1.
In view of the 100,000 deaths in the pandemic, help for the health system is urgently needed, but German politicians seem to be ignoring its plight
Of course, it's no more than a number. Today is the day on which more than 100,000 corona deaths are to be mourned in Germany. The number of infections continues to rise, the prospects are bleak. Nurses who care for seriously ill Covid patients report in conversations with SPIEGEL colleagues about their fear of a horror winter with sharply rising sickness and death rates and about their own overload and helplessness.
My colleague Janko Tietz writes in his comment on today's day of the 100,000 pandemic deaths about the failures of German politics.
Especially in comparison to the zeal with which German politicians countered the international financial crisis in 2008, one has to state that the will of politics to save human lives has evidently been less strong in recent months than the will of banks and stock marketers to bail out.
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Photo: Andrew Merry / Getty Images
"There is something fishy in a country that allows the health sector to be left hanging around with its services of general interest - with all the foreseeable consequences," says Janko. He wants a responsible policy that now promises health workers the money they need to ease the burden. Who is willing to pay medical and nursing staff for the duration of the pandemic and to improve working conditions in such a way that there is an incentive to return to work for those who have left it.
"Haha, that would be nice," writes the colleague, "that will never happen".
In contrast to the financial crisis of 2008, politics was limited to short-term solutions for a long time.
The economy has been supported by an economic stimulus package worth 130 billion euros.
Rapid help for hospitals and their employees was largely absent.
"Now we are dealing with a new situation," says Janko.
The prospect that Germany's politicians will not react to this situation with the same determination as to the financial crisis of 2008 is what he calls a »perversion of capitalism«.
Read the whole comment here: Maybe the keepers should have just gambled
2.
In the stress of forming a government, the Greens are fighting a power struggle - and the traffic light's climate plans are also criticized for being too vague
The Greens had already announced for some time that they would present their staff for the traffic light government on Thursday.
After 16 years of opposition, they will soon be part of the government again in Berlin.
It is surprising how fiercely people argue about posts and positions.
In the party, which is no longer really used to such disputes, a violent power struggle has broken out between the left wing of the party and the so-called Realos.
What is the background to the Green Quarrel, in which it is obviously largely about the ministerial ambitions of the leftist Anton Hofreiter and the Realo Cem Özdemir, in which Hofreiter now comes away empty-handed? It's the question of women: because the FDP has more men than women in its cabinet positions, the SPD and the Greens have to make up for the missing woman so that the cabinet remains equal. The future Chancellor Olaf Scholz had promised that, from the SPD it is said that it is important to him. For the Greens, which they understand to be a feminist party, it is anyway. "The fact that the Greens did not present their personnel sheet at 4 p.m. as planned shows how controversial the question is in the party," says my political colleague Valerie Höhne. "It has the potential to put the parliamentary group to the ultimate test."
The future climate policy negotiated by the Greens in the coalition agreement has also come under fire. My colleague Michael Sauga asked the economics professor Ottmar Edenhofer about the value of the traffic light agreements that are supposed to make it possible to achieve the 1.5 degree target. The scientist Edenhofer, who has been recognized as a »climate economist«, sees the coalition partners on the right track overall, but criticizes the lack of a clear concept for making CO₂ more expensive.
"The coalition does not want to raise the CO₂ price for traffic and buildings any further before 2026 because the prices for gasoline, heating oil and diesel have already risen sharply in the past few months, and that scared some," said Edenhofer. As a result, there were no reliable price targets for the future. "I wouldn't be surprised if energy prices on the market were to fall again soon," said the professor who teaches at the Berlin Technical University. "Then the incentives for savings are suddenly gone." In this case, it is not clear how the government intends to achieve its ambitious goals.
Edenhofer calls the traffic light plan to generate 80 percent of electricity from renewable sources in ten years "extremely ambitious".
In order for the government to accelerate the approval process and make two percent of the German land area available for wind and solar power, "Mumm" is needed.
Read the whole interview here: »There is a lack of consistency«
Grünenspitze wants Özdemir and Lemke as ministers - Hofreiter should go away empty-handed
3.
The global clothing industry produces more and more products for customers who wear their clothes shorter and shorter - this is damaging to the environment and the climate
On average, people living in Germany buy 60 items of clothing a year. However, the clothes are only used for half as long as they were 15 years ago. This is one of the amazing findings from a story by my colleague Philip Bethge about the business of the so-called fast fashion industry. Worldwide, 206 billion items of clothing will probably be produced in 2030. "Ten to 30 percent of the clothes never make the leap over the counter," Philip quotes a Greenpeace expert. Fashion chains such as H&M or Zara would meanwhile receive new deliveries weekly or even daily: "Any of the goods from the last batch that has not yet been sold is sorted out and destroyed."
Greenpeace and other environmental protection organizations are calling for textile companies to take back their products and for the flow of goods to be slowed down. The business model with the ex and hopp fashion must come to an end, so it is said, otherwise the textile industry will remain a major driver of the climate and biodiversity crisis. Using the example in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, the colleague describes where the discarded clothing ends up and the environmental damage it causes. "The mounds of weathered clothing, T-shirts, trousers and shirts in all the colors of the rainbow" are a very strange sight, says Philip, "in one of the driest parts of the world with a magical beauty."
Even if in the north of Chile at least some of the old clothes are recycled because locals rummage through the dumps to find things they need or can sell in their neighborhood - the Greenpeace expert questioned in the story is certain: “That is not one Second-hand for the needy, but a waste export for a long time. "
Read the full story here: Why even new clothes end up in the desert
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What else is important today
Merkel assures Poland of "full solidarity":
Poland's pushbacks on the border with Belarus are being criticized internationally.
Angela Merkel confirmed her support to the Prime Minister.
She knows what "considerable pressure" Poland is under.
The smuggler
caught on the
English Channel came from Germany:
27 people drowned on the crossing from France to Great Britain.
Five suspected smugglers have now been arrested.
According to the French interior minister, one had a German license plate.
Amazon employees strike on Black Friday:
From this Friday on, Amazon employees want to strike several days for a collective agreement.
The strike falls on the bargain day Black Friday.
According to the company, customers should not feel this.
Volkswagen
recruits
Apple's battery boss: Volkswagen is
getting external know-how to set up battery cell factories.
According to manager magazin, the Wolfsburg-based company will commit Apple's previous battery boss.
He's not the only newcomer.
ARD is setting up its new cultural platform in Weimar:
ARD has agreed on where it wants to locate its cultural platform: in the Goethe city of Weimar.
After a long and tough media-political tussle, is everyone happy now?
Not really.
What we recommend today at SPIEGEL +
Because it affects everyone:
Joshua Kimmich has become a symbol in the vaccination debate over the past few weeks.
The message that he has now tested positive fits: If you are not vaccinated, Corona will catch you at some point.
What you need to know about Covid-19 child vaccination:
The Covid-19 vaccine from Biontech is now also approved in the EU for five to eleven year olds.
When will the drug be available and what makes it different from the adult vaccine?
The overview.
Corona endangers the restart of the CDU:
new boss, new board, women's quota.
The party congress at the end of January is set to be a turning point for the CDU.
Actually.
Is the corona crisis wrecking everything?
Which is less important today
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Ferchichi family
Photo: bush1do / Instagram
Well-behaved wild man:
Bushido
, 43-year-old German rapper, celebrates the people who recently stood by him and his wife during the birth of their youngest children - and must answer to court in connection with an alleged arson. As it became known today, the public prosecutor is indicting Bushido, whose real name is Anis Ferchichi, of community arson. He is allegedly accused of hiring two accomplices in December 2013 to start a fire in the roof structure of his house in Kleinmachnow. Also today Bushido shared a photo on Instagram that shows him and his wife Anna-Maria Ferchichi with their youngest triplets. For which the rapper thanked the doctors at the Berlin Charité and midwife Luise - "and especially the great nurses and nurses on our ward".
Typo of the day
, corrected in the meantime: "The dismissal of one engineer was in no way related to his advice."
Cartoon of the day:
Queuing on Black Friday
And tonight?
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Benedict Cumberbatch in "The Violence of Dogs"
Photo: LMKMEDIA / ddp
Could you go to the cinema, watch the new film by director Jane Campion - and find your answer to the tricky question of whether the work "The Violence of the Dogs" is a dreary right-wing piece of work or a masterpiece. I myself was allowed to discuss the western with Kirsten Dunst and Benedict Cumberbatch in my report on the start of the Venice Film Festival and, unfortunately, I was really bored - because I was with the very clearly recognizable intentions of the director, the acting work and the for a good five decades old novel based story of the film could hardly begin.
So I'm all the more astonished, but pleasantly surprised, that my colleague Hannah Pilarczyk discovered the “tension of a psychological thriller” in the film in her review of the cinema release today.
She praises it as an outstanding event in which the director, actor and author all turn out to be brilliant.
And she writes that you should definitely see the film in the cinema before it is sent on Netflix.
Should I really have made a mistake in my lousy assessment?
This sometimes happens to the most avid critics.
In this case, maybe me?
A lovely evening.
Sincerely
yours, Wolfgang Höbel
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