1. The best protest songs against right-wing extremists
A weekend of protests against right-wing enemies of democracy began today, and I think that's a good thing.
After right-wing extremists spoke at a conspiratorial meeting about deporting millions of people from Germany, many thousands of people across Germany want to take to the streets.
Around 90 rallies nationwide have been registered for the weekend.
In Munich, more than 200 organizations are calling for a large demonstration on Sunday.
(Read here where demonstrations against the right are taking place this weekend.)
The sociologist Armin Nassehi assesses it this way: At the moment, those who had been waiting for a suitable occasion for a long time were taking to the streets.
“Now is a moment in which the silent majority realizes that something is actually at stake,” says Nassehi.
“And here she lets herself be heard for once.”
Today my colleague Andreas Borcholte provides a suggestion as to which songs can best be used to demonstrate for democracy.
Of course there are protest choir classics like “He, ho resists…”, but today the Hamburg band Kettcar released a new song that is probably also suitable for protest.
The song entitled “Munich” is “full of angry guitars that scream like alarm sirens and is a rare political statement in German pop,” writes Andreas.
In the accompanying video clip, the rock band remembers the victims of the NSU: the shops, kiosks and places where right-wing extremist terrorists murdered nine people with a migration background between 2000 and 2006 are shown.
“Munich” is obviously about an everyday situation.
A young man is asked where he actually came from.
It's the usual, thoughtless, passive-aggressive question that Germans with a migration history have to endure all the time.
“Are you asking where I was born?” the text says with pent-up anger.
“I say I was born in Munich-Harlaching / Munich, old lady.” My colleague Andreas thinks the song is “a stirring anthem,” and it fits “exactly into the discussion about AfD successes and frighteningly popular right-wing narratives.” .
More here: Revolt against the right – with this song
2. Finance Minister Lindner gives the post office an absurd tax gift
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Post office in Bonn: Help from Berlin
Photo:
Frieder Blickle / laif
All companies tremble in the same way in front of the tax office and the strict German Finance Minister Christian Lindner.
Really all?
As my colleagues Benedikt Müller-Arnold and Christian Reiermann report today, Linder waives hundreds of millions of euros in VAT from the all-powerful Swiss Post, but not from the competition.
Why does a liberal of all people damage competition in such a way?
First things first: The so-called Postal Law Modernization Act is actually intended to strengthen competition on the letter market; it was passed by the cabinet shortly before Christmas.
However, Lindner's officials have incorporated a tax gift for the partially state-owned Deutsche Post AG into the law: In the future, it will no longer have to pay VAT on other parts of its offering, for example on mass mailings.
Smaller mail companies that compete with the post office, on the other hand, would have to continue to charge VAT of 19 percent according to the federal government's plans.
Of course, the Post sees it differently and has already had success with its position in court, for example in 2021 before the Cologne Finance Court.
If she had also won the appeal proceedings, it might have been very expensive for the federal government.
Lindner apparently didn't want to take this risk - and approached the post office with the new law.
She is happy, but her competition probably isn't.
The present from Berlin could increase the market value of the post office - which in turn should please the federal government, after all, it wants to sell further shares in the post office this year in order to use the proceeds to increase the railway's equity capital.
However, the Federal Council must also approve the law.
There is likely to be resistance there.
“Lindner violates his two roles,” says my colleague Christian Reiermann.
»As head of a liberal party, he should promote competition on the mail market – and elsewhere – rather than hinder it.
As finance minister, he should not unnecessarily distribute a tax gift for a single company in times of tight cash."
Even more so if the company is partly state-owned.
It is to be hoped that the tax exemption will be withdrawn during parliamentary deliberations, at the latest in the Federal Council, said the colleague.
»Bavaria has already clearly positioned itself against the privileging of the postal service.
Other countries could follow.”
Read more here: Lindner's absurd tax gift for the post office
3. At Green Week, the farmers' future doesn't seem so bleak
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Farmers' protest in Berlin: Who is willing to pay for food?
Photo: Carsten Koall / dpa
When he or she is not blocking the road with his tractor, the German farmer is often a sociable, hard-working and even profound person.
I know this from my farming relatives in the Allgäu - and it can now be seen again at the Green Week, which started today in Berlin.
The worldly wisdom of the peasantry is also manifested in wonderfully entertaining, if not always accurate, peasant rules.
For example in this one: "If you want to praise January, it has to freeze and rage." Or: "January has to crack with the cold if the harvest is to be good."
My colleague Maria Marquart writes today about the Green Week: "Actually, it is Agricultural fair a fair weather fair.
Consumers should be able to see and taste the modern side of agriculture.
You can eat your way from stand to stand."
This time the Green Week is overshadowed by the current farmers' protests.
Their protest is aimed at the agricultural diesel subsidy, but it is also about the question of how meat, milk, fruit and vegetables are produced, who should pay for it and, above all, how much.
Maria reports on innovative considerations in retail on how fair prices could be set for farmers' products.
For example, one initiative wants to let consumers vote online about what is important to them when it comes to food.
Depending on where the check mark is placed, the price changes immediately - including an information box explaining why this is so.
And there are even more ideas about how farmers could improve their incomes.
“If politicians get involved, the future on the farms doesn’t look so bad,” writes Maria.
She was at the trade fair this afternoon and apparently met a lot of people in a good mood.
So-called agricultural scouts swarmed into the hall of the German Farmers' Association.
»I asked one of the agricultural scouts how he felt about the mood.
Almost all visitors were open to agriculture, said the man, who taught agriculture at a vocational school.
It's fun to get into conversation."
There's also no sign of a bad mood among the association officials and lobbyists, says Maria.
»They are all surprised that they were able to shake up politics so much with their protest and hope that reforms will now make progress.
But there is one concern: that all ideas will ultimately be crushed in the traffic lights."
The Austrian cabaret artist Josef Hader just said a sentence in an interview with the Berlin "Tagesspiegel" that also captures my feelings: "I'm more on the side the rural population.
I just don’t want to live with her.”
Read the full story here: How fair prices can become a reality for farmers
What else is important today?
The Bundestag decides to make naturalization easier - under certain conditions:
In the future, foreigners should be able to obtain German citizenship much earlier.
What is necessary is a commitment to protecting Jewish life.
The parliamentary debate on the traffic light project was intense.
Deutsche Bahn presents a new offer to the train drivers' union:
In the collective bargaining dispute between Deutsche Bahn and the GDL, the employers' side has made a new offer to the train drivers.
The railway is thus meeting the demands of the GDL.
Protests in Bashkortostan, Russia - Authorities take action against participants: There is massive protest in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan: Thousands demonstrate against the conviction of an activist.
Several demonstrators now have to go to prison for a few days.
My favorite story today: Madonna is being sued by fans
Many concert goers know this from their own experience, including myself: the starting time stated on the concert ticket often turns out to be fraudulent, the artist or band only comes on stage much later.
The singer Madonna likes to keep her concert audience waiting for a particularly long time.
Two New York concert-goers had had enough; two hours late were too much for them.
They want to sue for damages from the singer.
The two filed a lawsuit in a New York court against Madonna Louise Ciccone, tour promoter Live Nation and the venue owner.
“The lawsuit points out that fans have already complained about late concert starts on previous tours,” writes my colleague Felix Bayer.
At a show in Las Vegas, he writes, Madonna once mocked: "There's something you all need to understand.
And that is: A queen is never late.«
Read the full story here: Madonna is being sued by fans for “deceptive business practices.”
What we recommend today at SPIEGEL+
The traffic light spends money on this - and this is where it saves:
The budget is in place - after weeks of dispute in the coalition.
What are the biggest cost items?
And who has how much money left for them?
The overview.
The first to move away from the Chancellor:
The SPD is experiencing an unprecedented crash.
At the beginning of the super election year, hope is dwindling in the party that the Chancellor can turn the situation around.
Are the comrades sticking to Olaf Scholz?
Why league leaders Leverkusen should actually be third:
How likely is it that a chance turns into a goal?
This is how “Expected Goals”, a popular statistic in the Bundesliga, are calculated – and it shows a completely different balance in the first half of the season.
Which is less important today
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Photo: Lev Radin / Pacific Press Agency / IMAGO
New Kids like the Blocks:
In the separation dispute between British actress
Sophie Turner
, 27, known as Sansa Stark from "Game of Thrones", and US singer
Joe Jonas,
34, a New York court has dismissed Turner's lawsuit, as have several US -Media report unanimously.
She had accused him of taking their two daughters to New York without permission.
She has now apparently withdrawn the accusation of “unlawful restraint”.
Mini concave mirror
You can find the entire concave mirror here.
Cartoon of the day
And tonight?
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Photo: LumiNola / Getty Images
Could you do something educational and stimulating for yourself and your children, nephews, grandchildren or other younger relatives and pick up the current issue of "Dein SPIEGEL", the news magazine for children.
There you not only learn what children and young people can do if they are bullied themselves or if they observe bullying in their school class.
You also learn very interesting things about blast furnaces - or more precisely: about how the Thyssenkrupp company plans to soon produce clean steel in Germany's currently most climate-damaging factory.
“As if a gate to hell were opening,” is how it looks, according to editor Marco Wedig, when liquid pig iron flows out of a blast furnace.
(Read more here: “People tend to look away”)
A lovely evening.
Heartfelt
Yours, Wolfgang Höbel, author in the culture department