Was reading Berlin-City news....curious problem.
Over 100 e-buses are out of service. The entire Ebusco fleet is waiting for repairs/modifications.
What they say? Well....cracks in the frame....thus making them dangerous.
New buses? No....these are 3 and 4 year old buses.
Slot machines are legal in Germany.....under a fair number of regulations. You (as a pub, bar or restaurant) go to the city and get a permit. You admit....x-number of machines, and pay a taxation fee. Most will tell you that it's a marginal profit by the end.
If you asked me how many Germans actively play slots? I'd say it's 95-percent male-orientated....probably one German guy out of fifty.
So this week....in my town of Wiesbaden....a police raid occurred. What the cops say....they busted the maintenance facility of such machines, and this goes hand-in-hand with a two-year investigation of the region....with unlicensed slots.
Yeah, these pubs/bars....had machines in operation....with no license.
From what they figure....locally....forty-odd machines....there was a five-figure amount of untaxed income flowing back to someone.
So the parties involved....in trouble for unlicensed operations, and then dealing with the German tax folks.
1. Couple of shots fired last night in Dortmund....guy (unknown nationality) was hit and died. Police are investigating. All the cops say....occurred at north part of town....near midnight.
Shootings in 1980s/1990s were awful rare. If you follow the news these days....there's probably one every couple of week...usually crime-clan related.
2. Out of Thuringia.....a 34-year-old man from Georgia on asylum-status (supposed to be deported)....got into some argument with two aid workers. What cops say....the guy beat the two refugee aid workers so badly they required hospitalization.
3. The only 'big' gain in this Trump-Greenland deal? All military facilities on Greenland....end up with US operational control. Besides what the US already had....if Grok/AI is correct....six non-US sites end up in this deal.
Difficult to say if these are going to be US-manned, and 3,000-odd US Army guys end up in some 1-year Greenland temp-duty situation.
Yeah, and most likely they create a medal for the one-year deployment.
4. Out of WELT: now costing 5k Euro a month for a 'spot' in a German retirement home. Reaching a point where half of folks can't really afford the monthly bill.
5. For 25 years....this Mercosur deal has been attempted. The Mercosur-EU deal refers to a comprehensive trade and partnership agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Mercosur trade bloc, which consists of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay (with Bolivia as an associate member and Venezuela suspended).
It was supposed to create one of the world's largest free trade areas, covering over 700 million people and facilitating tariff reductions on goods, services, and investments while enhancing political cooperation.
It settled agricultural standards, environmental protections, and market access.
So....they signed the deal on 9 Jan 2026....done deal.
Well....NO....yesterday....the formal group in the EU....said we want a judicial review. EU court?
First, you can expect the review to take 12 months minimum....maybe on up to 26 months.
Second, this ECJ assessing? It'll list compatibility with EU treaties, focusing on issues like a "rebalancing mechanism" that lets Mercosur countries challenge EU legislation (e.g., environmental or agricultural standards), potential regulatory autonomy erosion, and alignment with EU climate commitments.
Potential destruction? Lot of South American folks figured this was a done deal....hyping up their economy over 2026/2027. Now? Even if the ECJ were 'nice'....saying no issues....you won't see any benefit occurring in 2026, and possibly even in 2027.
If the ECJ fails the deal....go expect a mini-economic crash.
The odds of total abandonment? Well....I'd give it a 10-to-20 percent chance. Maybe there's just one or two problems to re-engage upon and resolve.
The cheap steak path to Europe? This got brought up this past week....where both Argentine and Brazilian beef would be arriving in a few months.
If you go by the European gas storage database....GIE AGSI....the current fill level of German natural gas storage facilities on 21 January....is 40.7 percent.
No one really says the 'breaking' point where leadership gets worried. I would imagine if we reach a 30-percent point before the middle of February....there will be warning given and some lecture on conserving heat.
If you ask me about this current winter season....it's a bit more 'brisk' than most of the past decade.....at least in my valley. Two brief snow falls....most of the past month are minus-5 C temperatures for evenings.
I sat and watched a DEVOS talk....Finland's President, Alexander Stubb, says Europe can "unequivocally" defend itself, without the Americans.
It's pretty much a true statement...ONLY because Putin wiped out his military over a four-year period.
If you add up....rebuilding stage/era required (minimum of 30 years)....with the population issue (1-million dead men, and a bogus advertised population), and a limited manpower situation for decades to come....the Russians are simply not a key-threat anymore.
Keeping Ukraine armed and carving off Russian numbers...month by month....has shown the regional dynamics.
Cherry on this conversation? Well...once you establish that the Putin-team is not a threat....who will be able to dedicate military funding? Very quickly....France and Germany will want a cut in funding.
I sat and read through a news piece today....$150b Danish Pension Fund ‘AkademikerPension’ ready to sell all of US Treasury bonds amid rising Greenland tensions.
So there are three parts of the story left out.
First, the total amount in Treasury bonds....around $100-M or .4-percent of their total.....so it's not exactly a lot.
Second, AkademikerPension is a public pension fund....which is designed for college graduates and government employees....who know their regular pension from Denmark....is limited. You won't find heating technicians, plumbers, or car mechanics participating in their program.
Third, yes....the college graduate crowd probably put a lot of internal pressure on the managers of the fund.
Finally, the prime question I have....after they sold the bonds....did they at least break 'even'? If they didn't break even....how exactly will they explain the loss?
Oh, and a odd final question....you have $100-M now in your hand.....where will you invest it? German bonds? Swedish bonds? Greek bonds?
This is a story I noted about a month ago and I asked Grok/AI to lay out references.
So reports in 2025 indicated that a significant portion of new Berlin police recruits require additional German language training due to insufficient proficiency.
Back in the spring of 2025, out of 240 cadets who began training, 132 of them (around 55-percent) needed remedial German classes, particularly in written skills, during their first semester. (brusselssignal.eu)
What the leadership has said? It's a repeating issue....affecting about half of new entrants on average, and attributed it to broader societal trends like declining language abilities, teacher shortages, and increased classroom diversity rather than a problem unique to the force. (brusselssignal.eu)
Oddly, the requirement now mandates that recruits in training....must ultimately reach C2-level fluency (near-native proficiency) before graduating.
Odds of this occurring across all sixteen states? Well....no one says that. I would imagine have some issue brewing and quietly mandate additional language classes.
German politician Jürgen Hardt (CDU) has proposed a boycott of the 2026 World Cup which is to be held in the United States, regarding Greenland.
Pausing over this....it's a curious idea.
Most breweries, pub and bars in Germany need the European Cup and World Cup (alternating every two years) to occur....for the month-long period in summer.....to help profits and business to 'survive'.
Most German bar owners will tell you that a Cup-action for a month....makes about 40-percent of the yearly income, and it MATTERS. They also do NOT want the televised action to occur at 6 AM or noon.....they'd rather have hefty consumers of beer for late afternoon or evening games.
The same crowd have gotten use to beer-gardens being used....with weather being a major factor for beer consumption. Just having a one single rain-storm cancel out the bar garden situation....could mean a 10-percent loss in beer-profits for the month.
I'm not saying this idea of a boycott is good or bad....just that brewery industry and bar-owners don't agree with the idea.
In the early 1990s....I was giving this a 80-percent chance of happening....where most all of US forces in Europe would exit. This NATO versus Warsaw Pact....was dissolving. But I was wrong.
By the 2005 era....I was giving it a 10-percent chance of happening....very unlikely.
Here in 2026....I'm giving it a 99-percent chance of happening. The evolution will involve 'hate-Trump' chatter, keeping Russia alive by buying their oil/natural gas after the war ends, and some weird EU creation of NATO-plus-up with Ukraine as a active member-player.
The comical side of this evolution? Well...Europe has a arsenal of US-designed weapons. So they need to replace them....with limited to marginal funding available. To make this successful....taxes need to escalate...meaning public funds get more troublesome.
US commerce has to be punished in some way.....with several hundred thousand Europeans in such jobs....getting laid-off. Explaining this will take care of a number of political parties....triggering them to be more punished than usual
All of this acceptable to all members of the EU? I don't really buy into that....there's probably five or six European states which aren't going to buy into the 'path' designed. Poland, Hungary and Czech might go against the path....so might Italy.
All happening in 2026? No....but it'll be like the 1966 event in France, where the exit plan is drafted and finalized. I would imagine somewhere between 2027 and 2028....this 'end' will occur.
Financial chaos to occur? Yeah, but the more things change....the more they stay the same.
It's not the end of the world scenario....it's just a new evolution.
Here in Germany, this RyanAir 'comedy' where they got into Elon's business by saying 'no' to the Starlink being used on RyanAir flights for internet service. They could have lightly said 'no'....suggesting their flights are ultra-cheap and they don't offer gimmicks (that cause a upswing on tickets). But they decided to go a step or two beyond that.
This Elon hyped-up, and he asked (mostly as a joke)....how much was RyanAir if he were to buy them.
So this discussion has taken off....without much German notice unless you are on Twitter.
Cost, if Elon was serious? Folks suggest $35-B if you were to buy RyanAir.
My general take? I used RyanAir twice (2000-2005 era)....out of Hahn....to Shannon (Ireland) and some poverty-airport near Rome.
My experience....Hahn runs like a Greyhound bus station, and you spend an hour looking for parking...before you finally start walking to the terminal. The airplane? You feel like it's a Greyhound bus situation out of Memphis (yeah, I did that experience in 1980).
The ticket is ultra-cheap...but logically coming because RyanAir refuses to use prime airports, and most are these mostly 'dead' airports that died out in the 1970s.
If your priority is just to get from point A to B...cheaply as possible, and rent a car for four days.....to see X and Y....then it makes sense.
If you board the plane and want a Coke? It's not free.....figure a minimum of four Euro.....on up to 6 Euro....if it is a long distance flight. You want a particular seat? Pay for that as well.
If they could figure a way to charge for toilet services on the plane.....yeah, they would likely charge 5 Euro for that. So far, it hasn't happened.
If Elon did buy them? I don't see it as a huge profit situation. Elon would re-name them....either Air-X or X-Air. He'd likely add some membership deal....50 Euro a year.....where you got cans of soda for 25 Euro-cents. And yes, Starlink would be on each plane.
A tip here....don't let German bureaucrats drag Elon into a nuke energy discussion. He's likely to go and anchor some platform off the north coast of Germany by 12 miles....put five or six mini-nuke stations on it...and offer to sell cheaper power to Germans....by a 30 to 40 percent discount than what they current produce with solar and wind energy. Another tip....don't get Elon talking to the Poles about mini-nuke stations....engaged in selling cheap power to Germans.
Started about 2 hours ago....new European rumor.
Macron (France) proposes G7 meeting with Russia's Putin.
BS? I think it's strictly a creative moment....bring in Putin to be the 'good-guy' and pretend he's the replacement for Trump.
If I were Putin....accept and then dictate a anti-US situation for Greenland.
Yeah, this starts to sound like a WWE-wrestling script....bad-guys flipping to good-guys, and vice-versa.
My bet....both the UK and Germany will support this.
It is a somewhat funny story to lay out....which some folks don't laugh over.
This involves the state of the Pfalz (across the river from my Hessen state).
Every day, checks are carried out at the country's asylum reception centers to ensure all asylum seekers are still present. For 2025 and half of 2024....currently.....923 folks 'departed'....missing....without explanation.
Yeah, they just got up and walked away.
The state Integration Secretary....Janosch Littig (Greens) will have to address the Integration Committee of the State Parliament in Mainz on Tuesday afternoon, and this topic will come up.
Where the 923 folks went? Unknown. They apparently don't show up on the listing of the other 15 German states....at least not yet.
Did the state cut off their subsidy? Unknown.....you would think within 30 days of disappearing....the 'free-money' would be cut-off.
Did the 923 folks go 'home'? I doubt it.....but maybe so.
Did the 923 folks go to France or England? It's possible. I doubt that either nation chats over incoming/outgoing refugees.
What I think occurred? If you asked general questions....I believe that the majority of the 923 were men...with skill-sets, and they were offered jobs under-the-table (meaning black-work). The group are still in Germany....working...without a status. But you really don't want to stand there as a state official and suggest this to the public.
Same thing going on in the remaining 15 other German states? No one says much, but I'd wager....yes.
1. For the over-40 German crowd....ZDF (Channel 2 of Public TV) finally decided to go forward with the revival of the 'Wetten Das' Show.
The new host (plural)? Well....from Tokyo Hotel fame (kid rock band from 2005 to 2015 era)....the brothers Tom and Bill.
Yeah, from the top 100 Germans who are recognizable.....I would agree. However, if you ask anyone under age 25...they don't know Tom or Bill, or Tokyo Hotel.....same probably for those over age 70. For the crowd between 25 and 60....everyone follows the adventures of Bill (husband of German model Heide Klum).
Oddly, this is 'hot' trending this AM across Germany.
2. German gov't agreed on a E-car subsidy.....no problem. Then they turned around and allowed Chinese-made E-cars on the list as well. Some public folks are grumbling....it should have only been German-made E-cars.
3. Piece on Focus written by Ulrich Reitz....commenting how the German deployment of 15 soldiers into Greenland resembles the script in some ways to the comedy....Dr. Strangelove.
I would suggest before this analysis came out....a number of Germans were writing comical pieces over the 15 guys, the mission, and how this was organized. It would not surprise me if some German writer puts forth a movie script. My suggested title? Forty-Four Hours.
4. EU rumor (out of Brussels).....the EU is examining the idea of creating a new NATO-like 'creature'....without the US, but would include Ukraine. What they haven't discussed....Ukraine is still at war, and any such creation would get the attention of Putin (asap).
My suggestion....call up Putin and suggest that a new alliance occur....if he ends the war....to allow Russia to be the 'partner' of the EU.
5. From this rail accident in SW Spain....forty dead, 24 seriously injured, and another 150-odd passenger hurt in some way. Couple of Germans noted among the dead.
6. Berlin.....group of seven guys smoking in Hermannplatz subway station (something you aren't supposed to do.....maybe for 20 years now)...when 4 security guards for the rail-network....confront the men about it. Guards get insulted and then beaten up. Two of the BVG employees had to be taken to the hospital with lacerations/cuts.
Police investigating. Security cameras probably have decent images of the six.
7. Bavaria's Soder (Premier) put up the idea of merging several German states. Like taking Saarland and merging into the Pfalz.
Some survey was done over the weekend.....two out of three Germans oppose merging.
To be honest....you might find more support to split several German states into multiple states (instead of 16 states....having 25 states). Several cities would like to have the status of Bremen or Hamburg....city-states. I suspect residents of Stuttgart, Hannover and Munich would approve of this idea.
8. Mayor of Aschaffenburg comments a year after a knife attack in the city: "Safety is not something to be taken for granted."
I'll offer the analysis....in my village or a small town of 10,000....I feel 100-percent safe. When in a metro-situation (town of 200k or more)....especially at night....I have a watchful eye, and obviously care more about safety. No-go zones are more obvious.
9. Bus services in the Heidelberg area are experiencing delays/cancellations. This relates to newly delivered E-buses....that fail in below 0 C situations.
The operator is Rhein-Neckar-Verkehr (RNV).
Particular type? Mercedes-Benz eCitaro G buses.
So what they say....around 50 were delivered recently, and half can't operate at full capacity...unless the temp is plus-temperatures (above 0). I would imagine that the battery area of the vehicle has to be warmed in some fashion....to keep temperatures above zero. If you read through the story.....modifications coming. But you have to wonder....did M-B ever test the E-bus technology in harsh conditions.
10. German statistics: Germans required almost 20 days of sick leave for 2025. This is adding cost to German health insurance.
11. Since publicly known in 2024.....noting scandalous revelations surrounding a paratrooper regiment and sexual misconduct within the German armed forces....an investigation is to finally start.
To be clear....this is simply the beginning of the survey/report.....if the report is ever released to the public is still a unknown.
I'll predict....almost no one agrees to participate, and the final report isn't written until mid-summer 2027.
12. After a little 'joke' by RyanAir social media folks on Elon Musk.....Musk asked the value of RyanAir (figured in the 35-B range).
Some folks think that Musk might buy and re-name the airline X-Air.
Having ridden twice on RyanAir....2000 to 2005 era....I'm not a big fan. You feel like it's a Greyhound bus situation. If I had 35-B euro.....I would find something better to buy.
Wiesbaden area is preparing for the city-election in mid-March.
So....a new party has arrived and intend to campaign....the Pro-Auto Party.
Their emphasis? Urban development, the economy, security, and public order.
Mobility remains a key issue
They will be advocating for the rights of motorists....opposing a potential light rail system....preserving parking spaces.....reversing traffic measures deemed problematic by the party, and rejecting the Ostfeld project.
Other points? Safety and cleanliness in the city center, the reduction of bureaucracy, structural reforms of municipal companies, and a reduction in property and business taxes.
Picking a weakness of the top three parties (CDU, SPD and Greens)? Yeah.
I would suggest that two-thirds of the residents have a negative opinion over traffic, parking and see 'planning' as marginal process.
The Ostfeld project? If you draw a line from the center of town....toward the Army Airfield....there's a 500-acre area that was formerly a garbage dump....renovated to a nature area, and some portion of it...is supposed to change into a housing area.
Over the weekend....Alice Weidel (boss of the AfD Party)....spoke up to the idea that a major stance of the party for the next election (2029)....is to leave the EU.
No polls to rely upon, but I would imagine somewhere around 20-to-25 percent of Germans have a negative opinion about the EU, and leaving might bring up a broad discussion.
Here's the accompanying odd factor....the Linke Party...making up around 12-percent of voters....isn't exactly pro-EU. They want a number of reforms within the EU....to make them more 'left'.
The branding of the AfD in this direction? Well...exiting the EU probably isn't on the top hundred things in Germany to 'fix' for the majority of working-class Germans. Most will tell you.....they aren't pro-EU, but they aren't anti-EU either.
Back around 1975....as a kid....I watched the 1959 British satirical comedy film The Mouse That Roared.
It's based off Leonard Wibberley's novel. Chief star? Peter Sellers, who is in multiple roles as the Grand Duchess Gloriana XII, Prime Minister Count Rupert Mountjoy, and Field Marshal Tully Bascomb.
So the story follows the tiny, fictional European Duchy of Grand Fenwick, nestled in the Alps, whose economy relies solely on exporting its famous Pinot Grand Fenwick wine.
Things were fine for years and years....then some California winery produces a cheap imitation called "Pinot Grand Enwick," which causes the duchy to go into financial woes and bankruptcy.
To save the duchy....the scheming Prime Minister Mountjoy proposes declaring a 'fake-war' on the United States. The gameplan? They expect a swift defeat followed by generous American reconstruction aid, similar to the post-World War II Marshall Plan.
The Duchess Gloriana hears the whole thing, and readily approves, but says in the end....no one gets hurt.
Mild-mannered game warden Tully Bascomb is appointed to lead a ragtag invasion force of about 20 medieval-armored soldiers equipped with longbows and arrows.
The boys tend sail off to New York City on a old freighter....with intent to surrender upon arrival.
Oddly....they arrive during an city-wide air-raid drill, where they're mistaken for invaders from Mars (this is NY City where people believe almost anything).
In the confusion, they accidentally capture a top-secret "Q-bomb" (a super-destructive weapon capable of destroying the world), its inventor Professor Kokintz, his daughter, a U.S. general, and some police officers.
Instead of losing, Grand Fenwick unwittingly "wins" the war, returning home victorious with their prizes.
This unexpected triumph forces the duchy to navigate international diplomacy, as larger nations vie for control of the bomb, turning the tiny country into a global power broker.
We've reached a point where the Greenland-EU-Denmark story could easily fit into this type of movie.....where 15 German soldiers can only get to Greenland....onboard a regular passenger flight, and utilize local hotel accommodations while performing 'recon'.
1. The sudden end to the German Army deployment? Well....they flew out in business-class.
I asked the wife (German in nature)....if she thought they went to the business lounge at Nuuk Airport. She responded....if free beer were in the lounge, yeah, they probably lounged.
2. There's some rumor that Germany was told that US EUCOM in Stuttgart....had a order to evaluate the idea of closing bases if any European country was working against the Greenland acquisition.
I'm not giving the rumor much thought. There's probably a meeting every month where a priority list is drafted and reviewed....over and over.
3. Finally...some social media story came up that the US was gathering up data on airports and ports in Greenland.
Why bother? The intel-guys have the ASSotW 10-thousand page document which is a world index of all ports/airports....which has this data already existed....for 60-odd years.
There's simply a lot of BS going around this subject.
At some point (after sun-down) on Friday.....the 15-man Bundeswehr (German Army) unit arrived in Greenland.
They spent Saturday accomplishing the mission.
Today (Sunday)....AM, the unit boarded a plane...leaving for Iceland.
What they did for Saturday? If you watch N-TV news....the term 'recon' came up several times.
Trump's threat causing the early 'end'? Well....no....as the Berlin announcement occurred....the recon was successful, and a full report would be issued shortly.
If I were viewing this from a Air Force prospective.....they have enough text from Saturday to write up a Achievement-Medal citation....giving each man/woman....a medal. If they had a good officer planning this....he probably wrote up a new operation 'name'('Orange-Thunder', 'Polar Bang', or 'Cold Ice').
Also from a Air Force prospective....it's possible that the guys got into trouble (boozing-up from Friday night). I'd give this a remote possibility...say one in fifty odds.
It's also possible upon arriving there....the boys discovered that their Arctic gear wasn't top-notch....or that they hadn't budgeted enough funds to cover bullets or hotel cost.
Material for German comedians? Yeah, there's fresh new material....for a good 8-minute dialog.
I paused over this story...coming out of Spain this week.
So a city-department-worker...typically in a 3-man office....found himself mostly for 2025...in a one-man situation because of sick-leave and retirement of one employee. So, he put in extra hours.
If you do the math....for a 40-hour week....he had to work roughly 35 extra hours a week...or 6 hours a day extra.
You also have to assume for most of the year....there was no comp-time or leave-time.
Well....you have to define crisis in detail.
Germany is facing an ongoing energy crisis, characterized by high electricity prices, supply vulnerabilities, and economic strain.
There were paths taken over the past 20 years....but this primarily starts from the phase-out of nuclear power plants (completed in 2023), the loss of cheap Russian natural gas imports following the 2022 Ukraine invasion, and over-reliance on intermittent renewables like wind and solar.
Chancellor noting this? Yeah....on 14 January 2026, he publicly admitted that shutting down the nuclear plants was a "serious strategic mistake," noting it has led to unaffordability and forced imports of nuclear-generated electricity from neighbors like France.
All of this leading to a economic impact? Yeah....you could use the term stagnation, with GDP expected to grow only 1.2-percent in 2026 after contraction in prior years.
Critics now argue "green" policies have sacrificed the economy, with calls to re-engage Russia for gas supplies. The natural gas 'path'? It can't happen unless the Ukraine war comes to an end.
Yesterday (17 Jan)....there was a stabbing incident in Hamburg, Germany.
Occurring near an anti-Iranian regime protest, where at least two people were seriously injured, one of them critically.
I read through three accounts....what the police say....this attack took place around 5:13 PM on Jungfernstieg, close to the Alsterhaus department store.
Police arrested three suspects, with some unverified reports suggesting they were Afghan nationals/locals.....maybe linked in some way to pro-Iranian regime elements.
Motive? Unknown.
This demonstration? Well....NDR says it was attended by thousands.....locals showing solidarity with ongoing protests in Iran against the Islamic Republic.
1. How did France come to expel US military personnel/bases in the 1960s?
France, under President Charles de Gaulle, announced on March 7, 1966, that it was withdrawing from NATO's integrated military command and required all foreign military forces (including US troops) not under French control to leave French territory. The deadline given for their departure was April 1, 1967, providing roughly 13 months to complete the withdrawal.
2. Is it likely that some repeat performance (bigger in scale, to include all of Europe) is about to happen...in regard to Greenland and feelings over Trump?
As hyped-up as people are....there is this odd dynamic of Putin sitting in the corner of the 'room', and realization of a cost-factor to replace the US troops (the money simply isn't there).
However, I could see the 1966-scenario repeating....with US bases/posts closing over a one-year period. If you asked me about the consequences to the economy of Germany/UK...regionally, it's a big deal (go examine Kaiserslautern, Wiesbaden and Stuttgart).
3. Was this Trump-Greenland-watch NATO end strategy always laid out?
I'm one of those people who believe the Trump-team has a room with white-boards and yellow-sticker labels laid out for events to trigger situations to occur (like WWE wrestling scenarios).
To be honest....there was a point in the early 1990s....while still in the Air Force, where I would note some conversation almost weekly....'why-are-we-still-staying-in-Europe' would occur. Had the Yugoslavia-break-up not occurred....I suspect Clinton would have approached some exit strategy.
4. All this end-trade-with-America.....who does it really hurt?
It's not a accurate strategy.....as much as you think Europe is unified/united....it's not. As much as the Danes, Germans, and French might be headed toward this tactic of ending US trade.....the Italians, the Poles, and most of Eastern Europe aren't that thrilled of a end-trade strategy.
I looked at 2023 data: the EU exports to US: €822 billion (€503 billion in goods + €319 billion in services).....the US exports to EU: €774 billion (€347 billion in goods + €427 billion in services).
If this end-trade strategy were applied? Well....you'd start to notice within 30 days....a recess-like wave to occur. The companies in Italy and Poland for example....might not suffer as much because trade wouldn't 'dip'.
5. Is the whole list of reasons for Greenland acquisition laid out?
Some people think so....some don't think so.
If you view German public forum discussions with intellectuals....this is a awful short list of logical reasons. It is odd....over the past month, I've heard the term 'Königreich Dänemark' (Kingdom of Denmark) a good bit....before this era....it was always just 'Dänemark'.
My general belief? China (over the past decade) has shown the general strategy of walking in and establishing trade/commerce contracts as a 'tease'. You can use the 2018 attempt to get into the airport build-up contract in Greenland as a example. It is possible that Team-Trump sees any action like this (Greenland, Venezuela)....as a long-term problem.
6. Who is the bigger 'evil-character' Trump or Denmark?
Inuit people (who make up around 85-percent of Greenland) have a slightly different view than non-Inuit people in Greenland. The memory of forced birth-control from 1960s/1970s....lingers.
The logic for this strategy? Danish authorities aimed to curb birth rates as a means of population control, reducing welfare and childcare costs to alleviate economic pressures on the state (meaning Denmark).
I would imagine if you used a Inuit-women-only poll....the vast majority don't see Denmark in a pleasant way.
I would also imagine if you use mostly non-Inuit society members for a poll....it's near 95-percent anti-US/anti-Trump.
7. With all this hype going on....is there a talk going on in the UK about forcing an election?
People are showing a fair amount of disgruntlement....but the 2029 election is still the target.
If a trade 'war' were to start and hinder the Brit economy....it'd only add to the woes of the current gov't.
1. If you write down the top 500 German companies that produce 'something' that requires a serious amount of electricity....at least half or more....will relocate production outside of Germany (leaving the HQ's and development site alone).
Reason? They can't compete because of the grid rates. Countries like Hungary, Poland, Czech, Romania, France....will benefit.
2. GDP will lessen.....by 10-to-20 percent...because of production moving elsewhere.
3. Because of lessening pensions and cost of living....an increasing number of German retirees will start to view leaving (for places like Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland).
4. I expect some national scandal to develop....where a quarter of all German 'kids' age 17/18...can't read/grasp beyond the 6th grade level. Politicians will ask....how was this possible, and how they can meet obligations to major companies.
1. I sat and read through a NIUS story this AM....thinking it was a joke. Searched around....well....no, facts are facts. So the story.
10,000 inmates in Bavaria's (the state) prisons....so more than half of them aren't Germans.
This fact? It comes from a response by the Bavarian Ministry of Justice to a parliamentary inquiry from AfD members of parliament.
You can do the numbers....amounts to several hundred million in operations/support cost or the state prison system.
The odds that the remaining 15 states also have the issue brewing? Well....no one says much, but you have to wonder about that detail.
2. The designated 'new' Minister-President of Saxony-Anhalt, Sven Schulze, has advocated for requiring welfare recipients to perform social service . "People who receive benefits from the state should provide something in return, up to and including community service."
Legal? It'll be challenged.
The thing about this....if you ask a thousand working-class Germans about this....more than three-quarters fully support the idea, and probably another 10-percent want some type of 'duty' (maybe just 8 hours a week).
Who would run this? Unknown. You'd have to recruit in a city of 200,000....at least forty managers to keep it functional, and where would this money come from?
3. End of next week....weather guys say a harsh dry 'front' comes through Germany....day-time temperatures back down to minus-5 C (23 F) for probably three weeks (no snow).
My impression of the impending natural gas shortage? The current reserves nationally....near 50-percent. So if true....this 3-week period will likely bring the reserves down to the 25-percent point. Hopefully, that's it for winter.....if anything else arrives...the gov't likely puts everyone on limited use of natural gas.
4. National crisis brewing in Germany....driving-schools are saying no one has money for classes.....job-cuts are coming in the next couple of months.
Originally yesterday....I saw this story from the UK....thinking it was a joke. Well....no, it's no joke.
Talk has started up in the UK revolving a draft measure in the Armed Forces Bill, which....which seeks to strengthen the country's military readiness amid geopolitical tensions, such as potential conflicts involving Russia.
Under these changes, retired military veterans (specifically those in the strategic reserve, including ex-regular and recall reserves) could be liable for recall to service up to the age of 65, up from the current limit of 55.
This is designed to make it easier and faster to mobilize experienced personnel in crises, including for "warlike preparations," rather than only in cases of national emergency or direct attack.
It won't take effect until spring 2027, and it primarily affects currently serving personnel (who can opt out), while those already retired whose liability has expired aren't impacted unless they choose to opt in.
How many in this manpower 'pool'? 95,000.
Public perception? Most Brits think it's humor or bogus. Well...no....it's actually in the draft bill.
1. Various European countries are in the process of sending a handful of troops to Greenland....to defeat Trump invasion
After pondering it....I thought....why would Putin not get involved? Russia ought to line up a 60-man 'team'.....deploy into Greenland and vow to fight the evil Americans. The Europeans would 'buy' into this and form an alliance with Russia.
2. There are two (only 2) news sources in Greenland. First, there's Kalaallit Nunaata Radio (KNR)...the public broadcaster providing radio, TV, and online news in Greenlandic and Danish.
Second: Sermitsiaq.AG: A private media operation which publishes two newspapers (Sermitsiaq weekly and Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten twice weekly), online news, magazines, and a free local paper in Nuuk (Nuuk Ugeavis).
Even if a 'deal' is made....both would have to survive and continue on....sponsored by the US gov't.
3. Reading through various material....I came across a study from the 1980s...on alcoholism on Greenland.
Roughly 50-perent of society is noted with some type of alcohol issue....with roughly half of that group noting binge-drinking coming up at least once a month.
On cannabis-use? Roughly ten-percent are noted as regular users.
There are probably twenty-odd German reality or promi TV stars that I follow....most have zero talent....other than goofing around or being a marginal comedian.
One of my favorites is Claudia Obert, a German reality TV star and entrepreneur known for her appearances on shows like "Promis unter Palmen" and her luxury lifestyle brand.
So her brand or gimmick....is a public persona heavily tied to champagne consumption....or you 'think' she consumes.
Her brand? It sells media depictions, social media posts, and memes that portray her as someone who frequently indulges in it.
One of the hosted events....the "Magic Champagne Party" and she promoted her own "Champagne Club".
Fake drinker? Yeah, and Germans do eventually figure this out.
My buy-in? At some point....she was treating champagne as a "basic food".
I watched a German news piece today....where they talked to a couple of locals (more so Danish, than native Inuit tribal folks....who make up 88-percent of the isle).
I'll just say the question was asked in a particular way.....if 'fear' or stress existed. The typical Greenlander-Danes responded something to the effect that they feared the US invasion, Trump-was-a-dictator, and they'd have to flee.
Oddly, no Inuits were asked the question. I suspect if they had....there would not have been a 'fear' or panic. If you had said that the local breweries.....Godthaab Bryghus, Qajaq Brewery, and Grønland Ice Cap Beer (69°N)....were shutting down for a month...yeah, it might have gotten more attention.
Now that this has gotten German news attention....I'm guessing the politicians are open to asylum offerings.....to help the poor Greenlanders out.
The fact that around 1,300 Filipinos, Thais, and Chinese also live there? I don't think anyone realizes that.
The 54 Germans? No one mentioned them.
The 121 Sri Lankan folks? No one mentioned them.
When I went through the German integration class (for my visa)....in the 30-day class....there was around two hours spent on the era (from the East German/DDR prospective). It was enough to 'wet' your taste. From the group I was with (mostly Iraqis/Syrians)...they knew next to nothing about the division and marginally got anything out of the 2 hours.
This came up today....Berlin-City authorities have finally decreed that secondary schools don't have to waste any history studies time on the DDR era. Some folks complained, but it appears like 98-percent didn't care. It wasn't like this thrilling era was fun-loving or dynamic.
What will fill the history hours? Well....they left that blank. I'm guessing Roman era stuff.....maybe a bit more of the Weimar-era.
Täter, when used by a German....means a guy who has committed some type of crime. The term Verbrecher also works.
If you go back a thousand years....the term was 'tat'.
I will also go and suggest that once a German suggests so-and-so is a Täter...even if the court case has yet to come up...the Germans zeroes out innocence....meaning he or she is to be convicted.
Oddly, the term wasn't really written down anywhere until the 1850s....when the Grimm brothers made it a national term. Up until that point, it was passed around....mouth-by-mouth.
I sat and asked AI (Grok) how many Greenlanders were living at poverty-level. It spent a good 8 minutes looking at data.
Based on the most recent available data (2023), approximately 9,850 Greenlanders live below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold.
Meaning? They live at 60-percent of the national median equivalised disposable income (after taxes and transfers).
Landscape? It represents 17.4% of the population, the highest such rate among Nordic countries.
Oddly....Greenland does not have an official national poverty line, so this EU-SILC-aligned metric (measuring relative poverty) is commonly used. The figure reflects persons, not households, and highlights ongoing challenges like rural-urban disparities and limited economic diversification.
So....roughly one out of six Greenlanders aren't that thrilled over the current economic situation.
I spent about an hour this AM....trying to grasp the 'true' unemployment rate for Greenland.
The latest data that you can find (and trust) is from 2024 (nothing for 2025). That number is 8.7-percent (for Denmark, it's two points less). Yeah, it's fairly high and a bad sign over the economy.
However....if you dig into youth-unemployment....projections go to 25-percent.
So when politicians for Denmark/Greenland talk over the 'woes' of Greenland....roughly 2,500 to 3,500 of the population under age 25....aren't that thrilled over the commerce and job-opportunities.
Having a open-vote? If you lined up all 42,000 residents (who are 18 or over).....4,700 are in the youth category (18-25). I would imagine the bulk of the younger voters want massive change. The remaining 35,000 are probably split, with most preferring to continue 'as-is'.
1. Total number of German troops deploying to Greenland for defense purposes? 13. By the wording of the announcment....it didn't seem like it was going to be more than 10 days of 'ice-duty'. Arrival? Thursday afternoon.
2. Interesting WELT piece: 'The Desperate Sex'. Article discussing trend....mental disorders in young German women increasing....caused by over-parenting, social media and expectations beyond the norm.
3. Merz says 'nein' to the SPD plan for reforming (increasing) the inheritance tax.
4. Watched a N-TV news-sports piece....over 2026 World Cup games....FIFA says with new higher ticket prices.....ticket sales in Germany is still 'hot'.
5. For 2025....VW Golf was the biggest seller of cars.
Down in Ulm (SW Germany) today.....knife attack at a Media Markt electronics shop. Two employees stabbed....one in really bad shape....the other less so.
It appears some 'disagreement' within the store started up with a Eritrean guy (29). Cops were called....quickly arriving. They gave the order to put the knife down....no response....they pulled guns on the guy...firing a couple of rounds. Attack guy still alive but in serious condition.
Odd factor? Well...back in the fall of 2025....he was arrested for several violent problems. Judge found reason to release him around Christmas. So he's been out for roughly two to three weeks...out of jail.
This affecting the Baden-Wurttemberg state election? Well....it feeds into the AfD 'machine'. People see the story and ask why he was released back in December, or if he is a nutcase.
About ten days ago....(2 Jan 2026), oddly just a couple of hours before the Berlin blackout...Channel 2 (ZDF, public TV) had a police 'soap-opera' (krimi series "SOKO Leipzig")....which came up at 9:15 PM.
I was channel-flipping....watched about 10 minutes of the show, and continued channel-flipping.
The initial buy-in? Some type of scenario with radical eco-terrorism....convincing you that they were lefty-environmentalists.
So the next day....number of Germans commented via social media over what developed during the 90-minute.
Basically....there was a kidnapping of environmental activists from the "Blühende Landschaften" (Flowering Landscapes) movement.
This was all tied into a 2nd more radical eco-group "Kommando 5 nach 12" (Command 5 After 12). Yeah, catchy names, I will admit.
Somewhere in the first 30 minutes....there's this odd twist with the plot.
The Command 5 After 12 is really faked-up environmentalist group....who are NOT left-wing extremists. Nope....they are some Reichsbürger movement (extreme right-wing nutcases who want to trigger a coup in Germany).
Yeah....so the kidnapping script/show....is mostly a false flag.
So what is odd here....at 02:47 (roughly 3 to 4 hours)....the Berlin power grid went down because of the explosion.
Tied in? No. But if you were a Berlin resident affected, and the next couple of days went by with various explanations over the situation....you might remember the ZDF cop show and wonder....maybe it was a fake environmentalist (really a Reichsberger guy) who did the damage.
I'll end my commentary with this humble thought....back a decade or so ago....I quit watching these German public TV cop-soap-operas...mostly because the scripts were so faked-up and marginal. It felt like watch 1970s 'Dragnet' shows. Maybe I'll have to reverse my stand and start viewing them again.
My local town (Wiesbaden, population of 295k)....has a 2026 'project'....to build a bicycle 'autobahn' from the Theodor Heuss bridge (far SE part of town, leading to Mainz)....to the city train station.
900,000 Euro figured in cost (mostly for development/asphalt).
Yeah...making this roughly a 25-minute ride from point to point.
Yes, the bus already does the trip in 25 minutes.
Yes, the train does the same trip in about 10 minutes.
WELT did a poll...politically....asking about Germans defending Greenland from the US.
Oddly....75-percent of Greens said 'yes'...meaning that roughly 25-percent were not open to fighting the US.
With the CDU membership....71-percent said 'yes', but 29-percent weren't interested in fighting the US.
With AfD Party folks? Only 37-percent said 'yes'....meaning around 63-percent were against fighting the US.
I would have asked from the 18-to-25 year old Germans the question...figuring fewer than less 10-percent would engage in war against the US.
Asking if it were Russia invading Greenland....I have my doubts if 50-percent of German society would say 'fight-them'.
1. Odd story....the Havel-Therme (Potsdam-Mittelmark area) is a upper-class spa center. They've had some 'bad-boy' behavior the past couple of months.....“groups of men....alcohol”....so they are imposing stringent entry rules. Yeah, in effect....rules established and enforced.
2. Interesting WELT piece this AM.....talking of various areas of Germany where the electrical grid is maxed-out. The solution? Well....literally hundreds of millions of Euro to upgrade.
While on the topic....Germany's electricity prices remain among the highest in Europe....with household rates averaging around 38-40 euro cents per kWh in the past year or two. Blame? Combination of policy decisions, infrastructure needs, and market dynamics.
Several structural factors contribute to this, including the country's ambitious energy transition (Energiewende), which emphasizes renewables while phasing out nuclear and coal power.
If you built a index of German companies which rely upon electricity in the production of their products/services....listing a thousand...I'd mark off the top 30-percent as likely moving their service/production outside of Germany within 10 years....to be competitive.
3. Over the weekend, Foreign Minister Wadephul and Finance Minister Klingbeil happened to meet....in Iceland. Oddly, both were on a visit-Washington trip...on separate planes.
This got in the news....because of 'tighten-the-belts chatter' that the Merz team has put upon the cabinet.
4. Just odd...no polling in past 4 months in Saxony-Anhalt (the state). State election in September.
Last poll....Sep 2025....had AfD at 40-percent. Some belief that AfD has progressed to around 45-percent since then. No factual evidence to support this though.
Maybe if you read Danish newspapers intently, or bring this up with a Greenlander....you might know bits and pieces of the story....otherwise, a 99-percent chance as a EU resident....you have no knowledge of the situation.
The leadership of Greenland...wanted to expand and build onto three airports in the country....Nuuk (the capital), Ilulissat, and Qaqortoq. No support was appearing from the Danes, or the EU. No one ever asks why....but I would imagine they didn't see tourism growth ever coming to Greenland.
So....talks started up between Greenland and China regarding airport projects centered on Greenland's efforts to secure financing and construction for expansions.
This intent? Development to boost tourism and economic growth, with an estimated total project cost of around 3.6 billion Danish kroner (approximately $560 million at the time).
In late 2017, Greenland's then-Premier Kim Kielsen led a delegation to Beijing to work up a deal with Chinese state-run banks and companies for funding and building the airports.
Greenland could cover about 2.1 billion kroner internally but needed external financing for the remaining 1.5 billion.
The Chinese side? China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), Beijing Construction Engineering Group (BCEG), and the Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM).
Chinese interest was expressed, but financing was conditional on a Chinese firm handling the construction. Yeah....Greenland would have to allow Chinese construction workers, period.
A short list of bidders came up in the spring of 2018....with construction supposed to start in October 2018.
So at this point....spring-to-summer of 2018.....security concerns from Denmark (Greenland's sovereign authority) and the U.S. came up over potential Chinese influence near the U.S. Thule Air Base and risks of debt dependency upon Greenland.
To prevent problems....summer of 2018...Denmark intervened by agreeing to provide 700 million kroner for a 33-percent stake in Kalaallit Airports (covering Nuuk and Ilulissat, but excluding Qaqortoq), effectively putting Chinese financing on hold and reducing the odds of CCCC winning the bid.
In the aftermath of this funding decision....Greenland political tensions popped up....mostly negative about how the Danes got in the middle of controlling the outcome, and forcing a particular outcome.
The odds of some Chinese influence in the Greenland bidding and selection process? You can make the analysis and suggest this....but no real facts to back it up.
So as the Danes, Greenlanders, and US meet this week....the Danes are fairly aware of this episode, and the influence of the Chinese on Greenland. As much as they publicly denounce Trump.....they also are probably aware that they can't rig this with any happy outcome for Greenland.
Oh, and I should add....since 2024....1,800 jobs in tourism have been created in Greenland (thanks to port visits and the nation's main airport).....105,000 guests have visited Greenland in 2025 alone (with 2024 numbers of 54,000 airport guests). The upgrades in the airport? Yeah, it was a big deal.
To make this as simple as possible....the Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK) is Germany's largest public pension group, managing around 117billion Euro in assets as of late 2024 for approximately 2.7 million members.
The members? Well....professionals like doctors, architects, and municipal employees in Bavaria.
Bluntly.....BVK did NOT experience a full "financial downfall" or insolvency. They did see aseries of high-profile losses, write-downs, lawsuits, and political scrutiny tied to its U.S. real estate investments since around 2023.
Roughly....1.4-percent of their strategy....crapped-out. Adds up to 700 million Euro 'gone'.
What you have are high-end real estate properties....which for decades had paid off (profit-wise) for rent. Covid-era arrives, and this high-end strategy for the first time ever....is high-risk. So you might have a portfolio of 100 properties paying yearly profits, and wake up two years into Covid....with a majority of the portfolio unable to pay rent/profits, and as you try to dispose of the properties....you discover that original value is now 50 to 90 percent 'gone'.
A big deal? There's some well-to-do Bavarians who are eyeballing their retirement plans (they were expecting a 40-plus-thousand Euro check....giving them a extended-happy-retirement 'bonus' yearly, and now....it's probably 30 to 50 percent less).
Footnote: there are hundreds of banks in the US presently....holding 'dead' portfolio situations....hotels, malls, office buildings....where current value to 'dump' is half or more dissolved. They sit on the books....hoping for some upturn in the real estate market. Just guessing....there are probably more than a thousand hotels on this list (lot in Vegas).
1. Bad enough on weather....state of NRW...closed schools for Monday. Lot of parents expected to show up for work though.
2. Odds of a collapse of the coalition in 2026? Near 1-percent. However....as you get into 2027....there are a couple of factors at play, and I give it near a 30-to-40 percent chance of a collapse.
Factors? First, several state elections come up in 2026. While the SPD or CDU are projected to win in three of them....there's at least two where the AfD is likely to pull heavy votes. It's possible that the Berlin Senate election (Sep) and the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern land election will be sour points for both SPD/CDU.
Second point: the economy. Merz was supposed to bring up a positive era....which has yet to be seen.
Third point: the Ukraine-Russia needs to conclude....to help the German economy improve.
3. Head of the Bavarian police-narcotics division gave a talk over the weekend.....says cocaine is now a problem in Germany....gram of the stuff now at 70 Euro or below.
4. Both Swiss and German authorities complaining over European-produced E-buses....not up to expectations.
5. SPD pushing grocery operations to offer 'affordable' prices on basic food items.
6. WELT piece by Harald Martenstein....interesting topic: wise-people avoided state mandates (like E-cars/heat pumps)....in a better position than those who ran to the mandates. Worth a read if you can find it.
7. Police called to the Koln main station....as a train pulled in. Guy noted with a machete...sleeping on a train. Blood stains on the machete. Police investigating.
8. Temperatures back to normal in central Germany....day-time, near plus-6 C. Next ten days....from plus-4 to plus-8.
Noticed in today's Germany news....Germany's natural gas storage facilities are emptying at a rapid pace.
Lot of -5 to -14 C temperatures the past week.....the national authority admitted. The capacity is right now at the point of dipping below 50 percent.
Temp by Wed? In my region....supposed to be back toward plus-5 to plus-8 temperatures (C). Through the end of January....mid-Germany supposed to stay near plus-2 to plus-6 temperatures.
Might just slide by....unless a second arctic front comes through for Feb.
1. Odd robberies: Sparkasse Bonn bank reports (17 Dec)....they had someone who broke into 2 safe deposit boxes....taking 20 kg of gold. Insider employee of the bank suspected.
Around 23 Dec....Sparkasse Halle bank reported that four safe deposit boxes were broken into.....contents taken unknown.
I noticed in yesterday's BILD....short story....some Turk from the Gelsenkirch Sparkasse...had around 600k of gold coins taken from his box...(life-savings).
2. Police in Berlin...are presently under orders to 'protect' (guard) power ducts in the city. Nearly 400 have this duty. Most consider it useless.
3. Snow and ice conditions in Hamburg....the main station is mostly shut-down for the past 12 hours. Lot of travelers just 'stuck'.
4. INSA survey/poll done....highest level of dissatisfaction with the Merz coalition.
5. After the Berlin grid-attack...the Interior Minister is discussing expanding investigative powers....if they can improve security.
I watched N-TV early this AM...with a curious item....ONE out of FIVE Germans are in some thought-process of leaving Germany.
Survey done by the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (Dezim).
Chief reason? 'Hope for a better life.'
To tell part of the story....they bring up for 2024....nearly 1.2-million Germans did leave.
This group....German-Germans? Well....no, it gets brought up that a fair number of Turks, Mid-Eastern types and North African folks....are the ones being influenced to consider leaving.
I would imagine if you dug into it....most would admit that the cost of living (since Covid) has influenced a lot of people to think seriously about leaving.
But they (the survey folks) point out.....just because you think about leaving....doesn't mean you actually leave (my wife....German in nature....will discuss this exit idea at least once a week, but never concludes on where it would be better).
Should this bother the government? Yeah, it probably is a on-going issue. You really don't want five-million Germans over a decade to pack up and leave.
I sat and read a fair amount this week over Greenland and it's relationship with Denmark.
So....Greenland, as an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, maintains control over its own taxation system. Yeah....since 1979...they've been independent.
Taxes collected in Greenland? If you include income taxes (typically a flat rate above 40-percent varying by municipality), are paid to and managed by the Greenlandic self-government. Yes, it stays in Greenland.
There's not a penny of tax revenue....coming back to Denmark.
So to make the system work (for schools, fire departments, road work, bridges)....Denmark writes out a check of roughly $610-M...on top of the tax-revenue collected....to cover bills.
Yes, financially-speaking....Denmark makes nothing off Greenland. If Trump did carve off Greenland....the Danes would actually have near half-a-billion in cash....still in their pocket.
The 40-percent tax-rate in Greenland? One could imagine a deal worked out where state tax-revenue was covered in some way by the US, and the forty-percent of pay taken....was handed back to Greenlanders (I doubt if they would complain).
I'm not saying any of this makes sense. But financially-speaking....there's a better way of handling things.
This week...out of Düsseldorf (NW Germany)....a public 'case' was brewing.
A number of weeks ago...local city policeman decided that he'd use the rule changes and convert to a policewoman.
The gov't had rule changes in 2025, and you can change your gender without much effort (or surgery). You can even change your name (once a year) to reflect your sex change.
So this guy changed his gender.
However...'she' then woke up to realize that her superiors didn't really buy into this and felt that this was a 'act'....solely for career advancement.
I won't dwell on this angle of the story. There probably several ways in which she'll advance at a faster pace...over the old path.
So the superiors accused him of doing this solely for career reasons, and went the next step up. Local public prosecutor's office? They did a brief review and said....NO, this is not a criminal offense...'cut the crap, and move on'.
The end of the story? I kinda doubt it. If it is a pathway to faster promotion....there's likely a dozen-odd folks looking at the transformation required (no surgery), and maybe it makes sense.
North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is the state to the far NW of Germany....chiefly run at this point by the CDU.
So the scandal brewing? Employees at the Bielefeld Foreigner/Migration Office are suggested in some way of taking bribes.
Highest bribe amount so far in the news.....4,000 Euro.
According to investigations by the Bielefeld Public Prosecutor's Office (yeah, it's gotten pretty deep)....tips led to raids in November and December 2025, with employees being suspected of issuing unauthorized Niederlassungserlaubnisse (permanent residence titles) in at least 15 cases between September 2023 and April 2025.
If you read through all the material....there's 4 individuals under investigation on charges including bribery, acceptance of bribes, granting advantages, and acceptance of advantages. Two are city employees, one is a translator involved in immigration matters, and the fourth is a migrant who initially received a residence permit and then allegedly assisted in the scheme.
What'll happen? Court-case will follow in the next couple of months....with deal-making (I think) probably unlikely to happen. The prosecution folks have a pretty iron-clad case. Just the way things are described....the migrant and translator will get lesser charges, with the two city-employees likely to get time in jail.
This hurting CDU political positions? Yeah, it could....but as long as no deals are made, and full prosecution occurs....the public might be satisficed.
And yes, it is front-page news in NRW.
When a German brings up the mechanics of a coalition gov't....it means that no one got 50-percent of the vote, and you need to partner....to achieve an end to the election. Chief task? Give-and-take....whatever you promised your voters....is on the table to be subtracted, or changed.
Coalition-building has become a technical task....with a listing....probably near 30-plus pages....where you offer cabinet positions, and agreeable points. The 'buddy-party' agrees, and then the task of voting positions comes up. If they want to raise taxes....it's likely to be very limited in scale. If they want more police hired....there's to be a severe limit.
A center-right party (CDU for example) coalition-building with a center-left party (SPD)? No problem.
A center-right party (CDU) coalition-building with far left (Linke/BSW)? In 99-percent cases....will never happen.
If you have AfD winning with 44-percent of the vote, and trying to partner with the CDU or SPD? It'll never happen. Partnering with BSW? AfD might lay enough on the table (like half of all cabinet posts for the state).....to entice BSW (to get the 6-percent required).
How long is a coalition-building period? Typically 30 days. If you haven't achieved success by 45? There's usually talk of a second election....something that most everyone is against.
Are agreeable people put on the coalition-building teams? Yes....that's typically where you find the 'nice' (agreeable) folks....who won't utter crazy talk.
Can coalitions come to an abrupt 'end'.....two to three years later? Yes.
Can you run a gov't for a short-period of time without a coalition? This was attempted in 1930....for roughly four months. An election followed.
1. The average 'top' cost for a German driver's license class? Getting near 4,500 Euro. Read a piece today suggesting that more than half of license/training operations are likely to fail in 2026....cost is too much for most young Germans. Gov't is promising some type of relief....to correct the situation.
2. BILD piece: 17,604 insolvencies were reported in Germany for 2025 (amounting to some average of 48 per day.
3. This terror group that caused the grid outage in Berlin....put a warning letter out....suggesting operation number two is planned....for a neighborhood/quarter....to the far east of Berlin. People taking the threat serious.
4. Saxony-Anhalt election. Comes up in Sep of 2026.
Right now.....polls show AfD at around 40-plus-percent. SPD? At 6-percent (marginal situation). CDU near 24-percent.
With roughly eight months to go, it's possible that the AfD may cross the 50-percent point, and not require a coalition.
If I were to pin the upswing? Most of the luck goes to the regional candidate...Ulrich Siegmund (business-man turned politician).
From that bank vault robbery episode from two weeks ago in Gelsenkirchen (I've essayed it several times)....there's a rumor (came in BILD reporting this AM) going around that 'they' (the bank and the insurance company)....will go and pay the maximum allowable on each box.
Personally, I have doubts that the rumor is completely true.....usually, the insurance company will only cover what you can prove. Maybe the bank is set to cover this alone....to make people happy.
Some kind of weird 'path' going on? Well...lot of people now seem to believe that various 'customers' kept tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of Euro in their bank boxes.
Hidden income situation? Yeah.
Max pay-out? Well....10,000 Euro is usually the pay-out unless you had special extra insurance.
People still not happy? If you knew that you had 80,000 Euro in cash in the box....yeah, this 10k Euro pay-out won't make you happy.
The other issue brewing? I think the tax-guys are reviewing things....to realize billions in hidden cash might be in bank-boxes across the nation.
Hidden income....the real story here? Small German shops/pubs....could sit there and generate 100k Euro in each year, but only report 50k for tax purposes....taking a bit out each month....to hide in a cash-box.
1. Curious 'threat' yesterday AM...the A44 has been closed at the Jackerath interchange (far west area of Germany). A blade of a brand-new wind turbine... danger of being blown onto the roadway by the strong wind.
2. Mid-morning Wed....Berlin power grid back up to 100-percent power. Around an hour later....the police announce they will have food to hand out at a dozen locations toward late afternoon....for public consumption.
3. Thursday weather outlet....freezing rain and heavy snow for various areas of Germany.
4. Kinda funny....the Bundeswehr (German Army) finally arrived Wed AM...right as the grid in Berlin was back-up to full power....so the soup kitchen operation started five hours later.
5. Another grid threat. Unknown individuals have apparently attempted to sabotage the power supply in the state of NRW. Substation in Erkrath, an incendiary device was discovered that had not been ignited. A claim of responsibility from the left-wing group "Kommando Angry Birds" was left.
6. German immigration office in trouble.....employees at the Bielefeld immigration office are being investigated for accepting bribes for indefinite residence permits (no amount suggested, but I would imagine it's in the range of 1k Euro). Fifteen cases being reviewed.
7. German Bahn (rail) on a new strike schedule.....spring-period...wanting 8-percent more pay.
I'll offer four observations:
First, when 'crap' happens...generally, who you do not want in charge of emergency chaos for your problem...is a politician. You want a emergency service 'professional' or some military guy with a sense of priorities.
In the Berlin case....neither the CDU or SPD politicians did a job worth bragging about.
I suspect both parties lost voters in the next election because of this.
Second, the dimwit-group responsible for the destruction of the powerlines....needs to locked away for the remainder of their lives. They are a threat to society.
Third, if I were Putin's crew and needing some type of action against Germany....this event gave me a thousand ideas about inflicting damage on German society. Frankly, I'd be worrying about how this went.
Finally, you need to think about the worst event that could happen to your house, and have a plan 'B' idea about actions to take.
Since 1957.....yes, you can mail-in vote in Germany. The term is Briefwahl.
You can only vote in the district/town....that you are registered in.
Reason? No particular reason is required.
You simply need to apply for a polling card (Wahlschein) from your local election office, typically by mail, online, or in person, up to a week before the election.
Once approved, you'll receive your ballot by mail, which you fill out and return via post or drop off at designated locations. This option is particularly common for voters abroad, those with disabilities, medical issues or anyone preferring not to vote in person on election day.
Corruption factor? In the years that I've observed elections....no one has ever brought up a legit issue.
1. Not only should you worry about disinformation, and misinformation....you should worry about zeroinformation (where you have four sources for news, and none of them report x-event....yet you go over to a 5th (rarely used news source) to discover they are reporting x-event.
2. Sometimes....experts are not experts, but merely 'talking-dogs'. Meaning....they are more of a propagandist than a expert.
3. When the news guy spends 12 minutes to explain a 1 minute story....it's probably way over your head anyway.
4. When a story involves science....it's probably over the understanding-level of 90-percent of listeners.
5. Don't go anticipating that tonight's news will make you happy. Maybe you should just limit yourself to news that effects 50 km within your home.
Grid repairs continue on in Berlin, and yesterday (Tuesday)...the city council finally agreed to provide residents of the affected areas....70 Euro per day.....for a hotel situation.
Driving force? Well...they already paid to have refugees moved into alternate quarters, and put themselves into a awkward position by denying residents the deal.
Would 70 Euro cover a hotel room? My view....this is the off-season....if you browsed carefully.....looking for a two-to-three star room....just outside of Berlin...yes, you could get a decent room for 70 Euro per night.
To be honest, you could get a package flight/hotel deal to Turkey at present....full week with meals included....for 2 people....659 Euro....3-star hotel. I told the wife (German in nature)....that's my plan-B (no argument, she agreed).
The fact that the city council argued about this for 3 days? Yeah, they lost some political points.
1. City-state of Brandenburg had a coalition collapse (SPD-BSW)....their finance minister quit the BSW party. Some folks felt new election was now required. SPD simply went to a new partner.....CDU.
If the election had occurred? Well....AfD is suggested to lead all other parties....around 35-percent.
2. Focus piece this AM....journalists have talked to left-wing students in Berlin area, who say whoever did the grid attack is way past their beliefs. Their suggestions? It leads back toward Russia. So far though....no evidence.
3. Heat-pump threat in Berlin? So....experts have said now...if you have a heat-pump in the grid-affected area, with it off for several days....the coils could freeze. In this scenario...as a minimum, it could require the services of a technician to resolve and figure a couple thousand Euro for service. Worst case....the coils fail....releasing the gas. Yeah, environmental hazard, and tons of money to fix/resolve.
4. Last week....I talked about that break-in of a Gelsenkirchen bank vault.
Well....police came up yesterday.....searching the offices of the robbed savings bank in Gelsenkirchen. Reason? The bank has refused to release certain data. This leads the police to think....insider was helping the robbers.
I paused over this....there's a remote possibility that some employee (or two) was running a fraud scheme totally unrelated to the robbery. Wouldn't shock me if the bank box list of names....has some aliases (fake people).
5. Greenland and Denmark have requested to meet with Secretary of State Rubio. No response....yet.
6. Rejected asylum guy....traveling by train from Belgium back to Germany....stopped again by the police. The 37-year-old Lebanese guy is apparently registered with the police already.....under nearly 30 different names.
7. Aachen police report released to the public. They had eleven open manhunt cases....solved. One 21-year old Moroccan guy was detained and ID'ed with seven identities....for the 11 open cases. Cop who broke this case....deserves some award/medal.
Today....three key things unfolded in Berlin....with the grid issue mixed into the chaos.
First, the mayor (Wegner, CDU)....finally put out (4th day) a precise 'we-got-this-done-to-this-point' message. In terms of communicating and laying out accomplishments....up to this point, I'd give the guy a '5' (1-to-10).
Second, Franziska Giffey....head of the SPD 2026 election efforts....put out her first election theme 'message', and it hits Wegner in a blunt way. The SPD and CDU folks run a coalition city council, and up to this point....they were 'friendly'.
Third, someone with a electrical background....pointed out that various parts of the Berlin grid...is working off technology based on 1950s/1960s/1970s. I noted in the commentary....the general rule of replacement is a 40-to-60 year cycle....so they are about 20-to-30 years 'behind'. Some commented about this being a DDR-era issue, but I'd point out the our 'quarters' in the mess....were all part of West-Berlin.
I suspect a big discussion will start up in the spring....Germany-wide....is the grid modern-and-updated, with the politicians admitting there are issues.
It's interesting to note....it's 36,000 km of cable stretched across Berlin....from the three levels/degrees of the grid.
One of the news folks pointed out....the massive manpower picture. From the grid-repair guys....probably in the 300-to-400 range....working around the clock. Police? There's the regular city-police....but state and fed police (400 in number) have been brought in. Then there's the Bundeswehr....with probably 200 to 300 (logistics, soup-kitchens, etc).
But this has brought up the prep-topic. Back in the Merkel days (ten years ago)....the Merkel folks wanted Germans to prepare for such an emergency....to have at least 7 days of food and 'extras'.
Shortly after that theme started....ZDF (public TV, Channel 2) got critical over the idea....suggesting this was an American dimwit-thing....'don't-be-a-prepper' message/attitude.
I suspect a lot of Germans are viewing how badly this went, and a renewal of the prepper business will start up.
Finally, for my negative view of E-cars....I was proven right....the grid is not 100-percent safe to go and assume I can always charge my car.
Last poll done by INSA.....wrapped up at end of Oct 2025:
CDU would win with 23-percent of the vote....SPD in second place with 16-percent.
Greens with 14-percent, Linke with 17-percent, and AfD with 15-percent.
With the grid chaos affect? I might suggest that in the SW quarters (four of them)....probably half of all SPD, Green and CDU voters are frustrated and prepared to 'jump'.
I'm not saying AfD will collect those votes....but some alternate party has a opportunity.
From the remaining unaffected quarters? I might go and suggest one out of four voters are shaking their heads over leadership demonstrated during the crisis period.
I'll predict 3 things to occur.
First, the US will sign some type of 'compact' with the Greenland PM (not the Denmark PM). It'll open business/economic trade relations....with some ferry-freighter service occurring once to twice a week between Greenland and the US.
Second, some housing mortgage deal will be offered from the US to Greenland citizens....interest-free, I'm guessing. Danes will be peeved over this, but have little to sweeten the pot.
Third, some US-gov't greenhouse operation will start to operate....offering fruit/vegetables all-year-round.
I was out and about today....noting the druggie-zone over by the city train station has a new 'thing'.
Police apparently pulled up some light/camera trailer next to where the five or six druggie-guys operate. So....24-hours a day....there's a minimum of three cameras in operation, and a light operating at night.
Fixing the situation? No....it just pushes them elsewhere in the city. But it makes the city park safe once again.
1. Started this AM in Berlin....down to 25,000 homes without power. Oddly, they now admit this is the longest power outage (in Germany) since 1945....for the city.
450 extra police now patrolling the 3 'quarters' around the clock....to prevent looting....using federal and state police. Local cops even said that horse patrols will be added.
As of this AM....near 1,400 commercial businesses still with no power.
2. Germany admits for 2024.....7,000 accidents were caused by people without a license, with 93 dead. They also say on check-ups/accidents....they convicted near 40,000 individuals without a license.
3. VW says the new ID will have an entirely new/radical look (like a cockpit).
4. Julie Kockner (CDU member, president of the Bundestag)....now considered most popular politician in Germany.
The Vulkangruppe (also known as the Volcano Group) is a German left-wing extremist group known for sabotage and arson attacks primarily targeting infrastructure, often with environmental and anti-capitalist motivations. Actions since 2011?
2011–2013 (multiple unspecified dates): Three separate arson attacks on infrastructure, including cable ducts on railways. Locations: Berlin, Germany.
Quiet for 5 years...unnoticed.
2018 (unspecified date): Destruction of power lines via arson, leading to a power outage affecting roughly 6,500 homes and 400 businesses; damages estimated at several thousand euros. Location: Charlottenburg district, Berlin, Germany.
2019 (multiple unspecified dates): Series of arson attacks on cable ducts on railways, radio masts, data lines, and vehicles. Location: Berlin, Germany.
2020 (unspecified date): Arson attack on the Heinrich Hertz Institute, a research facility focused on digital infrastructure. Location: Berlin, Germany.
2021 (unspecified date, prior to May): Arson on a transmitter tower at the Tesla Gigafactory construction site, criticizing Tesla as neither ecological nor socially just. Location: Near Berlin (Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg site), Germany.
May 2021: Arson damaging power cables with fire at the Tesla Gigafactory construction site; statement accused Tesla of environmental deception and exploitation. Location: Grünheide, Brandenburg, Germany.
March 2024: Arson burning an electricity pylon, halting production at the Tesla Gigafactory and causing power outages; labeled Elon Musk a "techno-fascist" and tied to anti-patriarchal motives for International Women's Day. Location: Grünheide (Tesla Gigafactory site), Brandenburg, Germany.
May 2025: Arson targeting a radio mast and transformer station; statement criticized the wealth of local inhabitants. Location: Grunewald, Berlin, Germany.
September 2025: Suspected arson (no immediate claim, but linked by authorities) on power cables, causing a major blackout for roughly 50,000 households over several days. Location: Johannisthal, Berlin, Germany.
January 2026 (early January): Arson (described as a "bomb attack" in their claim) on power cables at a gas-fired power plant, cutting power to 45,000 households and 2,000 businesses; framed as resistance against energy greed and linked to opposition to artificial intelligence. Location: Lichterfelde (Heizkraftwerk Lichterfelde power plant), Berlin, Germany.
1. Berlin grid update: most hospitals and retirement homes in the affected area....back up and running as of this afternoon, but due to generators being pulled in and hooked up.
German Army has arrived and providing support.
Federal investigators coming in to review search for the terrorists involved.
2. GMS survey done....AfD Party now at 27-percent nationally....CDU-CSU at 24 percent.
3. WELT report...upswing on bowel cancer for young Germans.
1. Some of these neighborhoods....SW Berlin....are villas-type/upscale areas. Terror group who selected the target....had to know the status/affect.
2. If you asked the Berlin bureaucrats over planning for something like this....I don't think they ever envisioned something of this scope/size. Within 12 hours, they should have called up the Chancellor and asked for massive help.
3. At noon today (Monday)....they figure 100k residents are still without power.
4. Edeka (the grocery folks) brought in emergency generators by this AM, and are in business once again. Course, if you bought refrigerated food.....where would you store it? I imagine most of what they sell....chips, canned food, and beer.
5. Social-media-wise.....lot of criticism over politicians.
Today (Monday, AM)....court case opened up in my local town (Wiesbaden).
May of last year (2025)....murder occurred in the city park over by the river. It's a fair sized park (probably in the 120 acre range....with various paths you can take.
Older guy (86) was out for a walk.....younger guy (56)....had some intent to harm/kill someone (he admits this part).
Younger guy desired to harm two women but they seemed to have out-paced him. So the older guy ended up as the victim. What the police say....by the end....the older guy had been stabbed a minimum of 50 times.
This all being a random thing? Well....that's the odd part of the story. Total random selection.
Just a nutcase? It appears that the judge had the guy examined and he's proven that he's sane.
This park being a drug-hang-out? Well....I've been to the park a couple of times, and because of it's large size....you could disappear easily. About six years ago...about a km away....there was a murder which was linked up to a drugged-up crazy guy....so it wouldn't surprise me if this guy was on some binge at the time.
Putting this park on my no-go list? I hate doing it.....there are so few green areas in the city.
So, you as a German kid turning 18....will now get a letter.
It's a basic questionnaire for the German Armed Forces. It contains a QR code that leads to a digital questionnaire. In addition to basic information such as name, age, and address, this questionnaire also asks about education and other qualifications. It also requests body measurements and a self-assessment of fitness. Most people suggest it can all be done in 8 minutes. On the self-assessment of fitness? It's probably the one thing you can 'fib' upon.
At the end of this process...it'll ask if you want to volunteer. My humble view....roughly 50-percent will say no.
Even if you reach the point where it's a failure, and you go to the draft 'path'....they still have to test you on competence, language ability, and fitness....where you rig yourself for 'failure'.
If you ask me....could you end up in 2027/2028 with a draft situation? I believe it's entirely possible. I also think half of the draftees would show up and act half-witted....getting them out of conscription.
Watching this grid chaos event take place....it's painfully obvious that the CDU Party, the SPD Party, and the Green Party....will take a hit on public trust.
20 Sep 2026 is the next Berlin election...if you were wondering.
It would appear that two key 'paths' are being crapped upon.
First, from the prospective of handling an emergency....I'd give both the SPD and CDU leadership from the region....D-plus grades.
Second, from the prospective of getting some firm lead on the terror group who triggered the grid loss...you have to view Green Party values as a 'problem' (not an asset). The police don't seem determined in getting to the root of the issue. But I would offer the view.....national intelligence assets need to be drawn for the job required.
Now, if you were the AfD folks, and went to a law-and-order strategy, and hyped-up the search for the culprits....yeah, you'd probably gain 5-to-10 points over the other parties. By Friday of this week....I expect the AfD local folks in Berlin to engage, and public frustration will be provoked.
Well....you run a small business. On paper, you generate about 6,000 Euro of profit per month....that you admit to....to the German tax authorities.
But the reality is....you generate around 10,000 Euro a month. Each week, you hand your wife 1k Euro in cash, and she goes to the local bank where you have a box. Over a year, she will put around 52k Euro into that box.
So when you come up and need a new car, or want a summer vacation....you use the bank box cash.
Illegal? Well....if you get caught.
How many Germans engage in 'black' money? No one really knows. Might be ten-percent....might be 50-percent.
So the security of these bank boxes....matters.
My family in mid-1930s (highly rural region)....finally got power...as the grid company (the TVA) came by and put up a pole, and ran a cable to the front-porch. The family had bought one light-socket and bulb. So for several months....this was their one single use of power (the bulb on the porch). They would eventually screen-up the porch....because of bug problems.
By the late 40s...the total consumption vehicles for power in the house....were eight lights, a washer, and a oven. That was it.
Today, in my German house....if I count pure consumption vehicles....there's likely sixty total things 'sucking' off power.
I had a professor in the 1980s who spent an hour talking over the economics of the grid, and how the general public have no clear understanding of the vast amount of equipment/hardware/personnel required to make everything work.
In the 18 months I lived downtown Panama City.....the power was out around 12 hours per week. You got used to it....after a while.
In my German house....I experience a outage twice a year....usually no more than 30 minutes.
German news last night noted that the THW folks (the German civil emergency guys) did have around 200 of the big-scale electrical generators (diesel-powered)....but had deployed them to the Ukraine.
It appears that whoever the evil intent guy/group is....the experts are pretty drawn to the idea that they knew precisely of the damage that would be caused.
Finally, the worry of pipe-breakages come up. If you were in a building of 'age'....it's possible because of the temp's that you might have pipes to rupture. Right now....Berlin evening temp's are forecasted around minus-5 C....99-percent of homes/apartments ought to survive the heat outage.
In the last couple of hours (Sunday afternoon)....the city authority is now asking the German Bundeswehr (Army) to step in and provide help in the grid-loss. What kind of 'help'....is left blank.
One gets the opinion that the chaos and public anger/frustration....is way too much for the politicians to handle.
Plan 'A' or 'B'? This loss of power for 45,000 homes/apartments has dissolved pretty much anything they had on the books....for helping the public.
The electrical repair guys? They have a general plan to bring temp-power back into the situation....some grid 'pieces' each day will come up....with the last group probably on Thursday of this week (afternoon). It's hard to see if the Army could help them.
The schools down? If the Army could bring up twenty-odd generators...they probably could put the schools back in operation.....but the public is dispersed out way past the affected areas.
Feeding the public? These folks in temp-shelter.....could be supported by the Army.
My humble guess....by mid-morning Monday...twenty-odd Army officers will gather up and ask what exactly is needed, and by Monday night....they will be active on a 'plan'.
The sad thing? The responsible party for damaging the grid....will strike again.
I lifted this from the public release (in English):
NEW YEAR'S GREETINGS 2026. HAVE COURAGE!
We can no longer afford the rich.
We can initiate the end of the imperial lifestyle.
We can stop the plundering of the Earth.
In the greed for energy, the Earth is being drained, sucked dry, burned, abused, razed, raped, and destroyed. Entire regions are rendered uninhabitable by the heat. They simply burn up. Or habitats disappear beneath the waves during floods or due to rising sea levels.
Shutting down fossil fuel power plants is a task that can be accomplished by hand. Have courage.
We know we must interrupt this destruction. We know we are not alone. Don't give up hope for a world where life has space, not the greed for money, power, and destruction.
Last night, we successfully sabotaged the gas-fired power plant in Berlin-Lichterfelde. This resulted in power outages in the wealthier districts of Wannsee, Zehlendorf, and Nikolassee. Power outages were not the goal of the action; the fossil fuel industry was the target. We apologize to the less affluent residents of southwest Berlin. Our sympathy for the many villa owners in these districts is limited. We explain why in our statement below.
Our public-benefit action is socially beneficial. We have also addressed this in more detail in our letter regarding the action.
The attack on the gas-fired power plant is an act of self-defense and international solidarity with all those who protect the Earth and life. The infrastructures that serve the "technological attack" and promote the destruction of the Earth can be sabotaged. Fossil fuel energy production can be stopped. The smart city metropolises, like Berlin, can be prevented. With Stromnetz Berlin, a building block of this catastrophic vision of a smart city has been hit.
For us, it goes without saying that we ruled out any risk to human life at all times.
Our detailed statement is attached to this information.
NEW YEAR'S GREETINGS 2026. HAVE COURAGE!
Greed for power, greed for energy, greed for destruction
In this greed for energy, the earth is exhausted, drained, burned, ravaged, razed, raped, and destroyed. Entire regions are rendered uninhabitable by the heat. They simply burn. Or habitats disappear beneath the waves during floods or due to rising sea levels. Several thousand inhabitants of Tuvalu in the Pacific are already seeking refuge in Australia.
Last year, the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere rose to 423.9 parts per million, a value that surpasses all previous records. At the same time, climate scientists agree that the massive transatlantic ocean currents will collapse sooner or later due to global warming. This collapse of ocean currents, which has so far afforded the North a mild climate, is only one part of the catastrophe that awaits us. The extent of this devastation is simply ignored, abstracted, and discussed at global climate conferences until the scale of the destruction disappears into tables and declarations of intent.
But the insatiable hunger for energy is eating its way through the Earth's crust and our lives, among other things to feed artificial intelligence, which then spouts stereotypes and absurdities, confusing, disorienting, and/or manipulating us. Meanwhile, with each new "learning" of the AI using previous data, language, expression, and vitality are increasingly reduced, mutilated, and limited.
We feed our data to the so-called "clouds," which are nothing more than gigantic, energy-guzzling data centers and server farms. These also consume our drinking water and churn out numbers that bombard our screens with useless, supposedly important spam until we've forgotten how to look our neighbor in the eye. Having become dependent on these small devices, we're always ready to send an emoji and feed "Big Brother," whose algorithm registers our deviations from the norm and answers our search queries before we've even finished thinking. We sit with our friends while the feeds devour us, sinking into our devices instead of having real conversations. We're operating our own surveillance, and it's total. The tech companies are in the hands of the powerful men we give them. We consume the colorful images that the machines filter and serve up to us, starving in front of our screens from loneliness and alienation. We are becoming swiping zombies, knocking each other over in traffic. We are prisoners in a digital system that increasingly deprives us of our right to exist if we don't submit to its rules and relocate our lives to social media, chat, and artificial realities. We receive no money, can't book or buy anything with cash. Without access to the digital world, we are increasingly excluded, losing touch with what seems normal. We are afraid of what will happen to us and bury ourselves even deeper in our screens instead of switching off our devices and taking away the power over us of those who track, monitor, observe, and manipulate us. We are blinding ourselves to the knowledge for whose dissemination Edward Snowden risked his life. We are turning a deaf ear to the silent cries of Indigenous peoples and farmers who see the planet's life support system burning before their very eyes. On the contrary, with every post, we are feeding the fire that is encircling us and driving temperatures to new record highs every year. One day we will simply sit in front of glowing screens or inert devices, dying of thirst and hunger. It's no longer difficult to imagine.
We don't claim to know the way out. But we do know we must stop this destruction. Hedonism can no longer hold us captive once we've tasted the sweat of fear that spreads when there's no way out. No going forward, no going back. Only the horror of where we, as humanity, have ended up. When the question falls back on us, what did you actually do to prevent what was coming? You saw it coming, the survivors, the next generations, ask us. Please don't bring up the political parties. Please don't bring up the brown-shirted alternatives in pinstriped suits and dresses. And not the Greens or the Left either. Don't bring up the economy, whose free market will supposedly solve the problem. Economics and politics deal with death every day. With dictatorships and butchers. Their concerns vanish into thin air when it comes to satisfying our energy needs, for example. Russia is still supplying gas to Europe via Nord Stream 1. And the US wants Venezuela's oil. That's why military attacks are now taking place. And fracked gas arrives by ship from all over the world. Currently, 79% comes from the USA! Fracking is extremely environmentally damaging in its production. Even during extraction, a methane loss of 6 to 10 percent is assumed, which further warms the atmosphere.
95% of the gas burned in Germany is imported. At climate summits, only tactical lip service is forthcoming because the oil-producing countries are not interested in climate protection but in money. Because the major cities base their policies on money and growth, lobbyists in Europe are being handed the end of the combustion engine phase-out.
For example, the German Minister of Economic Affairs, Katharina Reiche, was State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Transport, a lobbyist for the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKM), and a manager at the E.ON subsidiary Westenergie. Minister Reiche presents herself as a supporter of hydrogen but primarily relies on natural gas. She plans to issue tenders for additional gas-fired power plants with a capacity of 10 gigawatts, which are to be connected to the grid by 2031, corresponding to approximately 25 new power plants. 20 billion euros are earmarked for these new gas-fired power plants.
Reiche would prefer to postpone Germany's climate neutrality target from 2045 to 2050 anyway.
The main culprits behind human-induced climate destruction are not those who suffer the most, those who pay with their health and their lives. The people of the Global South are already paying the highest price. The countries of the Global North, and soon China among others, are deciding the fate of everyone. China, as a communist, racist, and patriarchal dictatorship, can use "rare earth elements" to blackmail countries that don't toe the line, gradually weaving countries, cultures, and political systems into the cocoon of this new dictatorial world power. Over 85% of the world's refined "rare earth elements" come from China. And it is the rich who are the problem. It is the super-rich who are setting the world ablaze. In the East, in the West, in the South, and in the North. Sixty percent of the super-rich's investments worldwide go into gas and oil. And around 300 super-rich countries emit more CO₂ than the 110 poorest countries in the world. These criminals know it. They don't care. Their greed for even more wealth and power sets the standard by which everyone else follows. They're preparing their own "salvation" on isolated islands or in space once they've burned this Earth. A few years ago, we would have laughed at these misogynistic lunatics, but they're dead serious. Zuckerberg wants more "masculine energy." Musk is "producing" children on an assembly line so his clan can survive.
None of the perpetrators are solving the "problem." And certainly, the fundamental problem isn't being solved regionally. On the contrary—the whole world is arming itself for the final great battle for raw materials, water, food, and access to strategically important regions, in order to prevent, or at least postpone, the demise of its own spheres of influence. So that the population can continue to be offered the opportunity to participate for as long as possible. So that we in the Global North, entangled in a world of consumption and an imperial lifestyle, participate and reinforce the power structure with its increasingly authoritarian concepts. Because it's no longer about freedom for all, it's only about security for a select few. The promise of security is an exclusive right of those who can enforce it for themselves. We make the losers pay for our imperial way of life, those too weak to defend themselves against "us."
We reject the offers of participation in a scorched world with our militant action. That's why we targeted the gas-fired power plant in Lichterfelde.
This won't prevent our own complicity in an imperial way of life at the expense of other lives, but it will send a signal. Once again, just as many people and groups in different parts of the world are doing. Just as some groups here, like the Vulkan groups, have been doing consistently since 2011.
We know these words don't reach many people – they've drifted so far from the idea of a world and a way of living together that isn't based on destruction that these words reach them no more than the world's misery, broadcast daily in high definition on our screens. We can list facts for miles and miles and still find no one to listen.
We aren't the first, and we won't be the last, to try to reach people with words. We aren't the first or the last to resort to sabotage, because we're playing for time. At the same time, we and others are using the time gained to reverse the destruction of all life forms. People call us eco-terrorists, but we respect life. People call us irresponsible, but we take responsibility to end this imperial, destructive way of life.
Our public-spirited action is socially beneficial. We're trying to interrupt the exploitation of the Earth, prevent CO₂ deaths, and stop the diseases linked to the climate catastrophe. We are also trying to put an end to species extinction and make the world a more livable place for everyone. Those who call us "eco-terrorists" are themselves the real eco-terrorists, using this term to serve their own selfish interests and power calculations.
We see the unwitting, those who think they are clever and dismiss climate change as fake news. They mistake empathy for wokeness and only have their own advantage in mind, without recognizing how the things around them are interconnected. Behind this growing rejection of facts, we see a system of those who invest in the destruction of the Earth. These are the same people who hold the power over the tech companies that allow them to breed a human species that applauds when people drown, die of thirst, starve, or otherwise perish while trying to reach Europe or the USA. These manipulated welfare chauvinists and party supporters second Trump, Modi, Miley, Netanyahu, Merz, Weidel, Putin, Höcke, Orban, Vans, Xi, and all the rest of them in the "defense" of freedom. The freedom to decide who must die and who mustn't. Who has access to wealth and who mustn't. Every refugee who dies while fleeing has a counterpart here in deep depression. Every person who starves to death makes us fatter and sicker.
We people of the Global North, of the wealthy metropolises, derive no benefit from the misery of others. Material wealth is not wealth in the sense of an ideal that can rejoice in the lives of all.
If only a small segment of the population in every country says, "Enough is enough. Not with us anymore, not in my name. No more human beings should die at our expense." If we refuse to function and play along, if we become a wrench in the gears of a machine we ourselves have been feeding, then something will begin to move, then we can develop the power to stop the root causes once and for all.
But we need an international movement that rejects progress based solely on destruction, murder, and plunder. We cry out desperately, angrily, and resolutely, joining the calls of others: Sabotage the fossil fuel infrastructure, the power grids, the exploitation of the Earth, the data centers, the chip industry and its suppliers; destroy the foundations of the automotive and arms industries, of air travel, villas, yachts, spaceships, and golf courses. Destroy the police headquarters that guarantee patriarchal property relations, because the Earth belongs to itself and all living beings, not to humans, or rather, to men alone, and not to the richest among them. This cry of despair is also a wake-up call, a cry of hope, and it has no local boundaries; it is global. We are talking about an international that does not invoke a patriarch, not the gallery of heads that the communists venerate, but one that proceeds from diverse premises. An international that is understood in China, in Europe, the USA, in India and Pakistan, in every corner of the Earth where Starlink has reception, in every country where the deadly drone seeks its target and needs electricity to do so. In every country where, without energy, the warring forces are blind and people can leave the battlefields without anyone being able to issue orders to kill them. Where the stock exchanges no longer function and Bitcoins can no longer be accessed.
We'll say it again: we have ideas, but no definitive answers about the path. But we do have them about the goal. Every contribution counts. Trying everything within our power to put an end to this imperial way of life can't be wrong. The progress of destruction is man-made, and we can stop it. In the steps of resistance, in the echoes of diverse languages and cultures, in what others send us, we will find and recognize ourselves. It's about the Earth. It's about life. It's about fighting against immature, foolish men at the levers of power who behave as if they were operating a toy excavator.
There is no time for frustration regarding the resistance to man-made climate change and the growing number of those who deny it. We must learn from our defeats, not by joining political parties, privatizing, or settling into collapse, but by creating facts. Shutting down a gas-fired power plant is one such fact, but it could also be occupying land, open spaces, and forests, destroying golf courses and airports belonging to the wealthy. Imagination and determination are required.
Switch off the greed for energy, switch off the digital management of life, switch off the progress of destruction.
Today we attacked the gas and steam turbine power plant in Lichterfelde. The plant produces a total electrical output of 300 MW using natural gas. The target was the high-voltage power lines, in order to cause significant damage to the company. We set fire to the cable bridge, which is not publicly recorded and runs from the Lichterfelde power plant over the Teltow Canal, on the side facing the green spaces. We additionally short-circuited the charred cable strands with steel bars lying around.
The energy company will have to purchase electricity on the open market in real time to fulfill its contractual obligations to supply electricity as soon as the supply disruption is noticed. We do not expect to have disconnected 100,000 households from the grid, but rather only from the gas-fired power plant's network. The redundant power grid will reconnect the households via other power lines through the extensive electricity network as quickly as possible. Purchasing energy at market prices in the short term may be more expensive than when the energy company bought the electricity on the Leipzig Power Exchange (EEX). To avoid paying high contractual penalties to individual energy consumers, they have no other option. We short-circuited over twenty 110 kV lines and did not include the district heating pipes in the short-circuit. However, we cannot rule out an impact on the district heating system.
Our action differs practically from the action in Adlershof on September 9, 2025, against the technology center. There, the issue was a power line that lacked redundant protection. The situation was similar with the "Turn Off Tesla Volcano Group," which disconnected Tesla from the grid by destroying a power line, affecting around 5,000 private households. In our case, the power is not being cut off at a facility like the technology park or the Gigafactory, causing a blackout. Instead, the power plant, with its extensive network of cables, is being disconnected from the grid. It will still produce electricity, but it can no longer feed it into the grid and therefore cannot supply it. The supply to private households via other power plants will be maintained, which is also the intention of the authorities and energy companies. Nevertheless, it cannot be ruled out that our action will cause significant damage to individual transformer stations.
The district heating supply (thermal output around 690 MW) has not been interrupted by our action.
Individual households are not the target of the action. The aim of this action is to inflict significant damage on the gas industry and the insatiable demand for energy.
If extended power outages occur in private households, we want to make it clear that they are not the target of this attack. This effect was neither intended nor calculated by us. We have ruled out any risk to human life at all times.
Since we cannot be absolutely certain about what chain reactions, which are outside our control, might result from our shutdown of the gas plant, we have the following request for potentially affected households: Please ring your neighbors' doorbells. Consider providing power to elderly or vulnerable people in the event of a power outage. Provide for yourself and others by offering solidarity and support. Keep each other informed.
The Lichterfelde power plant was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Swedish state-owned energy company Vattenfall AB, with an annual turnover of €7.6 billion and the fourth-largest electricity company after E.ON, RWE, and EnBW.
From 2021, the power plant was "re-municipalized" and belongs to the city of Berlin. As a result, the power plant is being partially dismantled and converted to increase capacity. This only sounds good at first glance.
Stromnetz Berlin GmbH is currently making extensive investments in expanding Berlin's grid infrastructure to meet the growing demands of the so-called energy transition. For this, Stromnetz Berlin's subsidiary BEN (Berliner Energie und Netzholding GmbH) is receiving €380 million from the European Investment Bank – "to prepare for the advancing energy transition." The "energy transition" is a smokescreen that obscures the fact that it's about energy without any transition, without ifs, ands, or buts. The main thing is energy, sustainable or not. Stromnetz Berlin plans to double its capacity by the beginning of 2030. The goal is a "modern," digitized electricity grid. Specifically, this means hundreds of thousands of meters of new power cables and grid components, as well as more digital services. We can imagine that this isn't being done out of the goodness of our hearts. Ostensibly, it's about the city's security of supply, but on closer inspection, it's about a growth mania in a government-driven competition. The battleground is the city and our living conditions. The city is a commodity. Competitiveness with other major cities is intended to drive the establishment of more startups, more defense research and manufacturing companies, more digital service providers, and tech companies that consume even more electricity than the millions of Berliners use privately. It's also about e-mobility, which, of course, doesn't aim to promote public transport, but rather to generate even more cars powered by lithium batteries, even more AI-driven systems that churn out self-driving private vehicles. This is all masquerading as "infrastructure expansion," which will cost the state another 3 billion euros by 2029, as the A100 motorway continues to encroach deeper into the city. Investments of up to 770 million euros are being made to modernize the power grid.
All of this sounds incredibly dull, but it's of great importance to us as people in Berlin and Brandenburg, because it's our lives, our land, our water, our future that are at stake. For Giffey, the SPD's economic liberal, expanding grid capacity and building new power lines is a key prerequisite for Berlin's attractiveness as an investment location. These economically liberal destroyers of a livable future think of the city in terms of numbers, sums of money, growth rates, and competition with other cities. People don't count, or only as categories of low-income or high-income earners. The former must somehow be managed and contained—even through police and repressive measures, such as walling off a park in Kreuzberg. And the latter must be flattered, because their money stimulates consumption. For this group, the city is made smart and beautiful. Berlin is a brand and is marketed as such.
For Giffay, the expansion of the power grid is like the rapid digitalization of everyday life, as if it were a force of nature crashing down upon us. As if tech companies and tech fascists weren't deciding on the implementation of AI, which, according to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, will double global electricity consumption by 2030. As if politicians and economic liberals weren't themselves deciding when cash payments are no longer possible on BVG buses and people are forced into digital payments, thereby also being tracked, in a defiant city with a tradition of militant movements that must be controlled. As if politicians weren't deciding when they hand over the surveillance software Palantir to the police and intelligence services, software whose driving force is a fascist from the USA and whose software envisions a digital network for monitoring people. Giffay promotes the expansion of the grid with "our" companies and the increasing electrification of mobility: "Out of love for Berlin, the most modern electricity grid for the climate-neutral capital." And, adept at defusing criticism, Stromnetz Berlin has included "citizens' councils" as mere fig leaves, which can exercise ludicrous participation in trivial matters but have no say in the direction of energy policy decisions or the city's development. After Vattenfall and the city were forced, due to a broad citizens' initiative, to initiate a "re-municipalization," a nationalization of the electricity grid, and appoint BEN as the owner, they are carrying on with business as usual, and the madness continues unabated. The vision is clear: Smart City – Stromnetz Berlin states it: "Berlin is on its way to becoming one of the leading smart city metropolises. This transformation process has already begun in all areas of urban life." And: “Intelligent infrastructures, and especially the ‘smart grid’ (intelligent power grid), will form the foundation – as a networked operating system, it will become the backbone and catalyst of the energy transition.” Apart from the fact that we consider the term “energy transition” to be a smokescreen and would replace it with “technological attack on humane relations,” we agree.
The specific attacks on the Adlershof Technology Park, Tesla's Gigafactory, the infrastructure of the Vattenfall Reuter coal-fired power plant, and the Vodafone hub in Adlershof are reference points for our action, as are the many militant actions that are setting an example against the destruction of our planet. Even if these acts of sabotage cause significant financial losses, they cannot, as individual actions, force a change in political direction. But they point the way and the direction that we recommend to all major cities. Disable the infrastructure that serves the "technological attack" and promotes the destruction of the Earth. The consensus on participating in the project of an imperial way of life is irrevocable. A mass social movement against the global destruction of the foundations of life and against all wars and resource plunder goes hand in hand with the ability to sabotage power grids and energy networks.
The attack on the gas-fired power plant is an act of international solidarity with all those who protect the Earth and life. Our resistance is multifaceted, and often, in the fog of disinformation, differing cultural perspectives, and linguistic differences, we still need too much time to recognize our common ground. But we are confident that even in the darkness, the light is not far away. When we place this action in the context of a global resistance—whether in the USA, Latin America, Asia, China, or Russia, in Europe or Australia—directed against all forms of dominance, domination, and destruction of the Earth, we are confident that we will be heard, that these contributions will be translated, that translated contributions will reach us, that a subversive communication will take place along the winding paths of resistance, a communication that recognizes one another. And intervenes. And this, if possible, without shedding blood, but determined to cut off the power of those in power.
Volcano Group: Cut off the power of those in power.
We can no longer afford the rich.
Initiate the end of the imperial way of life.
Shutting down fossil fuel power plants is manual labor.
Stop the plundering of the Earth.
Freedom for all antifascists, climate activists, and all the other rebels."
Five observations: First, whoever wrote it....highly educated but lacking any economic 'common-sense'. Second, they use the term 'we' a good bit, but it wouldn't surprise me if this group were just one single person. Third, from the prospective of understanding grid-production-to-each-'nickel'....they have no understanding. Fourth, they (maybe this one person) has still more planned attacks, and they could get worse. Fifth and final....they (maybe that one person) want you to live in their fantasy world, period....with no other options possible.
I should add...on my anti-capitalist index (1-to-10)....they are absolutely pinging at TEN. Everything about them....their shoes...their clothing...their apartment appeal....all second-hand and long-kept. On electrical use within their apartment? They probably are the guy with the 3-watt bulb....survive without a toaster, and make their coffee the 1960s style...pouring hot water through a paper-filter of coffee grounds.
