Enlarge image
"We'll smile again"
Photo: Tasos Katopodis - Pool Via Cnp / imago images / ZUMA Wire
1.
The mask of Pandora
Can Hope Be Measured?
In Germany, the incidence value fell below 100 for the first time since March. On Wednesday, 1.35 million people in this country were injected.
And in the USA, the authorities are already lifting the
mask requirement
and the
distance
requirement
for vaccinated people, at least largely.
Joe Biden celebrates it as a milestone: "We'll smile again."
Enlarge image
Last week in New York, Times Square
Photo: Eduardo Munoz / REUTERS
In the parallel infoversum of
"Fox News"
they still - or perhaps because of that - make every effort to blame the incumbent US president for everything bad. "Joe Biden is a human pandemic," says commentator Mark Levin. Border crisis, rising prices, escalation in the Middle East - Biden is at least partly to blame for everything. And the most worn-out phrase appears: Biden has opened Pandora's box, somehow with inflation.
If this were an educated bourgeois podcast on
Greek mythology
(working title "Sage, was ist"), this would be followed by explanations about the woman who was created from clay by Hephaestus, the god of fire, and all of the vices and people in a box Brought vices.
That Pandora is also one of the 82 known moons of Saturn and a fictional planet in the Hollywood blockbuster "Avatar", the moderator would elegantly weave into.
Pandora and Prometheus as seen by NASA
Photo: AFP / NASA / JPL / SSI
But the question is:
Will the end of the mask requirement for vaccinated people come at the right time?
"As is often the case in the corona crisis, that cannot be said with absolute certainty," reports my colleague Nina Weber from our health team.
"The reactions of various experts in the USA were accordingly mixed." After all, people who have been vaccinated could also pass the virus on in rare cases.
But even cautious experts say: With low incidences, the residual risk, which always remains, is acceptable.
Again to Pandora's box, looked up in Schwab's "Classical Legends of Antiquity": "There was only one good hidden at the bottom of the vessel: hope."
Read more here: USA lifts mask requirement for vaccinated people - right or risky?
2.
My neighbor, my worst enemy
Within a few days, a conflict that began in
Jerusalem
has gripped large parts of Israel.
Palestinian militants have fired more than 1,800 rockets from the Gaza Strip since Monday.
Israel reacts with military strikes - air force and artillery bombed around 750 targets (read here how Israel's anti-missile defense "Iron Dome" works).
Fear of a new
Gaza war is
growing (more on the current situation here).
Enlarge image
Israeli asylum seekers in Givatajim near Tel Aviv: the attacks from Gaza are more violent than ever
Photo: Ziv Koren / Polaris / laif
The conflict is not only carried out militarily.
Israelis, Jewish and Arab citizens, too, attack each other, as my colleague Alexandra Rojkov experienced.
The reporter traveled to Lod, where a Jewish Israeli is said to have shot and killed a Palestinian on Monday and where a short time later cars, dumpsters and a school were on fire.
In an apartment building where Jewish and Palestinian families live, Alexandra observed how hatred and suffering turn neighbors into opponents and how distrust suppresses empathy.
Before this escalation, the neighbors met together in the stairwell, the safest place, during an alarm.
Now they prefer to stay in their apartments for themselves, even if that is riskier.
Alexandra says: "Even if the military escalation should end - the mistrust will remain."
Read the full story here: "It's the first time I've been afraid of my neighbors"
3.
Left iconography
Large portraits of, of course, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht hang in the
office of the newly elected
top candidate Janine Wissler
.
My colleagues Martin Knobbe and Timo Lehmann were able to speak to her there, and not just via video conference, thanks to the corona easing and lower incidence values (see above).
"We met a cheerful party leader who immediately knew the answer to every question," says Martin.
"She only got tight-lipped when we asked her about her past in the controversial group Marx21 and her trip to Venezuela for the revolution."
Enlarge image
Wissler with SPIEGEL editors Martin Knobbe and Timo Lehmann
Photo: Steffen Roth / DER SPIEGEL
Wissler told her colleagues that although she was fighting for socialism from below, she was unable to name a socialist system that, in her opinion, could serve as a model for Germany.
The Marx21 group was nothing more than a debating club, she said, and did away with a categorization that was often ascribed to it: "I have never called myself a Trotskyist," said Wissler.
"The term has its origins in Josef Stalin, who called his opponents that."
Read the whole conversation here: "Squatting is legitimate"
(Would you like to receive the »Situation in the evening« conveniently by email in your inbox?
Here you can
order the daily briefing as a newsletter.)
What else is important today
Christian Lindner re-elected as FDP chairman:
The FDP continues to climb up in the polls - now the party has re-elected Christian Lindner as party leader.
Most of the delegates voted for him.
Ex-ÖVP boss accuses Kurz of “problematic relationship with the rule of law”:
Public prosecutors want to try Sebastian Kurz.
Now the former ÖVP boss Mitterlehner criticizes the Chancellor - and suggests Kurz to let the office rest if he should be charged.
Central Council of Muslims condemns anti-Semitic marches:
no understanding for protests in front of synagogues as "alleged criticism of Israel".
The Central Council of Muslims has sharply condemned anti-Semitism in Germany.
But the next demonstrations are imminent at the weekend.
My favorite story today: 50 years of 1000 great things
Enlarge image
Actors Lilo Pulver, Henning Venske with Tiffy and Samson 1977
Photo:
action press
Who how what?
Why why why?
Good journalism and good children's television ask the same questions.
Half a century ago
"Sesame Street" came
to Germany.
"The show gave the country a revolutionary idea of what the future might look like: tolerant, open-minded, colorful," writes my colleague Hauke Goos, whose memory of the first episodes is brightly colored even though he watched them on a black and white television Has.
“There are the pre-Samsonites and the post-Samsonites among the› Sesame Street ‹fans,” says Hauke.
“Those who were born early enough grew up with the original characters from the USA.
Then, in the late seventies, Samson and Tiffy came along and everything got better. ”He never liked either.
I found Herr von Bödefeld worse.
But that doesn't appear anymore today, I checked it out the other day.
Read the full story here: How Sesame Street saved Germany
What we recommend today at SPIEGEL +
Enlarge image
"Priceless - Why average earners can hardly afford a home these days" is the title of the new SPIEGEL. You
will
receive the digital copy from now on
and from Saturday at the kiosk.
Simply priceless:
In Germany, home ownership remains a dream, even for many double earners.
How did it come to this, who else can make it and how expensive is it?
The SPIEGEL cover story.
"Hamas wants to know where the 30,000 euros are":
The Middle East conflict often serves as a pretext to spread anti-Semitic hatred - also in Germany, where groups close to Hamas have long been collecting millions in donations.
Angela Merkel and the sham from Bulgaria:
Because Chancellor Merkel urgently wanted to get masks and protective suits from Bulgaria, the Bundeswehr tricked a need.
Scenes of a political farce that almost endangered human life.
"I'm afraid of something like that":
German sport is again shaken by a scandal.
It's about abuse of power and rip-offs in the German Rugby Association.
Athletes feel blackmailed by high officials.
Which is not so important today
Enlarge picturePhoto:
Jordan Strauss / dpa
Newcomer to the throne:
Prince Harry
, 36, who with his wife
Duchess Meghan
, 39, said goodbye to his royal duties a little more than a year ago, spoke again publicly about the burden he had to bear as a member of the royal family.
In a podcast he announced that life as a Windsor was "like a mixture of 'The Truman Show' and a zoo."
Typo of the day
, now corrected: "Political scientist Markus Kaim"
Cartoon of the day:
Corona demonstrations
Enlarge image
And on the weekend?
Enlarge image
Halston actor McGregor (center): Talent for arrogant self-enthusiasm
Photo: Atsushi Nishijima / Netflix
Could you start watching the five-part
Netflix series "Halston"
to watch, which is available since today. "It's a great pleasure to see Ewan McGregor in the title role playing a cheeky sun boy from the New York fashion world, who went from hatter Jackie Kennedys in the sixties to the head dresser for the star guests in the legendary Studio 54 in the seventies," says my colleague Wolfgang Höbel. The series conjures up in a refreshing way a now transfigured time of New York city life. "In this, the fashion designer Halston is something like the first servant of the royal couple Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol, who ruled over a realm of art, drug addiction and cheerful hedonism in what was then the most exciting city in the world," says Wolfgang. (You can find his detailed series review here.) Freely adapted from old Fritz: Here everyone has to be blissful according to their fashion.
Wolfgang and my colleague Elke Schmitter will take over the "situation in the evening" for a few days.
I wish you a nice weekend, Sincerely
yours Oliver Trenkamp
Here you can order the "Lage am Abend" by email.