Baerbock about the baerbook
There seem to be two versions of Germany these days.
If you live in Berlin, you experience sunny, summery Germany, where the biggest worry is whether your favorite restaurant has a table for four or what the corona location in the planned holiday destination looks like.
And then there is the other Germany, in which people have lost everything within minutes, their houses, their businesses and probably more than 180 people even their lives.
It is surreal to live in sunny, carefree Germany and then see the pictures from this other Germany.
Images that are otherwise known from other parts of the world, in which a typhoon, an earthquake or a tsunami raged.
Or as Angela Merkel said: "The German language hardly knows any words for the devastation that is wreaked here." After Chancellor and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer is also traveling to the flood areas today.
In ten weeks the general election is, and whether you live in sunny or flooded Germany, in the healed or the destroyed part - many people should also base their voting decision on which party has the best answers to what the causes of this catastrophe were, and how such events should be prevented in the future.
And it is less about the question of whether the extreme weather events have anything to do with man-made climate change - this question is probably only denied by the AfD. “Well, first of all I see a storm like the one we sometimes have in summer. This time it turned out to be particularly blatant, "said AfD boss Jörg Meuthen just in the ZDF summer interview. "To what extent climate change phenomena have reinforced this story, we don't know." Does Meuthen mean by "we" only his own party? Maybe AfD people really don't know how climate change affects the weather?
But this week's question is more likely to be how disaster control in Germany needs to be improved. The green candidate for Chancellor Annalena Baerbock, who prematurely ended her vacation because of the floods, comments on this in an interview with my colleagues Martin Knobbe and Jonas Schaible. "Germany was very fortunate to have had to experience relatively few natural disasters over the decades," says Baerbock. “However, this also meant that disaster control measures were not sufficiently expanded - although experts have been warning of extreme weather events caused by climate change for years. Adequate precautions have not been taken. "
The Greens therefore want to “reorganize disaster control, and the federal government must take on more responsibility for this.” Floods or forest fires often happen in several places at the same time.
That is why Baerbock would like to see »an authority that bundles all forces to pull together helicopters or special equipment from all over Germany or neighboring EU states as quickly as possible«.
But Baerbock wouldn't be a Green if she didn't also emphasize climate protection: "We can no longer afford the political stance of some parties in this country - it won't be that bad and in case of doubt it will affect other regions of the world", she says.
Incidentally, my colleagues also asked Baerbock how the plagiarism in their book came about.
The explanation goes something like this: You read and write down a lot, and unfortunately the sources would have been missing in the notes.
In addition, in order to avoid factual errors, she would have checked details in "public sources", but unfortunately she did not state this.
In retrospect, would Baerbock do this PR project again?
Read the answer for yourself:
SPIEGEL interview with Annalena Baerbock: "It makes your heart contract"
Laschet and the loss of control
For Armin Laschet it was disaster days, and that is only partly because his state North Rhine-Westphalia was devastated by the flood disaster. In this context, the candidate for chancellor made two unsuccessful appearances. First there was an interview on WDR television in which the Prime Minister was asked whether the flood was not a reason to do even more for climate protection. Laschet, visibly annoyed, replied: "Because this is a day like this, you don't change politics." As if North Rhine-Westphalia simply hadn't had an optimal day instead of a flood of the century - no reason for major political changes.
A little later, the television viewers saw Laschet giggling and smirking in the background, while in the foreground Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier made a serious, sympathetic statement about the victims of the tragedy in the flood area.
There were two very different appearances, but they show one thing: Laschet, the full professional, professional politician since 1994, is uncontrolled. He tends to lose control, especially under great pressure. The uncontrolled discharge can sometimes be an incongruous giggle, sometimes a sloppy saying. Please do not get it wrong: Laschet would not be the first Chancellor with a short fuse, see Gerhard Schröder. Even people who are prone to uncontrolled eruptions can be fit for chancellor (but most of them seem to decide in favor of the media industry after all). These people have a much harder time on the way to the coveted office, because somewhere a camera always captures an inappropriate grin, or a microphone amplifies a frustrated curse, as with Annalena Baerbock after a party conference speech.
In this respect, only SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz has come through without an accident.
Anyone who, like Laschet, had actually planned a sleeping car election campaign, soft and informal, without steep theses or polarization, least need the video snippets of his freaking out in an endless loop on social media.
For Laschet, in the Chancellery there would be a flood every day in terms of stress levels.
My gut feeling says that we might encounter the eruptive Laschet a few more times in this election campaign.
From a citizen's point of view, one would also like it.
Angela Merkel has perfected punched language and rigid facial expressions in her almost 16 years in office.
You see Merkel all the time and yet you don't know her.
Armin Laschet has been known a little better since this weekend.
Laschet's double U-turn
Freedom for humans and animals
Today is Freedom Day in the English part of Great Britain, all Corona measures are being lifted there.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that people should continue to be careful.
I'm really curious to see how this step will affect me, which seems a bit crazy and dangerous to the public.
But maybe I'm just not freedom-loving enough, as it occasionally says in critical letters to the editor.
The Chancellor recently announced that in Germany the mask and test requirement will remain - so that the number of infections remains low and even more severe interference with personal freedoms can be avoided. I can already sense how the crest swells with these words, who claim to understand more of freedom than others. But before I get further anger here, I would like to refer to my colleague Ullrich Fichtner, who will probably get a lot of bad mail this week. He got into a cover story with the people who refuse to be vaccinated.
“We're talking about the doubters, the fearful or over-cautious, the undecided and over-informed. It's about all those who have college degrees and still believe in wrong alternatives. To everyone who is simply too lazy to stand in line at a vaccination center, those who underestimate the disease or who - wrongly - speculate that they will soon be protected, even without their own vaccination, because the herd will be sufficiently immune . «This attitude costs lives, argues Fichtner. Who knows, maybe he can change people's minds?
Incidentally, today is not only Freedom Day in England, but perhaps also in Brussels: Today could be a day for poultry in Europe: At the request of Germany and France, the EU Agriculture Ministers are discussing a ban on the practice, male Killing chicks because they are less profitable for the industry than hens.
The subject of cage management is also on the agenda.
If you now think that animal welfare is secondary to the floods and corona these days, I would like to draw your attention to an essay by Richard David Precht on animal ethics, which is due to appear on our website today.
In it Precht explains why "the keeping of livestock in stables and on pastures, including animal feed production, is one of the worst ecological sins of mankind."
No English relations, please
Winner of the day ...
… For me is Kamzy Gunaratnam, Vice Mayor of Oslo.
Gunaratnam was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in Norway. Ten years ago she was part of the management team of the political youth camp on the island of Utøya, where right-wing terrorist Anders Breivik murdered 69 people; he had previously killed eight with a car bomb.
Breivik wrote a long letter to Gunaratnam in which he asked, among other things, for a pardon and better prison conditions.
The 37-year-old replied with an open letter in which she replied to Breivik: “I'm better than you, Anders.
I'm a better Norwegian. "
My colleague Dietmar Pieper met Gunaratnam in Oslo.
She told him that her compatriots' dealings with the anniversary of the attack, July 22nd, annoyed her.
These sweet reactions on social media: »I don't need damn hearts in my inbox on Facebook.
I need people who do something against racism, against hatred. "
Survivors of the Utøya Terror: "You wanted to kill me"
The latest news from the night
Demonstrators attack television stations in Cyprus:
The channel had reported critical of anti-vaccination agents - now attackers have set fire to several vehicles at a TV station in Cyprus.
President Anastasiades spoke of a "blow to democracy"
England is lifting almost all corona rules - Premier Johnson in quarantine:
The seven-day incidence has recently increased rapidly - despite this, England has now almost completely abolished the virus restrictions.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson celebrates "Freedom Day" in self-isolation
Australia throws right-wing columnist out of the country after corona violation:
Katie Hopkins is known for racist derailments.
Now the British commentator has bragged about alleged quarantine violations in Australia.
The government reacts quickly and harshly
The SPIEGEL + recommendations for today
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Descent of the online retailer: eBay's self-dwelling
Study abroad at home: When the lecture starts at night
What the pandemic teaches us Germans: Just do it!
I wish you a good start to the day.
Your Melanie Amann