Harter Lockdown? Ein Witz!

    Deutschlands sogenannter “harter” Lockdown ab 16. Dezember wird ein weicher, sanfter werden. Wer einen harten Lockdown will, sollte sich an Frankreich und Italien orientieren.

    Da darf man die Wohnung nur in einem engen Radius verlassen und nur für Unvermeidliches: zum Einkauf nur im nächstgelegenen Supermarkt. Hundegassi nur bis hundert Meter von der Wohnung entfernt. Für jeden Gang ausser Haus ist ein Formular auszufüllrn, mit sich zu tragen und der kontrollierenden Polizei vorzuweisen, in dem der Grund für einen Apotheken- oder Arztbesuch dargelegt ist, samt ausgedruckter Bestätigung des Arztes von Termin und Diagnose.

    Solange solche Regeln fehlen muss man bezweifeln, dass der deutsche Lockdown wirklich ernst gemeint ist. Wasche mir den Pelz, aber mache mich nicht zu nass!

 

Nagorno-Karabagh

    Karabagh hat einen goldenen Namen, vor allem in Frankreich. Denn Karabaghs gelten als die vornehmsten antiken Teppiche, gleich nach den heimischen Savonnerie- und Aubusson-Teppichen. Die Karabaghs, daran gibt es keinen Zweifel, wurden von Armeniern geknüpft. So armenisch waren die Teppiche, dass sie mit von Azeris vertriebenen Armeniern in die türkische Provinz Erzurum wanderten, wo die Produktion in gleicher Qualität weiterging. Auch die antiken armenischen Teppiche aus Erzurum werden als Karabaghs gehandelt.

    Der Ruhm der Teppiche lässt die Azeris nicht ruhen. Sie versuchen, sich das Thema anzueignen. Jüngstes Produkt dieses Strebens ist eine Ausstellung in Baku, in der Aserbeidschan historische Karabagh-Teppiche als nationales Erbe präsentiert. Drei Teppiche aus dem 17. und 19. Jahrhundert werden seit vorgestern stolz gezeigt, die bei einer Messe in Italien von Aserbaidschan erworben wurden und nun im Museum der Schönen Künste in Baku zu sehen sind.

   Interessanterweise handelt es sich bei diesen Exemplaren nicht um die Art, die in Frankreich so hoch gehandelt wird: diese nämlich kopierten im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert erfolgreich die europäisch-klassizistischen Dessins der Savonnerien, während die Prunkstücke in Baku den orientalischen Geschmack mit Adlerkasak-, Rosenblüten- und anderen östlichen Designs bedienen. Was fraglos besser in die Welt der Azeris passt.


Äthiopien: Duell zweier Herrenvölker

   Tigré und Amharen eint ein Komplex: beide halten sich für das berufene “Herrenvolk” Äthiopiens. Ein übler Begriff aus der Nazizeit drängt sich in Äthiopien tatsächlich auf, wenn man die Psyche der beiden verfeindeten Nachbarn zu verstehen versucht.

    Als 1991 der kommunistische Diktator Mengistu Haile Mariam gestürzt wurde, beobachtete ich in Washington DC verblüfft, wie eine äthiopische Kollegin ausrastete. Nein, sie war keine Mengistu-Anhängerin, ganz im Gegenteil. Sie war wütend, weil die Macht in die Hände der Tigré gefallen war, deren Guerilla TPLF die Hauptstadt Addis Abeba einnehmen konnte.

    Des Rätsels Lösung: die Kollegin ist Amharin. Für sie war es undenkbar, dass Äthiopien nicht von Amharen regiert wird. Vom biblischen Salomon über Menelik bis zu Haile Selassie waren die Kaiser immer Amharen gewesen. Auch Mengistu, von Herkunft wohl ein Oromo, hatte den Vorrang der Amharen, ihrer Sprache und christlichen Religion (obwohl wahrscheinlich mehr Äthiopier Moslems als Christen sind) nicht angetastet.

    Nun waren die Tigré an der Macht. Auch sie Christen zwar, Nachbarn der Amharen, aber durch eine andere Sprache abgesondert. Tigrinya und amharisch sind recht verschieden, selbst so einfache Begriffe wie “Kaffee” (amharisch: unna; tigrinya: bun) unterscheiden sich.

   Meine Kollegin hatte sofort begriffen: die Tigré waren in Addis angekommen um zu bleiben. Und sie blieben bis 2018, bis ein mit den Amharen paktierender Oromo, nämlich Abiy Ahmed, an die Macht gewählt wurde. Abiy ist ein in Äthiopien seltener Spezialist: ein akademischer Fachmann für interreligiöse Aussöhnung. Tatsächlich gehören die Religionen nicht zu Äthiopiens gegenwärtigen Problemen.

    Die Tigré nahmen das Ende ihrer in jahrelangen Protesten untergegangenen Herrschaft übel zur Kenntnis. Statt Herren waren sie plötzlich Opfer des aufgestauten Hasses nicht nur der Amharen geworden. Sie, die stolzen Befreier Äthiopiens vom Kommunismus, das Volk mit der schlagkräftigsten Armee, sie werden nun vom fernen Addis aus regiert, wo sie nichts mehr zu sagen haben. Das konnten, das wollten sie sich nicht gefallen lassen. So kam es zum Versuch der Sezession, zur blutigen Niederschlagung des Aufstands und zu mörderischen Racheaktionen zwischen Amharen und Tigré. Gewinner des Konflikts ist das benachbarte Eritrea, dem seine Waffenhilfe für Addis eine Schlüsselrolle in der Gestaltung der Zukunft von Tigré garantiert.

 

Heinrich von Loesch

   Gestern, am 8. Dezember, verzeichnete Deutschland 21,000 neue COVID-Fälle -- Tendenz steigend, Italien15,000 neue Fälle -- Tendenz sinkend. Noch vor Wochen zeigte Italien ein Drittel mehr neue Infektionen pro  Tag als Deutschland, zeitweise sogar das Doppelte.

    Was hat Italien richtig gemacht, was läuft in Deutschland falsch? Für Laien ist es müssig, das prüfen zu wollen. Zu viele Variablen sind im Spiel, mit denen offensichtlich nicht einmal die sogenannten Fachleute klar kommen.

    Aber eine solche Analyse und Fehlersuche wäre sowieso müssig, denn das Ergebnis steht fest: Italiens Konzept funktioniert, Deutschlands nicht. Die Logik dieser Tatsache ist zwingend: Falls es nicht noch ein besseres Konzept als das italienische gibt (etwa das französische, belgische, spanische?) ist Deutschland gut beraten, sein eigenes Konzept zu kippen und das italienische zu übernehmen.

    Ein Heer von deutschen Seuchenpolitikern und ihren virologischen Büchsenspannern sollte in die Wüste geschickt und ersetzt werden durch hundert Seiten übersetzter italienischer Verordnungstexte. Das italienische Konzept eins zu eins angewandt verspricht Erfolg. Warum zögern?

Avanti, Germania!

Heinrich von Loesch

 

Rabat – Democrats failed to produce a “blue wave” of resistance against US President Donald Trump despite a rising COVID-19 death toll. In a country mired in several crises the incumbent was able to keep results “too close to call.” With 50 million Americans facing food insecurity, an economy in tatters, and a continuously climbing COVID-19 fatality count, Democrats failed to outright defeat Trump on election night.

   Democrats had counted on a sense of disgust with President Trump’s performance and rhetoric as an electoral strategy. While this strategy got the party’s supporters to the polls, it failed to offer the transformative change that can cause voters to abandon political allegiances. 

   Instead of galvanizing voters, Democrats appear to have offended Trump voters for holding similar xenophobic views as their leader, while offering little in terms of transformative change.

Optimism turns to despair

   Similar to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 strategy, Democrats had amplified Trump’s racism and corruption while failing to offer strong policy proposals to alleviate American suffering. They presented the race as a battle for the “soul of America,” while voters appeared to have been looking for clear and practical support in a time of crisis.

   Democrats’ failure to produce a landslide victory over Trump will have stunned many. Democratic campaign veteran James Carville had boasted about an upcoming electoral humiliation for Trump. A few hours into election night however, Carville’s tweets went silent. Confident Democratic-aligned commentators started the night with a Cheshire smile and concluded the hours of reporting with a painful grimace. 

Democrats’ strategy

   Weeks of polling had boosted the Biden campaign’s feeling of a large and inevitable victory. Trump would finally be held to account for his blatant racism and mismanagement, according to Democrats. The fact that American voters came out in large numbers to support Trump on election day appears to have indeed revealed part of America’s soul.

   Democrats had revolved their strategy on highlighting Trump’s failures of leadership, while presenting their candidate Joe Biden as a moderate alternative. The campaign urged for a return to the diplomatic and incremental approach of the Obama administration. Biden’s campaign did not propose any ambitious program to truly alleviate economic suffering.

   Instead Democrats were distracted by identity politics, making empty statements and posing for pictures wearing Kente scarves in response to the justified outrage of millions of Black voters. With millions facing economic despair, the Biden promise to return to 2016-style politics failed to offer a practical way out of voters’ current misery.

   The Democratic campaign focused on preaching to those already appalled at Trump’s behavior. With mock empathy woven throughout its rhetoric it failed to propose a transformative alternative vision for America.

Transformative change

   As the horse race between Biden and Trump, and Republicans and Democrats, for the electoral college progressed during election night, it became clear US citizens had indeed voted for transformative change—on the level of state initiatives. 

   Oregon voted to decriminalize all drugs, a historic shift in a country known for jailing vast numbers of non-violent people who use drugs.

   Traditionally conservative states like Arizona, South Dakota, and Montana legalized cannabis. In Washington D.C. the use of psychedelic mushrooms will no longer be illegal while Oregon will legalize the medical use of these drugs, formally considered to be high risk substances.

   In Colorado citizens appear to have voted to overturn the electoral college system itself, by voting to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. In California voters chose to expand democratic rights to people on parole by allowing them to run for office through Proposition 17. 

   US voters did not appear reluctant to vote for ambitious and innovative new ideas; the Democrats appear to simply have failed to offer any in the presidential race.

Consequences

   The absence of outright victory on election night, as predicted, will mean that the result will likely be mired in controversy for weeks to come. Trump has followed through with his earlier statements that he would consider election night as the “true result” of the electorate. Millions of uncounted ballots now produce an atmosphere of uncertainty in which Trump flourishes.

   Without a blowout performance by Democrats, as their pundits had predicted, Trump can seize the narrative and attempt to turn the election into a legal preceding. With the president’s Republicans in firm control of the Supreme Court, turning the electorate’s wish into a legal matter risks undermining US democracy itself.

   As the US continues to count votes, numbers are likely to shift in Biden’s favor. Yet the fact that Democrats could not outright defeat a candidate like Trump should be a dire condemnation of their campaign strategy and political abilities. With hundreds of thousands of Americans dead due to COVID-19 and an economic crisis on par with the Great Depression, Trump should have been one of the easiest incumbents to defeat in US history. 

   The fact that Democrats failed to prosecute and humiliate Trump outright is a dire warning about the future of their party, and the absence of any true political balance in the US.

Jasper Hamann -- Morocco World News

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   In July, Nick Baldetti resigned as director of the Reno County Health Department in Kansas.

But it wasn't the 80-hour workweeks that drove him to quit, it was the hostile political environment and threats to Baldetti's family.

   "I had the local police watching my house because my family was home and I was not," said Baldetti, who also served as the department's health officer. "There was a period of time that I had escorts to and from work."

   Baldetti spent years preparing to deal with a public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. He never imagined that when the moment arrived, he would encounter such antagonism for simply doing his job.

   "By the end of the day, you just felt like you were on an island by yourself," he said. "Whatever decision I made, 50% of people were going to be upset because it was too 'restrictive' and the other 50% were going to be upset because it wasn't restrictive enough.  

   But support for those policies eroded as the number of unemployed Kansans grew to levels not seen since the Great Recession. Republican legislative leaders responded by reining in Kelly's emergency powers and those of local health officials.

   As the political debate grew more heated — nationally and in Kansas — hostility toward public health officials, like McKenney, increased.

   She got threatening emails and was the target of personal attacks on social media.

   "It hurts your heart, it really does," McKenney said. "It's not only that people are mean, it's that you've lost friends. Relationships are broken."

   During the worst of it, McKenney said, she often sat alone in her office and cried after seeing her last patient of the day.

   "There's nothing else to do," she said.

   Andy Miller, a Wilson County commissioner, said McKenney brought some of the criticism on herself by disparaging President Trump's handling of the pandemic in social media posts.

   "When you start getting political," Miller said, "you've created a storm."

   When that happens, he said, the attacks run both ways.

   "I've probably got a dozen emails or so that are just, 'it's either a mask [mandate] or you're a killer,' " he said. "There's no in between."

   Early last month, commissioners rejected McKenney's proposal for a mask mandate. But as COVID-19 cases in the county and across the state surged and Kelly reiterated her call for a statewide policy, they agreed to consider a compromise.

   Most of the people who showed up for a public hearing opposed the mandate as an assault on their personal liberty.

   "My fear doesn't happen to be the COVID virus but the overreach of national and state officials who believe because of their positions or ego that their opinions are fact," said Charles Fox, a Fredonia veterinarian.

   Donovan Hutchinson, the bar owner in nearby Neodesha, said giving in to a mask mandate would lead to further abuses of government power.

   "What will they come after next, our guns, our children?" he said.

   When it became apparent that the commission was ready to approve a 30-day mask mandate as a compromise several people walked out in protest.

   Like other public health officials, McKenney is tired and discouraged. But she said she's not going to quit.

   "That's not me," she said. "I can't have this knowledge and ability to help people and just walk away."

 

James McLean -- National Public Radio

When are these lies going to stop one minute they say wear a mask next minute don't wear a mask it doesn't work which it does not only for hospitals it even says on the box of the Mask this mask does not stop the spread of covid-19 so which is the truth probably don't wear a mask because the governor's and mayors of this country don't our president don't cuz they know this is a hoax and masks are very very harmful to your health unless you're a doctor or a nurse in surgery that's what they were made for. Not for submission

 

Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the reality that Joe Biden won last week’s election is not merely an overgrown child’s tantrum. By deliberately seeking to undermine the results, Trump and a wide swath of Republican leaders are laying the groundwork to overturn them—an act that, were we watching it unfold abroad, we’d call a coup d’état. Just consider:

  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn’t acknowledged Biden’s victory.
  • Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has promised there will be “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
  • Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt says that Trump “may have not have been defeated at all.”
  • Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson says he won’t congratulate Biden because “there’s nothing to congratulate him about.”
  • The White House is reportedly vetting appointees for a second Trump term.
  • Attorney General Bill Barr has issued a memo authorizing federal prosecutors to pursue claims of voter fraud.
  • And Trump’s legal team continues to pursue baseless litigation promoting unfounded conspiracy theories.

   These are not the actions of a president and political party prepared to peacefully hand over power after losing an election. They are the exact opposite: a deliberate strategy seeking to annul the expression of the popular will. It is a dangerous scheme that, at best, will fray confidence in our already fragile democracy. At worst, it will succeed and keep Trump in office against all right and all law.

   This is, of course, exactly what we expected from Trump. But where are Democratic leaders in denouncing this with the righteous fury this moment requires? Why have we not seen Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, their chief lieutenants, and their most prominent allies all gather before the Capitol and, in one voice, expose this plot against America for what it is?

   We can’t just let Trump play out the string. We can’t, as one nameless Republican pleaded, “humor him” while we tell ourselves, “Jan. 20 can’t come soon enough.” The peril is too great. Trump’s attempted coup probably will not succeed, but that is not a good or acceptable reason to ignore it. Even if it fails, Trump can do great damage on his way out.

   Top Democrats must stand up for democracy while there is still time, to show the country and the world that we will not tolerate the GOP’s assault on this great nation and all it stands for. The stakes are too high to delay any longer.