How conservatives tick
Freedom is a big thing, maybe the biggest of all.
Because without freedom everything else is nothing.
Seen in this way, I admire the way the conservatives manage to get to the heart of the concept of freedom in these crisis-ridden days.
Or better: to bring to the circle.
On a white circle with a gray border and within it five gray lines from bottom left to top right.
recognized?
It is traffic sign 282:
»End of all route-related speed limits and no overtaking.«
Conservatives love it.
(And hey @fdp, you have at least as strong feelings, sorry, but here's a few paragraphs about other freedom aficionados.)
About Friedrich Merz, for example, who explained away the speed limit as a “symbolic topic” last night in the ZDF “summer interview”.
This would solve neither ecological nor traffic problems.
And it's right.
Because if you don't count traffic jams and CO₂ emissions as traffic and ecological problems, the CDU leader is absolutely right.
Incidentally, in Great Britain, the limit on motorways is 113 km/h (aka 70 miles).
And neither of the two remaining candidates in the fight for the Tory presidency and thus for moving into 10 Downing Street is questioning that.
British Conservatives seem to tick differently.
Are they also more modern?
After all, Foreign Minister Liz Truss and former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak are facing each other in a TV duel on the BBC tonight:
a 46-year-old woman (birthday tomorrow!) and a 42-year-old man with Indian roots.
Overall, at the start of the race to succeed Boris Johnson, six out of 11 candidates were from ethnic minorities.
As you may remember, last year it was Friedrich vs. Norbert vs. Helge.
However, the British are of course not more cosmopolitan per se for this reason alone,
but only to a limited extent more diverse.
Our columnist Sabine Rennefanz points out that Favorit Rishi Sunak and his wife are among the richest people in Britain.
Father a doctor, mother a pharmacist, he attended elite boarding school, studied at Oxford and Stanford.
When was the last working class child Tory boss?
Column on the fight for Johnson's successor: Not for old, white men
Long time no see
The tour got me back.
As I write this sentence, the award ceremony in Paris is playing in the background.
The Dane
Jonas Vingegaard
won the most important cycling race in the world after 21 stages and around 3350 kilometers.
Vingegaard is the first Tour winner since 2005, since Lance Armstrong, whom I know by name.
I first heard about his rival and winner of previous years, Tadej Pogačar, in the past few weeks.
I was totally bummed for being such a huge and so disappointed fan.
Fan of Jan Ullrich.
My idol was a liar, one of the greatest tricksters in cycling
, his last tour was in 2005. After that he was caught, suspended and blocked.
And I got out.
I followed the rapid rise of this man in the summers of 1996 (tour second) and 1997 (tour winner) as a student and I spent July 2003 in my Munich student flat in front of the television and watched Ullrich in the celeste-colored jersey of the »Team Bianchi« came back.
How he almost had Armstrong.
I pointed out to my roommates that I was 1.83 meters tall and weighed 73 kg.
Like Jan Ullrich.
They said: "Nice for you." That summer I was dabbling around in the Bavarian foothills of the Alps in a Bianchi jersey, people called "Ulle!" after me and I threw up from the effort.
From 2006 onwards, the garment lay at the bottom of various cupboards.
My colleague Udo Ludwig describes in his story, which is well worth reading and in places reads like a thriller:
Ullrich is »the victim of a merciless sports business, the greed for success and income.
And the fact that we are overwhelmed to find our way around in this system«.
I recently watched the ARD documentary about Ullrich that everyone is talking about now.
Five episodes in total, two episodes of ascent, three episodes of descent, almost to destruction.
My wife said: "Ullrich is awesome." We sat on the sofa, thought about this decline for a long time and I thought that I used to be a real fan.
She said: There's that funny green jersey downstairs in the closet.
"Celeste colors!" I objected.
Maybe I'll wear it again this summer.
The triumph and tragedy of Jan Ullrich: The athlete who was not fit to be a hero
The smell of the cities
Do you know that?
You come back home, to your town or village after a holiday and you recognize the smell.
It happens to me all the time.
For example, blindfolded, I could only tell from the smell that I am in Berlin.
And please don't think about animal excreta now, those days are really over.
More or less.
For example, I like the smell of the Berlin U-Bahn when you walk into a station and feel the breeze of an incoming train.
It was the same for me in Munich.
Not in New York.
At Pariser Platz in Berlin, behind the Brandenburg Gate, it can sometimes stink in summer because, as someone once explained to me, there wasn't enough water in the sewage system.
When I came back from America after four years, the first thing that struck me was the smell of diesel in German cities.
"Every city has its own chemical fingerprint
," explains atmospheric researcher Thomas Karl in an interview with my colleague Miguel Helm: "A city with a high concentration of coffee roasters smells different than a city on an empty lake." Makes sense.
And cities smelled differently in the past:
“In the 1980s, cars had a much stronger influence on the smell of a city than they do today.
That's why you can now perceive smells that people wear on their skin more strongly: perfume, sunscreen, cosmetics," explains Karl.
That doesn't just sound like a relief to me, but also an obligation.
Attention, the choice of perfume definitely stands out.
Unpleasant odor sources: Why do our cities stink in summer, Mr. Karl?
You can find news and background information on the war in Ukraine here:
Russia confirms plans to overthrow the Ukrainian government:
The Kremlin has tightened the tone in the Ukraine war: the declared goal is to depose the incumbent government in Kiev – chief diplomat Sergey Lavrov has now made it clear.
"Are we prepared to accept significant disadvantages?"
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier calls for solidarity with Ukraine, which has been attacked by warmonger Putin.
The head of state fears a return to isolation – and warns of division.
"I don't want you to be able to look away":
war photographer Ron Haviv was in Bosnia and Afghanistan, in Libya and now in Ukraine: the US photographer documents conflicts around the world.
Here he talks about truth and manipulation in journalism - and the power of images.
Katrin Göring-Eckardt is considering extended operation of the nuclear power plants – “in an emergency situation”
: the last German nuclear power plants are to go offline at the end of the year.
That's the plan.
But now an energy crisis is looming.
And even the Greens no longer rule out a temporary extension.
Here is the current quiz of the day
The starting question today: Which country was the last to join NATO in March 2020?
(as of July 2022)
Winner of the day...
... is
Baden-Württemberg.
This year the hyphen country is celebrating its 70th birthday, tonight the Ministry of the Interior in Stuttgart is hosting a festive evening.
Wait, only 70 years?
So younger than Hesse, Bavaria or Lower Saxony?
Exactly, because it was not until April 1952 that Baden-Württemberg was merged from three states.
Some other countries should have followed this example of a merger in the sense of a more effective federalism in the past decades.
Incidentally, in the same year in which the Federal Republic of Germany made one state out of three, they chose the opposite path in the GDR: the states were deprived of their administrative function, and instead 14 districts plus Berlin were introduced.
As a child of the West German zone border region, I still had to memorize them in the 80s, from the district of Karl-Marx-Stadt in the far south to the district of Rostock in the north.
Shortly thereafter the spook was over - and fortunately I had learned all this for nothing.
The latest news from the night
7.12 meters - Malaika Mihambo defends her world title in the long jump:
Overall, the head national coach draws a sobering conclusion from the World Cup in Eugene.
Joe Biden is still hoarse - but on the mend:
According to his personal doctor, the US President is recovering well from his Covid disease.
For the time being, however, he will continue to take medication.
Merz defends arrival in his own plane to Lindner's wedding:
Friedrich Merz steered his private plane to Sylt to attend Christian Linder's wedding there.
The CDU leader is now justifying this – and is immediately confronted with a “fact check” on Twitter.
The SPIEGEL + recommendations for today
Arab Autumn:
Tunisia is in a severe economic crisis.
At the same time, President Kais Saied is converting the incomplete democracy into a dictatorship.
But the young and clever in the country are no longer taking to the streets, but to Europe.
Gorillas in the fog:
The Berlin start-up was considered the hope of the German start-up scene, boss Kagan Sümer has already compared it to Nike and Apple.
Today Gorillas still burns a lot of money - but hardly gets any new capital.
“The bodies are no deeper than half a meter”:
tens of thousands of people are missing in Mexico, many of whom were victims of the drug cartels.
In the desert, mothers search for the remains of their missing sons - and time and again they discover mass graves.
Landed the biggest fish:
Jonas Vingegaard won the Tour de France without showing a single weakness.
The fact that this also arouses suspicion lies in the nature of cycling.
But the Dane also had the best team at his side.
I wish you a good start into the day.
Yours Sebastian Fischer