1/ Federal crime stats for Germany from 2023 have been leaked to a German newspaper prior to general publication. Here are the year-on-year increases over 2022:
✅ Overall crimes: +5.5% vs. 2022, +9.3% vs. pre-pandemic 2019,
welt.de/politik/deutsc… 2/ ✅ # of criminal suspects: +7.3% (2,246,000)
✅ # of suspects w/o German nationality: 41% (+ 17.8% yoy)
✅ % of recent immigrants among suspects: 18% (+ 29.8% yoy)
✅ Burglaries: 77,819 (+ 18.1%); burglaries in Berlin: +35.2%
✅ Violent crimes: 214,099 (+8.6%)

1/ WHY GERMANY CAN'T DEPORT ANYONE

Die Welt just published an important article on why Germany can't deport anyone. Currently there are 250,000 people living in Germany who have no right to be here. welt.de/politik/deutsc… 2/ Most of these are rejected asylum seekers or people who have committed serious crimes. They're called "Ausreisepflichtige" because they have been informed they have a "duty" (Pflicht) to leave the country. Only a trivial fraction leave voluntarily, since life in Germany

1/ MY PIECE ON ANTISEMITISM IN GERMANY

I'm chuffed to reveal that Quillette has published my piece on antisemitism in Germany, which I think highlights some pretty serious journalistic malpractice. quillette.com/2024/02/13/nar… 2/ If you read English-language press coverage of Germany in the New York Times or Guardian or NYRB or almost anywhere else, you've probably come across the claim that according to German government statistics, "90%" or "the overwhelming majority" of antisemitic hate crimes in…

1/ About a year ago, I predicted that Germany would soon start seeing the kinds of protests that often topple Third-World governments, in which masses of people protests cuts to fuel or food subsidies. In poor countries, dw.com/en/germany-far… 2/ millions of people live from jobs which require them to use fuel, but which don't pay enough to allow these people to buy fuel at market rates. So millions depend on the government to provide them fuel at artificially low prices. These subsidies of course have a distorting

1/ Die @Welt has an interview with a co-author of the groundbreaking Dutch study on the net economic costs of immigration, which has sparked a huge controversy in the Netherlands. The top line finding is that immigration has cost welt.de/politik/auslan… 2/ the Dutch state an average of €17 billion per year since 1995, mainly in providing generous welfare benefits to unemployed migrants. Work migrants from Western (blue) & non-Western (black) are the only net contributors. Asylum seekers are the biggest net drain.

1/ One reason "populist" parties are gaining ground in Europe is the feckless, mealy-mouthed response mainstream politicians have to terror attacks. A 26-year-old French guy (2nd generation immigrant) just stabbed a German tourist to death in Paris. welt.de/vermischtes/ar… 2/ He was shouting "Allahu Akbar" as he attacked people near the Eiffel Tower with a knife and hammer. He had a previous criminal conviction for planning a similar attack, for which he received a sentence of...four years. He was on a terrorist watch list and had pledged to ISIS.

1/ IMPORTING ANTISEMITISM

A thread based on my personal experience. I visited Sofia, Bulgaria a few years ago -- lovely city, strong recommend. I saw this book at not just one but several outdoors stands at a local book fair: 2/ I've forgotten what the words mean, but the illustration says it all. A few minutes later, sitting on a park bench, a guy bummed a cigarette from me. We got to chatting, and I told him I came from Germany.

1/ All German mainstream parties have worked (with differing motives and techniques) since ca. 2000 to transform Germany into an energy-scarce society: Shut down nuclear, pre-emptively ban fracking, build in permanent dependence on energy imports... zdf.de/nachrichten/po… 2/ subsidies to force a premature transition to intermittent, unreliable wind & solar. The result was predictable, and predicted: Germany has by most measures the most expensive energy in the world. Companies are therefore shutting down operations in Germany.

1/ Another story from Germany's broken, collapsing immigration and criminal-justice systems: Suleiman A. arrived with 700,000 other young males in 2015 with no background or security checks. 2/ hitradio-ohr.de/moerder-des-of… He had no papers, and claimed variously to be from Djibouti or Somalia.

1/ Lefty German journo Lukas Hermsmeier (@lukashermsmeier) has just written (yet another) New York Times opinion piece claiming Germany is facing a resurgence of the extreme right and not doing enough about it. nytimes.com/2023/02/08/opi… 2/ He starts out: "[J]ust two months ago, the authorities arrested 25 people for planning a radical right-wing coup to overthrow the German government." But then immediately admits: "The group’s ideas are bizarre and the plot had no serious chance of success."

1/ Thread: It's not just German energy policy which is broken. German immigration and asylum policy is also totally dysfunctional, as a recent high-profile mass murder shows. welt.de/vermischtes/kr… 2/ On January 25th, a man stabbed a 17-year-old girl and her 19-year-old companion to death on a regional train from Kiel to Hamburg. Seven other people were wounded, some of them with life-threatening injuries.

1/ So, I'm a US lawyer and journalist working on a very long piece about the Motion to Vacate in the Syed case and I've got a couple of genuinely 100% sincere questions for @TheViewFromLL2 and @EvidenceProf. 2/ On November 1, 2022, the Baltimore Banner published this piece: thebaltimorebanner.com/community/crim…

Mosby and Feldman seem to interpret this note as indicating that "Mr. B.", as we will call him, *himself* threatened Hae Min Lee.

1/ In case you're wondering why so many Germans are terrified of nuclear energy, it's because the German media and some politicians have consistently published misleading information on the technology, including gross exaggerations of the harm caused by Chernobyl and Fukushima. 2/ The German Green Party, for example, had to officially apologize after it tweeted, on the anniversary of Fukushima, that the *nuclear accident* had killed tens of thousands of people.

1/ As I've noted before, Germany has is stuck with its current leaders, even though the coalition has lost majority support. The reason: German center-right parties are still following a policy of absolute non-cooperation with the populist-right AfD dawum.de/AfD/ 2/ Overall the AfD gets about 13-15% of the vote, with much more in the East. Since the center-right parties only get about 35% of the vote, they have no hope of forming a ruling coalition without the AfD, and they are still 100% committed to the AfD freeze-out.

1/ People sometimes ask me why German industry & industrial unions haven't put pressure on the government to lower energy prices. The short answer is below: German union chief says Germany *and* Europe need to create an "industrial policy" to prevent firms leaving. 2/ Decoded, what this means is that Germany should keep spending yet more billions of Euros (which it doesn't have) subsidizing domestic firms to prevent them from relocating to lower-cost countries -- or perhaps pass laws forcing them to stay.

1/ The process of escalation and radicalization continues in Germany: "Last Generation" activists invaded the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, some gluing themselves to the runway, others riding bikes around to disrupt operations. thelocal.de/20221124/fligh… 2/ This time around, the action was criticized by every German political party and even "climate experts" (used advisedly) close to Last Generation. Yet, of course, speakers from this extremist faction will *still* be invited onto nationwide, publicly-funded talk shows.

1/ ECO-TERRORISM IN GERMANY?

What are the chances that "Last Generation" and like-minded folks will escalate to intentionally killing people? As a student of German terrorism of the 1970s, this interests me. A thread. 2/ German history has a template for this type of radicalization Student activists became more and more uncompromising in the late 1960s. They started out with disruptive protests like we're seeing now.

1/ One of my pet peeves is German language teachers downplaying how tough the language is to learn. Every time you say "It's really not that hard!" students think: "Then why am I having so much goddamn trouble? Is it me? Am I stupid? Do I need to put in even more time?" 2/ No, you're not stupid. German is a f**king bitch to learn, especially if your native language has no cases (like English) or uses a different alphabet. Unless you have an above-average IQ (sorry, but this is definitely relevant) and huge amounts of free time,

@GaydenCarr @gbponz Depends on the country. Germany, for now, still has enough extra cash to finance complex schemes to cushion the blow -- retraining, early retirement, subsidized part-time work, etc. This is how Germany buys off labor and reduces the political danger of unemployment. @GaydenCarr @gbponz Of course, as the energy crisis grinds on year after year, these massively expensive schemes (Germany's social welfare spending is €1.1 trillion/year) will become unaffordable, since Germany will use more and more of its budget subsidizing household energy. As the schemes

1/ So, what's happening on the big mainstream German talk shows? Here's a snapshot from last night. Markus Lanz, one of the highest-rated shows, invited CDU party graybeard Thomas de Maizière, Green climate activist Luisa Neubauer (Germany's Greta), zdf.de/nachrichten/po… 2/ a journalist, and a sociologist, neither of whom had much of interest to say, except that crises help extreme parties, which I think we all agree on. There was nobody from the right-wing populist AfD party or the pro-business Free Democrats. The AfD used to get

1/ The problem with the higher gas prices which are in the pipeline for German consumer and businesses is they're *too* high. The government wants people to cut gas use by 20%. Price signals would ordinarily do that. 2/ If your monthly gas bill goes from €100 to €120, you can cut consumption at the margins to get it down to €100 again.