Germany

Three approaches to reopening schools

Featured image Germany and France are set to reopen schools. However, the two nations are taking very different approaches. Germany is starting with two sets of students. Those about to move from primary school to secondary school and those about to take graduation/college entrance examinations will be the first back. Germany is still considering when other sets of students will be allowed to return. France will start with a much younger group »

German soccer set to recommence

Featured image The German Bundesliga is poised to become the first sports league I follow to go back to work. In fact, players are already at work. They are practicing in anticipation of matches to be played in early May. When the Bundesliga season came to a halt, teams had nine matches left to play. And, for once, there was a genuine race for the championship. Normally, Bayern Munich has the top »

The Wuhan coronavirus in Germany, Part Two

Featured image Yesterday, I wrote about how Germany’s coronavirus death numbers were extremely low compared to nearby countries. I noted that Germany had about the same number of reported cases as France (approximately 130,000 cases). Italy had about 155,000 cases. Spain had about 165,000. Yet, Germany was reporting only 3,022 deaths. France was reporting more than 14,000. Spain was reporting around 17,000 and Italy nearly 20,000. Looking at the numbers on a »

The Wuhan coronavirus in Germany

Featured image Germany has been in the coronavirus news lately because of a study from a town, Gangelt, that tested 80 percent of its population (of 11,634) for the virus. The study found that the infection morality rate was about 0.3 percent. (See here for criticism of the study.) Without wanting to discount this study, it may be worth noting that, since the early days of the pandemic, Germany has been reporting »

Recent Wuhan coronavirus numbers

Featured image The number of new Wuhan coronavirus reported cases in the U.S. (per Worldometer) continued to rise on Monday and Tuesday, though not dramatically. On Sunday, the number was 9,339; on Monday it was 10,168; and on Tuesday (March 24) it was 11,075. Reported deaths in the U.S. rose from 117 to 140 to 225. The total count is now 780 with most of them coming in the past three days. »

Germany’s Green Energy Faceplant

Featured image No sooner do I post an item yesterday about Germany’s pathetic energiewende than the thesis is confirmed today in, of all places, the New York Times! German journalist and Times op-ed contributor Jochen Bittner today writes of “The Tragedy of Germany’s Energy Experiment,” where these familiar-sounding highlights appear: My country has embarked on a unique experiment indeed. The Merkel government has decided to phase out both nuclear power and coal »

Germans Rebel Against Tax on Meat

Featured image Through human history, the basic standard of well-being has been the ability to afford an adequate diet, especially one that includes animal protein. But, in classic first world style, some German politicians have decided that Germans eat “too much” meat. Hence a campaign to raise taxes on meat: “Green tax on sausages a step too far for Germans.” Germany has raised the prospect of imposing a hefty tax on meat »

Trump Hatred–Or Is It America Hatred?–German Style

Featured image We wrote here about how Der Spiegel, Europe’s largest news magazine, made a fool of itself by publishing an entirely fictional article about Fergus Falls, Minnesota, and the “Trump voters” who live there. While the extent to which that article was fiction may have been unintended, its anti-Trump–and anti-American–tenor was not. Now, Der Spiegel has published a hit piece on Richard Grenell, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Like the residents »

“The Dark Night of Fascism Is Always Descending…

Featured image …in the United States and yet lands only in Europe,” as Tom Wolfe first said. I would offer a corollary: political violence is always descending from the right, yet when it lands, it nearly always comes from the left. Thus, for example, liberals love to talk about hate, but somehow they never mention the great political hater of our time, Bernie Bro James Hodgkinson, who took a rifle to a »

The Latest From Michael Ramirez

Featured image I know, I’m jumping the gun on tomorrow’s Week In Pictures. But here’s the thing–I can access a preview of Steve’s post, which will go up in the morning, and these cartoons by Michael Ramirez aren’t included. So I offer these three cartoons, all created very recently, with a clear conscience. Michael envisions the Senate battle over confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, a completely unexceptionable nominee, to the Supreme Court. I »

The left’s incoherence on Trump-Putin exposed

Featured image I agree with John’s analysis of the approach President Trump is taking at the NATO summit. In this post, I want to highlight the inconsistency, noted by John, between the left’s criticism of Trump’s approach and its claim that he is soft on, and maybe an instrument of, Putin. Trump has made two main points in Europe. First, key NATO members aren’t doing enough in the area of defense. Second, »

Europe: Things Fall Apart

Featured image German Chancellor Angela Merkel is hanging on by her fingernails in Germany right now, as the backlash against migrants reached a critical mass in recent weeks. The cabinet minister who confronted Merkel and forced immigration concessions, Horst Seehofer of the “conservative” CSU party based chiefly in Bavaria, has seen his own poll ratings collapse in the aftermath of the political crisis. But this is just as likely to be the »

Asylum Seeker’s Rape/Murder Roils Germany

Featured image Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of admitting into Germany hundreds of thousands of purported “refugees”–out of a misplaced sense of guilt, apparently–has been a disaster. The policy is appropriately unpopular, even more so following the latest outrage, the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl by an Iraqi whose plea for refugee status was turned down. The New York Times reports, with surprising objectivity: It was a gruesome murder: »

“Stürm das Cockpit, oder du stirbst!”

Featured image I have stumbled across the funniest thing I’ve read in a long while, and the fact that I don’t read much German makes it all the better. The German newspaper Zeit had an article last week explaining how Donald Trump should be understood as an epigone of Leo Strauss. All I can say is they’re a little late to the party, because that’s what the paranoid left said about George »

How Germany imported anti-Semitism

Featured image Hitler’s Germany virtually annihilated its Jewish population and made a strong run at annihilating Europe’s. Post-war Germany thus took pains to enforce a “Never Again” creed. But that ended when Angela Merkel decided to admit more than a million asylum seekers from Muslim countries. Now, Merkel admits that Germany confronts “a new phenomenon” as the refugees “bring another form of anti-Semitism into the country.” What in God’s name did Merkel »

Deutschland Uber Nobody?

Featured image Did you know that Germany is now in its fifth month without a government? Frau Merkel, the colossus bestriding Europe according to Davosman, has been unable to gather a coalition with enough other parties to reach a governing majority in the Bundestag, since she rules out including the new Alternative for Germany Party (AfD), which has gone from nowhere to winning 92 seats in the last election, and which, according »

German Energy Policy on the Rocks

Featured image It’s been a tedious chore to track the slow motion train wreck of Germany’s energiewende, or “energy revolution.” Climatistas here have long touted Germany as the model we should follow. Think of it a renewable energy uber alles. Well there’s a problem, and you don’t even need to know German to get this headline from two days ago: Fortunately we have Benny Peiser (a German native) at the Global Warming »