There's elections in Germany on Sunday. Prognoses still give CDU/CSU as the party with the majority of votes, followed by AfD. That, friends, does not bode well for our future. (You can look at dawum.org for the current results from surveys.)

Meanwhile, I'm spending too much time on social media trying to reach, hopefully, a few people and make them realise that we'll be up for deep shit if we get a right-wing dominated Bundestag. And with one eye, I'm looking towards the US in some kind of disbelief (this feels so much like a bad movie, it must be a bad movie, right?) and concern (it's obviously rather easy to deconstruct a democracy once you're in position, and who knows if we're not next in line?).

The weak, those without defenses, the ones easily silenced and erased get taken out of the equation first. And then it spreads. You can see for yourself how that works, just go visit https://orwh.od.nih.gov/career-development-education, the US National Institute of Health's pages for the Office of Research for Women's Health, scroll down, and click either "Women Scientists in Action" or "Local Legends". 

So. For those of you protesting things in the US: Thank you. Please keep going. We do see you, and every protest counts. 

For those of you unsure of what you can do: Connect with others. Go out and join protests. You can find out more, for example, at indivisible.org. If you're in Germany, protests can be found on the pages of demokrateam.org. 

Don't give up on human rights. Don't give up on democracy.

One of the interesting topics that come up again and again is the diversity of German dialects - which, I once read somewhere, can be so far apart linguistically that they are actually different languages. 

I grew up in Franconia, and thus know the Franconian dialect.  Which sounds very, very different from what you can hear here, which is the Cologne dialect.

(And a really wonderful project, by the way! It's a song to get people to vote. There's original subtitles in German and Kölsch - and yes, they are quite necessary for some bits for Germans, too - but the automatic English translation is, unfortunately, quite shitty...)

If you would like to have a look at some very old needles, here's an (also slightly older) article about them: "Sewing Needles Reveal the Roots of Fashion".  

And if you are in Germany and would like to join the protests against the extreme Right, you can find out if there's something happening in your area on the website of the Demokrateam.

... especially friends in the US, how are you doing? I'm reading snippets here and there of finances cut, people fired, and websites taken offline. Have you been hit by any of this? How are things going for you, while your vice president hops around in Germany telling us who to vote for (spoiler alert: not good advice)?

 

There's horrible news about an attack on a demonstrating mass of people today in Munich. It was not a demo against the far right, but a protest against too-low wages - and still. A car was driven into the marching people from behind, with several partly badly injured people as a result.

And I would not be surprised at all if the man doing this had been paid, or been promised payment, by the right-wing extremists. Something like that, ten days before elections, when the right-wing party has done their best to fuel hate and fear regarding anybody not having a pure German pedigree? It stinks. To me, it reeks of something behind the bushes here. 

It will be an interesting ten days until the elections now, and I would not be surprised if that flavours all the rest of the debates massively. It's horrible, in so many ways.

So. Excuse me if I will not blog tomorrow, I will be off on a demo (against the far right, because acts like this are still not a reason to make Germany Nazireich 2.0). 

And please keep your fingers crossed for sanity in our land. 

(Sorry, German today.)

Leute, geht raus auf die Straße. Der Rechtsruck darf nicht unkommentiert bleiben. 

Termine für Demos gibt es hier: https://demos-gegen-rechts.de/

Und dann, ganz wichtig:

Geht wählen und wählt eine der demokratischen Parteien, die uns noch verblieben sind. Und vielleicht nicht gerade die CDU/CSU, denn mit dem momentanen Verhalten ihres Kanzlerkandidaten steht zu befürchten, daß sie nach der Wahl genauso wortbrüchig werden wie vor der Wahl.

So. Stuff going on here? Madness, if you ask me. The right-wing extremists (AfD) are still at a solid 20% in the predictions for the upcoming elections, and CDU/CSU still at an incredible 30%. Incredible because they - or, if you want to be personal - their chancellor candidate Merz broke his word and welcomed the votes of the AfD for a "5-point programme" that would not change anything, only heats the artificial panic about migrants being a danger to Germany (spoiler alert: they are not), and would in some parts even break German and European law. 

So far, so shitty. 

In case you're not also in the middle of this shit, here's an English language video explaining a bit more what happened: 

After this, there have been lots and lots of demonstrations against this action, and against letting the far right dictate the topics for the election (which they still do, because neither Scholz nor Merz, who have recently done a TV debate, have gotten the memo that there's other topics and it might not be helpful if they just tell each other who is more enthusiastic about kicking people out of this country). 

There were, alltogether, millions out on the street. Now, instead of saying "well, yes, looks like there are quite a few people not agreeing with this, maybe we should think things over" they are saying the peaceful demonstrations are too much, and they are helping to further divide the population.

Divide my ass. We don't have a migration problem, we have an integration problem. A lot of the people who have come here would like to work, but are not allowed to. There's been people deported out of the country who had work here and were normal, regular tax payers, with their children going to school here, and yet they were kicked out. How does this make ANY sense? 

A lot of the people whose parents immigrated to Germany have no other home. They are Germans, paying their taxes and their dues, working and living here. But Merz is so far removed from anything regarding a normal life, within normal means, it's really ridiculous. How can we trust someone who owns several millions of Euros, but considers himself "not wealthy" with anything, let alone the country's finances?

I still hope that a miracle will happen in the elections. I will do my best to help. And if you are living in Germany, and have voting rights: Go and vote for a democratic party, please!