Thanks. I knew there was the usual spin to the Breitbart piece. Appreciate the more nuanced and broader explanation.

Breitbart once notoriously reported that Germany's oldest church was burned down by a Muslim mob. Except that it wasn't the oldest and that it wasn't burned down, least of all by Muslims, they were broadly correct. What happened was that there was a New Year's celebration crowd appropriately unruly for the occasion which also included some recent immigrants, some fireworks were launched in an unsafe direction, and scaffolding on the church briefly caught on fire, though there was no damage to the actual building. When called upon it, Breitbart retracted the "oldest church" bit, but stood by the rest.

The problem is that there's really no wide selection of competent English-language German news sources regarding editorial lines and political spin. As noted above, while "Spiegel" is the flagship of national in-depth reporting, they trend definitely left, and by US standards far left - internationally, they can be grouped with the "New York Times" and "Guardian", with which they frequently collaborate. They only put select pieces on their English site, too, and I sometimes find the translations curiously lacking.

"Deutsche Welle", the official multi-language international German news service, comes down in about the same place in their reporting on domestic issues, if not a little further left; though as they have a broad network of local international correspondents which don't necessarily fit into the German coordinate system politically, it's hard to group them as a whole. The only other major English-language news source I'm aware of is the German issue of "The Local", which seem to offer less in the way of a distinct political bias mostly because they don't do much own in-depth reporting rather than citing agencies and other media; so their apparent balance comes at the expense of substance.

In effect, it's hard for non-German speakers to triangulate the truth in domestic affairs the usual way by comparing several sources with different known political lines. If you do read German, obviously that limitation falls. There's the daily "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", widely considered to be middle of the road; by conventional wisdom, their politics section trends conservative, literature and arts left. Not to be confused with the "Frankfurter Rundschau", which is even further to the left than "Spiegel", or for that matter the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" from Munich.

Further on the right are the dailies of the Springer Press, notably the "Welt", which espouses a kind of cranky conservativism with libertarian streaks; similar to the weekly "Focus" magazine, established as a competitor to "Spiegel", though they never quite caught up. About the furthest you can go right in somewhat serious journalism is the weekly "Junge Freiheit", which is generally aligned with the AfD. Other clear party affiliations exist with the Green-leaning daily "tageszeitung", and the former East German leading paper "Neues Deutschland" and the Left Party. Though if you want real orthodox Marxism, you need the former GDR youth daily "Junge Welt", which is so far left on positions like "the US and NATO made Russia invade Ukraine" that they come out on the right again.

For the outside look on Germany in the same language, there's also the "Neue Züricher Zeitung" from Switzerland of a generally libertarian bend. For public TV, the various state/regional broadcasters joined in the ARD tend to reflect local long-time political tendencies; WDR from Social Democratic heartland North Rhine-Westphalia was long regarded as notoriously leftist as BR from Bavaria was as conservative. In national broadcaster ZDF, things tend to even out. Private TV has long pursued a more tabloid news style, and is only trying to develop serious political shows in recent years.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
Any bill will have to be agreed with the Ministry of Justice lead by the Liberals though, which has stated non-committally that they're "open" for proposals. Whether a result observing all judicial standards and protections will actually speed up proceedings has been doubted by legal professionals, though. Justice Minister Marco Buschmann has already pretty much shot down Faeser's proposals for tightening gun laws by repeating the truism that it's quite sufficient to take weapons away from extremists as it is now, you just have to use it, and equip authorities for that. As I suspected, most of the plans are about better information sharing, though that includes warnings of psychological issues - something Faeser's conservative predecessor Horst Seehofer already failed to push through due to the particular protection of medical data.

The only actual gun law issue, and rather unrelated to current events, would have been banning semi-automatic rifles appearing like weapons of war, which would have reverted a liberalization from 2004. With no support from the Liberals, there's no majority for that; even the Left Party, which must mind the gun owners among its mostly East German voters, has come out against linking the law to the Reichsbürger thing. As it is, by reports from today ten illegal firearms were found in the raids, while another 94 were legally registered between a total of 54 suspects, so it's not like they all had an arms room ready to equip a revolutionary army. Attention briefly shifted to nationwide raids (though on a much smaller scale) against the "Last Generation" climate activists who have been annoying everyone recently by glueing themselves to public trafficways and pieces of art, too. The Reichsbürger issue will continue, but the media machine is moving on, and it will be months or years before the political und judicial system has the fallout sorted.

Update on the gun law issue. Interior minister Nancy Faeser, eying to run for state premier in her native Hesse this fall and given additional fuel by particularly excessive New Year's hooliganism in Berlin following two previous years of official bans on private fireworks sales for fear of further stressing hospitals during COVID - including deliberate attacks on police and rescue services using blank-firing guns in the city's usual districts shaped by the typical mix of precarious socio-economics, high share of immigrants, and low esteem for the state and any institutions seen as representing its authority - had a draft bill announced this week. After reading the promptly-leaked text and getting my blood pressure back down, I found it has indeed "campaign stunt" written all over it.

This would turn the current authorization of municipal weapons authorities to inquire with local police about any knowledge about an applicant before issueing gun permits into an obligation, and extend it to agencies at previous places of residence up to five years ago; include Federal Police and the Customs Investigation Bureau into the authorities which may be asked for information; and require local health authorities to share any knowledge about anyone's mental health with issueing authorities, to be deleted if it's not relevant for the latter. Which as noted is a point Faeser's conservative predecessor Horst Seehofer already failed to push through some years ago due to the particular protection of health data under German privacy laws.

The requirement for a psychological exam of applicants below 25 years introduced after various school shootings would also be extended to any age. Further it includes the ban on semi-automatic long guns resembling fully-automatic weapons of war on the reason that they're particularly attractive to spree shooters and right-wing extremists, though there is some unclear language that rifles already owned may be marked yellow to distinguish them from the real thing. It also elevates the "CCW light" required to carry blank-firing pistols since 2003 somewhat to the level of a "real" permit with aforementioned psychological exam and the need to demonstrate legal and practical knowledge, and makes it a condition to just buy rather than just carry a BFP - as well as crossbows, which are apparently "particularly popular among Reichsbürger" and such.

As a sop to hunters, it would allow night vision sights and gun lights for the stated purpose of curbing the spread of African Swine Fever among wild hogs. Still, the whole thing is such an authoritarian wet dream that the Liberals could only reject it; which I believe is the purpose. If it had just stopped at making inquiries to local police mandatory, information from health authorities a pull rather than push issue and including the additional federal authorities as points of contact; and making the "CCW light" a requirement for buying BFPs (which is actually in the coalition agreement between Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals - something I wasn't aware of), there might have been some debate about details, but no fundamental disagreement.

Which would however have robbed Ms. Faeser et al of the opportunity to accuse the Liberals of blocking implementation of the agreement to improve public security and the fight against right-wing extremism in upcoming campaign speeches. As it is, FDP party head Christian Lindner, in his capacity as finance minister, simply blocked the draft from being entered into inter-ministerial consideration, let alone submitting a possible revised bill to parliament. Which means that in its current form, it's dead in the water; and may remain so for the rest of the term unless the interior ministry presents a much watered-down version along the lines stated above.