Today the focus is on NATO expeditions into space, the Greens' excursions into realpolitik and the British breakout of the virus world.
How NATO takes off
The heads of the 30 NATO allies are meeting for the summit in Brussels today.
Like that
At the G7 meeting in Cornwall, this
NATO summit
should also be
comparatively easy to "get over the ramp" (to quote an alleged favorite saying by CDU parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus).
Because after four years of Donald Trump, the NATO heads of government should be happy and grateful if no one sits in their group who declares NATO superfluous.
Enlarge image
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
Photo: OLIVIER HOSLET / POOL / EPA
The
reform initiative “NATO 2030” is to be
adopted
at the summit
, and as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg exclusively told my Brussels colleague Markus Becker in advance, it should not only be about the increasingly aggressive behavior of Russia and China in the world, but also about
threats that come from outside our globe
: "I expect the heads of state and government to decide that a serious attack on our satellites or other capacities in space can trigger the alliance case," said Stoltenberg.
In future, for example, NATO member Great Britain would not only be supported by its partners if - God forbid!
-, for example, a humpback whale remote-controlled from Beijing should swallow Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
An attack on a NATO partner from the infinite expanse of space could also trigger the fall of the alliance.
One does not want to imagine the scenario in which such an attack will occur and whether the NATO states are really technically or militarily prepared for it.
The Norwegian Stoltenberg remains vague when it comes to what exactly an attack would be:
"Leaving the exact threshold unclear is part of the deterrent."
Secretary General on China and new weapons technology: This is how Jens Stoltenberg plans NATO for the future
What the Greens dare to do
Enlarge image
Annalena Baerbock shortly after her freestyle for the first green candidate for chancellor
Photo: Hendrik Schmidt / dpa
Stoltenberg's sentence also fits very well with the strategy of the CDU and CSU in this early phase of the election campaign: it is better to leave the "exact thresholds" unclear, just don't define them, that makes the opponents nervous enough.
The Greens, whose candidate for Chancellor Annalena Baerbock sometimes stuck a price tag or a number on her goals, has not been rewarded in the polls in recent weeks.
And now the whole party had to show its colors: At the weekend the Greens passed the election manifesto at their federal delegates' conference, and as expected, they confirmed their
rejection of NATO's
two percent
target
, i.e. the plan to spend two percent of economic output on defense .
Stoltenberg said in an interview with SPIEGEL that he had already met the officially nominated candidate for Chancellor Baerbock.
“I reminded you that in 2014 all NATO partners made this promise.
Of course, I expect all of the Allies to do what they are committed to.
«
Stoltenberg's speakers are likely to have marked another piece of information for him in the press review this morning: In their newly adopted election program, the Greens gave up their years of categorical rejection of armed drones with a wafer-thin majority of 347 to 343 votes: The decisive factor should now be »for which deployment scenarios the armed drones should even be used by the Bundeswehr before a decision can be made about this procurement «.
This means that
the Greens are almost more open to the drone issue than the SPD
, which has postponed a Bundestag decision on the subject indefinitely.
The eco party in the coalition check: so much green goes with black, red and yellow
How a speech affirms itself
Enlarge image
The publicist Carolin Emcke
Photo: Mohssen Assanimoghaddam / dpa
Incidentally, the publicist
Carolin Emcke also gave a much-noticed speech
at the
green federal delegates'
conference
.
She called for a “new enlightenment” in the country, deplored the “fragmented” and “charged public” caused by social media and warned against the “populist mobilization” in our time, against
“the readiness for resentment and violence”
.
According to Emcke, victims of these moods could not only be Jews, but also experts from hotly contested areas such as virology or climate research.
Unfortunately, this speech was apparently too demanding for a small part of the audience.
Twitter was mobilized against Emcke in exactly the same populist way that she warned against.
Your mention of Jews and climate researchers in one sentence is
historically forgotten,
even
anti-Semitic
.
If you only heard a snippet of 40 seconds, you might get this idea.
Anyone who has invested seven minutes of their life can only shake their head at such interpretations.
Here you can hear Emcke's entire speech:
Party conference of the Greens: Shitstorm after report on alleged Holocaust comparison
How London sings and laughs
Enlarge image
Image from pre-pandemic times: the award-winning London pub The Harp in 2011
Photo: Oli Scarff / Getty Images
Today the British government is deciding whether it
can stick
to its
Corona timetable
. The plan for June 21st is to lift all measures against the virus - open everything, no longer restrict anything or anyone. Finally indoor dining and pub crawl again until curfew. If it weren't for the
delta virus variant
, formerly known as the "Indian variant," which is rampant in various parts of the kingdom. Should Prime Minister Boris Johnson decide to stick to his timetable anyway, it could have a curious consequence: The British are allowed to do everything again - but anyone who wants to enter Germany from the UK is not allowed to do anything at first.
According to the current status, the corona crisis team of the federal government classifies
Great Britain as a virus variant area
, this is the highest level of virus risk and means that travelers from this country have to be in quarantine for 14 days without being able to free themselves from it with negative tests. One reason why no SPIEGEL editor from Germany traveled to the G7 summit in Cornwall, otherwise the colleague would have had to isolate himself for two weeks afterwards.
The Corona crisis team is one of those secretive government circles that hardly anyone knows, but whose decisions actually have a
decisive influence on all of our vacation planning
. My colleagues Cornelia Schmergal, Christoph Schult and Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt were able to take a look behind the scenes of this committee, which often makes decisions based more on political than strictly scientific criteria.
By the way, our London correspondent Jörg Schindler traveled to Cornwall and reported for us
how meager the corona results were for developing countries
.
The richest industrialized countries could not even promise a billion vaccine doses for poor countries, while the World Health Organization reckons that eleven billion doses would be necessary to vaccinate at least 70 percent of the world's population twice.
Not to mention the delicate question of the revocation of patent protection.
In line with this, the German Development Minister Gerd Müller (CSU) is traveling from today to four West African countries, to Togo, Senegal, Gambia and Sierra Leone.
The rulers and NGOs there could ask him some uncomfortable questions beyond the protocol.
Coronavirus in the UK: how dangerous is the Delta variant?
Winner of the day ...
Enlarge image
Helmut Kohl with his wife Maike Kohl-Richter (2010)
Photo: Boris Roessler / dpa
... is former Federal Chancellor
Helmut Kohl
. Admittedly, the deceased rarely appear in this category, but today the city council of Ludwigshafen wants to pay tribute to Helmut Kohl posthumously, namely by renaming a street to Helmut-Kohl-Allee. One would think that this is not a difficult undertaking in Kohl's hometown, but apparently CDU local politicians like the parliamentary group leader in the city council, Peter Übel, have been fighting in vain for a street named after Kohl for years. At the first attempt in 2017, a petition signed by a good 1,000 people prevented Kohl-Allee, and further attempts also failed. But this time, evil announced in the local "Rheinpfalz": "The majority in the city council is."
With diplomatic skill, the CDU parliamentary group does not want to rename an existing street this time, but rather build one that is already ailing and ready to be demolished and baptize it in Kohl's name.
The SWR knows that Helmut-Kohl-Allee "should be almost 900 meters long, multi-lane and at ground level".
And the date of the city council resolution fell almost exactly on the anniversary of Kohl's death on June 16, 2017.
The latest news from the night
Historic and fragile:
Israel's new government stands - without Benjamin Netanyahu.
Now the right, left and conservative Muslims must rule the country together.
How is that supposed to work?
"She reminded me of my mother":
For the Queen he was the first president she received without her late husband Prince Philip: After the G7 summit, Joe Biden came to Windsor Castle - and praised her for her generosity
"There is great concern that the region is heading towards a critical tipping point":
The Antarctic Treaty came into force 60 years ago.
It is time to finally put the Southern Ocean under better protection, warns a new report.
Because the region is crucial for the global climate
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I wish you a good start to the day.
Your Melanie Amann