Crisis rhetoric: Threatening and warning

2022-06-17T15:10:16.464Z

An inflationary used figurine of folk teaching is the announcement of various evils and misfortunes. What are the messages behind it?

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Photo: S. Ziese / blickwinkel / IMAGO

romance

»Above the sea of fog«: The forester sees here in front of the inner eye, i.e. the eye that is the most important to postmodernism, how the emotional scientist CD Friedrich left his – at that time not so called – wanderer standing over the ocean of intuitions and possibilities .

Looking at that viewer still triggers a certain uneasiness even after 200 years.

The principle is less direct in art history than a fly on a bouquet of flowers, but it can be used in a modern and variable way.

In parts of the news situation it has taken control again.

classic

A few days ago, the columnist paid 7.18 euros for a 500-gram organic spelled bread.

Not in the gourmet shop, but at the supermarket bakery.

A remarkable experience for someone in whose childhood a roll cost 10 pfennigs, without three types of grain sprinkled on, sugar caramel, pumpkin and carrot content, but with a hand-carved longitudinal seam.

That's why I found the news from June 13 all the funnier: "Özdemir warns of high prices."

Now our Federal Minister of Agriculture certainly does not mean such a warning in a funny way;

Rather, he is very concerned that the German farmers, together with their friends from industry and trade, could be forced to make the sandwiches and pretzel sticks in what feels like 500,000 bakeries more expensive for German consumers.

In fact, where it hurts is not getting anywhere with jokes of this sort.

As well-meaning, wealthy people keep pointing out, "poverty threatens": first of all, families, "more and more" children, single mothers and all old people apart from civil servants and inheriting best agers.

In total, about 60 percent of the population, roughly calculated.

And the Germans are still doing well there;

in the motherland of immensity you can add another 20 percent.

Now, poverty is certainly not an occasion for cynical gossip.

That's why one would like to know what the difference is between poverty and the threat of poverty, and why there are always more and more people "at risk of poverty" in this country, but notoriously few poor people.

This question can be dismissed as quibbling.

However, I warn against any, especially of course the inadmissible trivialization: Most of the time, words mean something, even if many have forgotten it.

In parts of Africa and Asia, we now read daily, "famines are looming."

In the same article one reads that "there have been famines for years".

According to the prevailing opinion, the impending distress is caused by Mr. Putin, who had the Black Sea mined in such a way that his warships could not get ashore and the wheat could not get out of the country.

It is true, I think as a layman,

a strange attack tactic.

But ever since I've been reading the endless stream of bulletins published by several hundred military strategists and tank generals, I've had the feeling that I know nothing about the craft of war.

The threat of famine due to a lack of foreign wheat exports is now followed by at least two follow-up threats: Firstly, for a week now there have been murmurs that it might "actually" be a humanitarian aid operation (greetings to Joschka F.), using some Nato - Frigates to keep the Odessa-Mediterranean export route free.

We know this aesthetic figure from the Strait of Hormuz, where she has been helping to keep our values and profit margins stable for quite some time.

But with wheat and African children, the motive for humanitarian intervention and the legitimation of a frigate under international law naturally get a completely different drive!

No one really dares to put their editorial and talk show honor on the card »For the children in Africa – let's clear the wheat route!«.

But we are working on it.

On the other hand: why now and why like this?

Which child-murdering monster is responsible for the famines that have prevailed "for years" before and without Putin and sea mines?

And what the heck does that have to do with the buttered pretzel we just

need

, which we bend over backwards here every day for the fakers, shirkers and dodgers in the social system of the world?

One could boldly formulate this: The human question is not »tactical nuclear weapon or non-tactical nuclear weapon«, but »butter pretzel or famine«.

Less complicated: If it could even be worth the end of the currently known Europe to ensure the supply of subsidized bread to the lowest wage earners, to whom we owe our wealth: Couldn't one then, as the very last step of preventive caritas, 500,000 bakeries in Germany do that Prohibit the production of so-called »snacks« from flour, 30 percent of which are thrown away twice a day because of the »guarantee of freshness«?

Or even more precisely: If »Africa« lacks 50 million tons of wheat,

couldn't even "America" and "Europe" eat 50 million tons less biscuits?

The well-informed economists among the readers will laugh derisively at so much naivety: As every child in Africa knows, starvation business is not done in the fields, but at the wheat exchange!

Even.

modern

In 1996, the Federal Court of Justice ruled on the following (here simplified) facts (Az: 3 StR 59/96): T (perpetrator) tells O (victim) that he found out that K (killer) was on his way to kill O to kill;

K should receive sum X as wages for this.

But he (T) could offer K the sum X + 1 in order to save O, then everything would be fine.

O should therefore please give T, who is acting out of concern for O, the sum X + 1;

he will pay them to K.

That's how it happens.

In fact, everything is made up.

– Question: Was that a (serious) »robbery extortion« (§§ 253, 255, 250 StGB)?

The prerequisite would be that it was blackmail

at all

: a threat with an evil to force another person to dispose of assets.

"Threatening is putting an evil in the background, on the realization of which the threatening person claims to have influence".

That definition sounds "legal," and it is, because if you're going to pursue criminal justice, you need to know the difference between threats and fear, just as it's good for the internist to know the difference between arteries and veins.

All of the above conditions are present here.

But something important is missing: the threatener must support the realization of the evil towards the

victim

;

if he doesn't, he doesn't "threaten" but "warns."

With this we have solved our example case.

That the T's supposed warning is a sham (and therefore the whole thing a scam) is another matter.

In the world of communication, there are clear conceptual boundaries, but many more unclear ones.

The meanings float around in the sea of fog of interests, experiences, objective and subjective possibilities.

In most cases, the information that "there is a threat" contains complicated mood messages that do what is called "framing" if you belong to the majority of communication experts: Just a few pseudo-connections and potential causalities in a soup of fear terms bring to a boil;

then the gut feeling of the notoriously stupid audience knows where the journey is going.

The alternatives that could make the threats superfluous are secretly eliminated and the disaster pipelines that have no alternative are relocated.

Thomas Fisher

to be right

Miscellaneous from the world of criminal law: The best SPIEGEL columns by the ex-federal judge

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Number of pages: 304

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If you take the trouble to take a closer look at the announcements, you can understand this quite well using the terms "threats" and "warning" as examples.

If you look for a week in two or three national newspapers for articles in which someone either "warns against" or "threatens" or in which "It threatens" you can easily get a few dozen.

If you subtract the silliness in which someone "warns against serious mistakes" or "warns against hasty conclusions" or "there is a risk of traffic chaos at the weekend", there are still enough left.

Then you notice that the distinction is often not clear at all.

"I warn you of my anger" is the exact opposite of a warning, and the message "Zelenskyi warns of loss of confidence in the EU" clearly goes in the same direction.

Which brings us back to global punitive policy: But it is difficult to avoid at the moment if you are not concerned with the fact that, firstly, the next corona chaos is threatening, secondly, the collapse of summer air travel is imminent and thirdly, the collapse of rail traffic in Germany threatens (everything from this week);

apart from that also a war between China and Taiwan/USA, and that the beaver is threatening to thaw the permafrost in the Arctic if General Custer does not deposit a contingent of birch bark at the bend of the Chatanga River by the day after tomorrow at the latest.

However, the warnings and threats from Kyiv have a very special quality, because even with good intentions it is difficult to see why people, politicians or states with their backs against the wall should resort to threatening third parties with their own downfall .

It's not that this doesn't make any sense at all;

however, this must be introduced into the argument from the outside, i.e. it must already be assumed.

This is here, obviously, a power-political, strategic sense: "world domestic policy," as they have recently also

actually

friends of peace quickly out of hand.

Unless NATO unconditionally supports Ukraine's current government in retaking Crimea and liberating Donetsk, the President "threatens" to continue the war, either until victory is achieved or until the last Ukrainian hero is killed.

And the radical right-wing nationalist ambassador "threatens" the German slackers that 850,000 Ukrainian refugees will no longer want to be cared for by Germany if the ambassador's army is not given Zackzack 500 Leo2.

On the one hand, this is a question of style, or also the expertise of the infantile-wild war literature of the powers that write from all pipes.

But that can be left undecided;

outside of the communications consultants and expert shows, it's not really of any interest.

In the end, it's more a question of yes or no: Yes, will Germany, with the help of its Ukrainian friends, reconquer Crimea for the West?

If you want to say “no”, which is a good thing, you would have to send a little warning to the state of values that is threatening its own demise.

If the answer is "yes", one must not hide what that means and should urgently move on to a clear threat against the citizen: Then it's your turn, honored people.

»Watching your own people sink is not an option, but a crime«.

That's what a columnist wrote on June 13 on page one of the "FAZ".

The abandoned, betrayed, betrayed in Kabul will not have read it.

One can reach the lowest even with the highest.

We are waiting for the penal proposals from the judges in Frankfurt.

So far, nothing has become known about self-flagellation.

avant-garde

monogram

In conclusion: Civilian volunteer squads patrol Kyiv to protect the home front from saboteurs and to instill feelings of security.

There is not much to object to.

However, we read in a newspaper for Germany on June 13: All militia members have a dog with them, without exception (German) shepherd dogs.

And because so many dogs are used on the front lines, every vigilante has to "bring their own."

We conclude that in Ukraine units of state war dogs are kept, which are issued to the troops if necessary.

Now that is surprising news.

We warn against hasty dog donations.

Otherwise there is a risk of training chaos.

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2022-06-17