It’s silly season all over again: On the eve of this year’s ‘German Islam Conference’, Volker Kauder, head of the Christian Democrats in parliament and one of Merkel’s key alleys, declared that ‘Islam is not part of our tradition and identity in Germany and so does not belong in Germany.’. As an aside, he added that Muslims do belong to Germany and enjoy their full rights as citizens. Phew!
Den Luxus getrennter Ämter – Kanzler + Präsident – leisten sich die Bundesländer nicht. Aber das bedeutet nicht, dass es die Aufgaben und die Rolle eines Staatsoberhaupts auf Länderebene nicht gibt. Der Ministerpräsident übernimmt sie – beide. Damit müsste also jeder Ministerpräsident wissen, “wie Präsident geht”, denn es ist ein ureigener Teil seines Jobs. schreibt…
Who is afraid of whom? The liberal German weekly Zeit has commissioned a YouGov poll which demonstrates that Germans are more afraid of right-wing terrorists than of Islamist terrorists. The question read “What is, in your opinion, the biggest terrorist threat in Germany?” On offer were right-wingers (41 per cent), Islamists (36.6 per cent), left-wingers…
Unless you spent the last couple of days under a rock, you will have heard about the terrible series of (at least) ten neo-Nazi murders that has stunned Germany. In my view, three things are particularly remarkable about this crime. First, the mainstream media including the public broadcasters and the left-liberal press refer to the…
I knew it had to be so: The NPD’s miniskirt campaign of 2011 represents the final step of a long journey that took them from outright condemnation of the garment in 1965 to a slightly overenthusiastic endorsement. Proof comes form John Nagle’s slightly obscure 1970 monograph on the party. Their position on haircuts hasn’t evolved…
Recently, I re-ran my scripts on a new data set that extends the old series all through the naughties. As you can see, party ID in Germany is not exactly alive and kicking, but the rate of decline has fallen considerably over the last decade.
The German government’s spokesman now has his own twitter account (@regsprecher). The German government’s spokesman also has his own little twittergate, since he surprised his global audience yesterday by claiming that ‘Obama is responsible for thousands of innocent deaths’. What a difference a letter makes.
As predicted yesterday, the nuclear disaster in Japan is having a profound impact on something as trivial as three state election campaigns in Germany, more than 9000 kilometres away. Roughly 70 per cent of the population believe that an incident on the scale of the Japanese catastrophe could happen in Germany, too. The Federal Government…
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption] It’s amazing: Just 36 hours after the horrible earth quake in Japan, 60000 people are demonstrating in Swabia – against nuclear energy. While we do not know whether the Japanese plants are actually in meltdown, for the German liberal-conservative coalition, this is certainly the Most Credible Accident. One…
The recent DVU/NPD merger has been successfully challenged in court