by Peter Löcke //
Oops. She did it again. Just over a month after she expressed her fear of imminent popular uprisings at the RND talk show Baerbock gallops off again. This time, the insurmountable language obstacle course was Forum 2000, a panel discussion in Prague. With a few exceptions, the media reaction followed the usual pattern. It is not the German Foreign Minister who is criticized. The critics are criticized, while Baerbock is stylized as the innocent victim of evil forces. The most reliable advocate once again proves to be the fox of facts, the Ministry of Truth of the Bayerischer Rundfunk. Allow me an analytical polemic of this fact check. In the words of the German Foreign Minister: I would just like to "exaggerate".
The bone of contention
"We will stand by your side for as long as you need us', then I want to deliver, regardless of what my German voters think, but I want to deliver for the Ukrainian people."
There is great anger in the social media over this statement. Is Baerbock putting Ukrainian interests above German interests? Is she writing a blank cheque for eternal military and financial aid? Does she not care about her own voters at all? The people's soul is boiling.
Appearance of the fact checkers
Disinformation. The quote was taken out of context, the clever fact-checker is outraged. He is right, of course. When quotes are taken from a book, from a planned speech in the Bundestag or from free speech as here, then they are generally taken out of context. So the interesting question is whether statements elsewhere put Baerbock's latest lapses into perspective and shed a brighter light on his self-exposure. In the eyes of the funny fact fox, that is so. So Bayerischer Rundfunk quotes Baerbock's statements in epic breadth up to this point:
"No, we remain in solidarity with the people in our country, just as we stand alongside everyone in Ukraine."
Welcome to the realm of text interpretation and political interpretation. This is where journalism could begin. This is where real context could begin. This is where questions could be asked.
Can the German government represent both Ukrainian and German interests at the same time? Are these interests congruent? Hasn't Baerbock's party colleague Habeck long ago and repeatedly admitted that Germany is harming itself and that the sanctions are actually American sanctions? So is Germany just a recipient of NATO orders and is Baerbock's quote just further proof of this? How exactly does Baerbock want to show solidarity with her own population? In all seriousness through the third planned economy Relief package? Do you yourself believe in this solidarity, given your fear of popular uprisings?
You could ask the questions and come up with different answers. As befits a democracy and serious journalists. But not for the Orwellian Ministry of Truth Faktenfuchs.
The usual stylistic devices of the fact checkers
Wrong quote excerpt is the Checker accusation against WELT. My instead of the German voters, it should read correctly. Possessive pronoun instead of definite article. In fact, the Springer organ mistakenly translated Baerbock's English incorrectly in one word before correcting the mistake online.
But this is an inflated petitesse that does nothing to change the explosive force of the statement. Piquantly, the fact-checker himself changed his own article far more extensively. Out of insight due to strong criticism? Of course not.
"Apparently we had not sufficiently explained why we classify the targeted dissemination of the abbreviated Baerbock quote as disinformation."
Self-deprecation instead of self-criticism. The preachy tone remains. And now for the open sesame of every fact checker.
The good old contact debt
Who criticizes where? The focus is on the platform and sender. The critics are criticized, the content of their criticism is addressed superficially or not at all. Destroy the reputation of the messengers, then people won't listen to their messages. They suspect what is coming. "Prorussian Telegram groups" are on the move here and, of course, political opponents such as the AfD. The desired message: anyone who criticizes Baerbock is a Russophile and of course on the right. In addition to generalization, the good old contact guilt.
I have a few questions for the clever fact fox. When does the claim that both the sum and the product of two and two are four become a true claim? If Trump and the devil himself claim it on Telegram? Or only when this realization is read out on the news? Is it surprising that criticism comes mainly from political opponents? That's normal in politics. Would the fact-checker also be surprised if an AfD statement worthy of criticism was attacked by the Greens?
The grand finale
It can't get any more embarrassing? Yes, it can. For the grand finale, BR tries to put forward the thesis that disinformation campaigns and fabricated quotes against Baerbock are the order of the day. Two further fact checks serve as evidence; one of their own and one taken from Correctiv. There had already been invented Baerbock quotes. One about keeping pets and one about the widow's pension. Dear Fox, that's off-topic at best, kindergarten level at worst.
Have there been any questionable statements or lies made by the German Foreign Minister in the past? Keyword plagiarism in her book. Keyword creative CV. You could write novels about that. But it doesn't belong here.
Conclusion
Many a fox should disappear into its den and keep quiet before it finally mutates into a donkey.
Articles identified by name do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.
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13 Responses
Here is my fourth and, for this article, last attempt to be considered as a small individual voice.
Political entrepreneurs are basically people like you and me and therefore part of all economic entities in this world.
What distinguishes political entrepreneurs from private entrepreneurs, however, is the means they use to achieve their goals. While the private entrepreneur enters into voluntary exchange relationships with other economic entities - otherwise there is no exchange - the politician entrepreneur uses coercion and violence. The politician-entrepreneur enters the competition of crooks in order to attain a high political (power) position, through which he can then enforce his ideas and goals at the expense and to the detriment of other people by threatening and using violence. The political entrepreneur enjoys the extraordinary privilege of being able to legitimately access other people's property, which is denied to any private individual and is in principle forbidden to any decent person anyway.
In my analysis, I am not judging anything or anyone, neither people, groups of people nor human actions, but merely describing facts that everyone can check for themselves.
Dear Ms. Gudrun Schmidt!
Thank you for your last two comments.
Your perspective is very sober and describes the political class as I had never seen it from this (your) point of view.
In a few concentrated words and paragraphs, the disregard of the electorate by the cursed political actors is described.
Thank you, a very enlightening addition.
As an advocate of clear words, I would like to emphasize one main characteristic of the profession of a politician, which everyone is capable of examining independently:
Politicians offer services that do not, however, correspond to an offer that can be rejected, as is the case in a free market, where the consumer does not have to suffer any consequences if he rejects the offer.
Politicians are therefore not dependent on voluntary consumers, but are in an extraordinary special position that also allows them to levy taxes, i.e. to rob other people, to generate economic sectors for themselves as a monopoly, i.e. to completely exclude other people from free competition (law, violence, money, education, health, old-age provision, etc.) and to enact laws, ordinances, regulations, rules, prohibitions and bans for their forced customers at will and also to change them via contracts, pacts, agreements, etc. with other heads of state, NGOs, etc.In other words, to completely exclude other people from free competition (law, violence, money, education, health, pensions, etc.) and to enact and change laws, ordinances, regulations, rules, bans and prohibitions for their coerced customers at will and, in addition, to further restrict their already massively restricted freedom of action via contracts, pacts, agreements, etc. with other heads of state, NGOs and specially selected large corporations.
Given these facts, is it worth thinking about or discussing individual political figures?
I don't think so.
Freedom or servitude - that is the all-important question.
Once again.
Everyone, whether in English or German, understood the wording and the statement. Bärbock also rejected calls for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations, as several German celebrities had demanded in an open letter. There would be so much for a real foreign minister to do, but she is upset about Erdogan allowing himself to be photographed with Lavrov. She's not doing her homework. What does she care that the West is screwing over the developing countries. The developing countries received the minimum of the exported grain.
The West lied when it claimed that Ukraine needed access to sea transportation in order to reduce rising food prices and the risk of famine in poor countries. Most of the shiploads that left Ukraine under an agreement with Russia brokered by Turkey and the United Nations went to EU countries.
Only two out of 87, and out of two million tons of food, only 60,000 tons - and thus only three percent of this amount - were delivered to developing countries. Another big lie against Russia. It goes to Africa and shows itself to be present in the media, while at the same time stealing the promised aid.
Review: Baerbock warns of hunger crisis:
"We will not turn away"
Status: 13.04.2022
Three times as many people are expected to go hungry in West Africa alone in the coming months than a few years ago. Germany will not turn its back on this crisis, assured Foreign Minister Baerbock during her visit to Niger. During her visit to Niger in West Africa, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke about the global impact of the crisis.
The war in Ukraine exacerbates hunger
The war in Ukraine is already having an impact in crisis regions and will also put pressure on some emerging markets.
Number of starving people could triple. Due to the sharp rise in grain prices, around 38 million men, women and children will go hungry in West Africa alone in the coming months. "That's three times as many as three years ago," said Baerbock. In addition to the war in Ukraine, Baerbock called for a fight against an impending hunger crisis. One reason is the war in Ukraine, which is endangering the global grain supply: "Russia's war is being fought in a cruel way on the streets, towns and villages of Ukraine. But its traces of suffering reach deep into the global South," said Baerbock in a speech on climate and security at the University of Niamey, the capital of Niger. The Green politician said that it was a Russian strategy "to further fuel the misery in the world's poorest countries by cutting off or stopping the supply of food". This is why international partners must now tackle the food crisis decisively and confront hunger. Even if there is a war raging in Germany's neighborhood, it will not turn away from the other crises in the world. Mali and Niger are former French colonies and are among the poorest countries in the world. Niger has 23 million inhabitants and is ranked last out of 189 countries in the United Nations Development Program's Human Development Index. This on the subject of grain deliveries for the poorest.
Wouldn't it also be within their remit to condemn the constant attacks against Syria? Or to take a clear look at what is obviously going on in Ukraine. For example, a school that had just been rebuilt by the Russians was reduced to rubble again by Ukraine, so that the pupils have to start the new school year in replacement rooms. They should probably be glad that they don't have to go into the cellars. Or the shelling of a nuclear power plant, which affects us all. Instead, she lives out her infantile mental construct. Now to Bärbock's friend Robert:
On Maischberger, Habeck said in a long "clever" flow of words that insolvency has nothing to do with a company being bankrupt. A company that can no longer produce and can no longer pay its employees is not automatically insolvent. Great, have I misunderstood that too, or has Putin got his fingers in the pie again and manipulated Habeck's words via the secret service? Then the new Trutschl from England, who said she would have no problem detonating a nuclear bomb.... also misunderstood again. The fact-checkers (the end of free speech in Europe) ...... "The "fact-checkers" play an important role here. Their German flagships, such as Correctiv or dpa-Faktencheck, are organized under the umbrella of the US Poynter Institute and are paid by Facebook, among others, to identify "false claims". With the Digital Services Act and the "Code of Practice on Countering Disinformation", the EU is creating a sophisticated infrastructure for the comprehensive censorship of information and opinions - outsourced to private corporations. Guest author Johannes Mosmann's cool and objective analysis of these documents, which reveals the totalitarian control ambitions of those in power, is reminiscent of dark, pre-democratic times.
Fact checkers successfully check how facts can be relativized and reinterpreted. This is what makes fact-checkers so indispensable in a Faeser/Esken/Habeck/Lauterbach democracy (a democracy that has been transformed into a caricature of a liberal-democratic society).
All well and good. Who still listens to the fact-checkers in our personal environment? The completely out-of-touch people who applaud when the rug is pulled out from under them and their families. That is definitely not the majority and the federal government knows that very well. Ms. Baerbock says it explicitly - once with the feared wave of protest and then with the openly announced disregard for the will of the voters. As far as I know - although the news situation is not yet clear to me - this foreign policy has led to Russia allegedly terminating the ceasefire, which would effectively be an official declaration of war. Russia is said to have justified this step with arms deliveries and training programs for the Ukrainian army. There were enough warnings. Only Hofreiter and his ilk ignored them. In the meantime, continental Europe has become the main theater of war in the USA's economic war against Russia. We are collateral damage - collateral at best. If we took actions more seriously than words, we would see things more clearly. Many are already on the way to realizing this. Habeck and Baerbock should not underestimate this. I think they have taken it too far and their supporters will turn their backs on them. Let the polls available to us be what they are.
The article might elicit a laugh if the barrel of equivalent performances wasn't already full to the brim. There is nothing, nothing good at all, to be expected from power-hungry representatives of the people who are primarily concerned with drug legalization, sex with children, the abolition of biological gender roles and the violent capture of the forces of nature to finally take possession of God's armchair.
A comment I read yesterday under another video on the subject pretty much says it all: the best thing would be for her to go to Ukraine immediately, play foreign minister there and take the cow shit stacker with her. It's getting better here every day...
The so-called fact-checkers constituted by the political media godfathers have - all too transparently - the primary task of dispelling any civic doubts about the government's official (extremely demagogic) narrative as effectively as possible. Their activities have nothing to do with an effort to be honest. If, in the (fortunately not so rare) individual case, their intentions don't really catch on with the responsible citizen, they soon "disqualify" themselves as "right-wing extremist conspiracy theorists". It's as simple as that (at least if a respectful, democratic and critical discourse on a human level is considered completely superfluous anyway). Although this is nothing new, it is always astonishing to see how an astonishingly incompetent and corrupt political elite seemingly succeeds in pulling the wool over the eyes of an intimidated middle-class society.
I am glad that democracy exists. With it and its representatives, whom I hold in high esteem, a "fact fox" quickly exposes itself as an old socialist rebirth. The only disadvantage is that this new edition of old propaganda has to swim in completely different waters - and threatens to sink quite quickly. Well, socialism is a ballast that people in this country have already sunk into the sea. Perhaps someone should tell that to the fact fox?
I have had to put up with many political actors in my life, but the protagonists are getting worse and worse. If I thought it couldn't get any worse after Kohl's "girl", I unfortunately had to learn otherwise. It can always get worse. It is incomprehensible to me that the majority of the population still believes this comedy to be reality. Political actors who are afraid of the people's anger have to create institutions that divide the people and severely restrict the scope of what can be said and thought. People are then allowed to "work off" within this predetermined framework. The fact check is, so to speak, a precursor to a kind of "Ministry of Truth" that will be established at some point. The relentless collection of personal data is making people ever shinier. At some point, "anti-government thinking" will become a criminal offense, I say as a so-called conspiracy theorist. AI will make it possible. I never tire of emphasizing that these manipulation techniques are psychological violence against the population. Instead of focusing on the statements themselves, it is more important to look at the veiled intentions behind such statements. In my opinion, all of these so-called crises are homemade and are only intended to serve as a distraction for the establishment of completely different goals. It is important to take a close look at digital developments and what is already possible today. Of course, AI is making life much more convenient and there is more information available today than ever before. But this comes at a price, everyone should be aware of that. The big stage show for us at the front, the long-planned conformity of people at the back. Easy to manage and consumerist and statist. Goodbye diversity and individuality.
Dear fellow citizens,
Well, any profiler could refute this so-called "fact fox" immediately.
The gestures in the video speak volumes.
Profile:
While A. Baerbock makes contemptuous remarks about the voters (and also her own), she makes a clearly dismissive gesture in this regard at the same moment, with a long outstretched arm.
Convicted.
She meant exactly what she said.
Zero room for interpretation.
She is, obviously, the best foreign minister Ukraine has ever had.
And one of our German coffin nails.
The fact that she also immediately declares that it "doesn't matter" how "hard" her actions (ruining her own people (author's note)) hit "the politicians" (correctly heard and read) defies description.
In the manner of feudal cliques, this only makes the people even louder and more cynical.
Well; said "donkey" thinks of himself first...
Yours sincerely,
Lucy
PS:
In truth, I don't give a damn about the donkey species.
For example, they are intelligent and careful.
And have such beautiful ears... -:)
I just can't stand this lady. No matter what she says. But of course, it was the Russian. Again and again. And Putin - or was it Lavrov - is also said to have said that he didn't want to talk to such a stupid person. That's all I can think of. And her little dresses and shoes are just awful and don't make the overall impression any better. The lady is just embarrassing. And her dressmaker is certainly not cheap. Lagerfeld said that a woman with style is a woman with style even in cheap clothes, and a woman without style is a woman without style even in expensive clothes. Incidentally, I assume that the Greens' poll ratings will immediately increase by two percentage points..... Every time one of them has shown himself to be completely unworthy of his office and has made it unmistakably clear that he wants to do us harm, the ratings climb. This country can no longer be saved.
Hi,
your article is so informative and funny that i immediately downloaded it to my smartphone.
but in all of this against baerbock, against whom, in my opinion, nothing, not even a word, has ever been below the belt,
I was almost blown away by the fact that our children's book author said or even implied that these are US sanctions, which must/should/will mean that it is a war between the USA and RUSSIA and not a war in Ukraine.
this has been my personal opinion for a long time anyway and can ultimately be proven by incontrovertible facts.
of course, our imbecilic politicians are so US-savvy that they are even driving the german people up the wall.
Sincerely
dieter reichel