Gerald Knaus

Ja. Yes. “Wüst unterstreicht den Nachrichtenwert einer solchen Forderung aus CDU-Reihen selbst: „Ich habe heute etwas gesagt, das hat öffentlich bisher, glaube ich, kein CDU-Mensch gesagt: dass ich dafür bin, diese Arbeitsgruppe einzusetzen, die diese Arbeit dann leistet.“” The debate on a closure case before the Constitutional Court is getting serious. It is late. But better late than never.

🤭 Budanov and Kyslytsia's reaction to Kushner's remarks about Europe's inability to agree even on who should speak on its behalf

Ich verstehe nicht, warum das nicht ausreicht für ein Verbot. Genau diese verdammte, gegen Art 1 systematisch verstoßende Haltung.

🇸🇰 Fico accuses Merz of blackmail and threatens to veto the new EU budget over aid to Ukraine Here's the background. The German chancellor insists that the EU's 2028–2034 budget agreement must include guarantees of financial support for Kyiv in 2027 and beyond. What's more, Merz has even threatened to block the EU budget if those guarantees are not included. Robert Fico was outraged, calling the initiative a classic example of blackmail and threatening to veto such a decision. According to him, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria share his position.

Now that’s an interesting observation. politico.eu/article/vladimir…

👇 @getmalyona

Komplett vorhersehbar. Leider. Das wird auch so weitergehen. Weil EU Staaten ohne jede Strategie agieren. @magnusbrunner @BMI_Bund @BMI_OE

Boris Marte and the battle for freedom „Boris Marte, who passed away last month in Vienna, has left such a mark on our era, beyond the love and lives he shared with family and friends. Boris believed in the power of ideas. He relished the intellectual battles of his time, not for their own sake, but because he believed deeply that there are values that deserve to be defended. He supported others who sought to defend such values, and was able to equip them with the resources and ideas to win these battles and shape the society he lived in. Thus, he leaves behind many inspiring stories, legacies of an Austrian who believed in a Europe that had learned from the tragedies of its past and could turna place of former horrors – Vienna, the city he called home – into a beacon of hope and civilisation.“ Newsletter below 👇 @BorisMarte @kristofbender @adicerimagic @erstefoundation @omri_boehm @anneapplebaum @TimothyDSnyder @avalaina @andreas_treichl @jadviga

"Another idea, according to people involved in the talks, is a cartographic fudge: to redraw Ukraine’s administrative boundaries to allow Russia to claim full control of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions it wants to conquer without Ukraine surrendering the remaining cities it holds." Seriously, what is this if not the stupidest and most absurd war in the entire history of mankind? And isn't this entire farce of “negotiations” the single dumbest thing to ever happened to the world diplomacy? Who the hell engages in this kind of never-ending clownery with a straight face? economist.com/europe/2026/11…

Mehr als 400 Migranten an einem Tag – Kanareninsel ruft den Notstand aus to.welt.de/0Ufm8H0

False claims about the Kraków mass shooting reached 250 million views in 24 hours. Polish fact-checkers traced disinformation to recurring far-right figures, political outlets and accounts, with Russian and Belarusian channels amplifying them.

Merz issues a tough ultimatum: German Chancellor threatens to block EU budget unless guarantees for Ukraine funding are included Friedrich Merz insists that the EU budget agreement for 2028–2034 must include guarantees of financial support for Kyiv in 2027 and subsequent years. According to European officials, Ukraine could face a funding shortfall of around €70 billion next year. The EU is already planning to allocate €45 billion to Kyiv. Berlin also demands an agreement on interest payments on Ukraine’s debts and how these costs will be shared among EU member states.

After reducing the reach of pro-Ukraine accounts to zero, Elon musk has spent the day retweeting pro-russian lunatics.

Deutsche wundern sich haeufig, warum ich am Ende eher die USA als Europa bzw. Deutschland positiv sehe (natuerlich mit einer hoeheren Unsicherheit auch nach unten; und, kann sein, vermutlich auch etwas wishful thinking dabei), aber:

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk: Trump promised to end the war in 24 hours. Now he has decided to finance it. These are already the longest 24 hours in human history. Witkoff called putin a humanitarian. I have interviewed hundreds of people released from russian captivity. They were beaten, raped, locked in wooden boxes, had their fingers cut off, their fingernails ripped out, and were tortured with electric shocks to their genitals. One woman described how her eye was gouged out with a spoon. What is happening now is an imitation of a peace process. I met a five-year-old girl in Kyiv. The russians abducted her mother because of her pro-Ukrainian views, tortured her, and repeatedly gang-raped her. They then took her to russia and fabricated a criminal case against her. The girl hugged me, burst into tears, and began begging: “Please, bring my mommy back.” I am a human rights lawyer, but I have no legal tools to force russia to return her. I hugged the girl and promised that we would fight for her mother. Journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna was my friend and colleague. She traveled to the occupied territories to tell the truth about russian crimes. She was abducted, tortured, and secretly transferred to russia. She was held without formal charges and without contact with the outside world. She was denied medical care. She weighed just 30 kilograms. The russians refused to return her body to her parents for six months. When they finally did, several internal organs, her eyes, her brain, and part of her trachea were missing. We still do not know how she died. Viktoriia believed that the truth could save thousands of lives. That people in other countries, once they learned the truth, would make the right decisions. My friend and teacher, Professor Ihor Kozlovskyi, spent 700 days in russian captivity. For months, he was held alone in a small, dark basement cell without windows or fresh air. Rats crawled out of the sewer. He gave philosophy lectures to the rats just to hear a human voice. He was tortured so severely that after his release, he had to learn to walk again. Kozlovskyi told me: “Everything I have experienced does not make me see myself as a victim. The foundation of our existence is dignity. And dignity is action.”

Since yesterday, I have been following statements from Gaza’s Government Media Office, municipalities, Hamas officials, and their supporters, calling on the international community, Arab countries, and the Palestinian Authority to take responsibility for the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, after heavy rainfall flooded the tents of tens of thousands of displaced people. I do not deny Israel’s responsibility for destroying Gaza and displacing its people, nor do I overlook the international community’s failure to protect them. But what makes me angry is this relentless insistence on holding everyone accountable except Hamas itself! Hamas made the decision to launch the October 7 attack without any clear plan to protect the people of Gaza from its catastrophic consequences. Israel’s brutality does not absolve Hamas of responsibility for that decision. But there is another issue that deserves just as much scrutiny: the money. During the first year of the war, Khaled Mashal appeared smiling as he recounted a message from Ismail Haniyeh (Hamas’s leader at the time), describing the donations Hamas was receiving as unprecedented. He reportedly referred to them as a “financial flood,” a description echoed by other officials. And we are talking about a movement with international funding networks and financial backing from Iran, as well as reported sources of support connected to Qatar, Turkey, and Islamist organizations operating in Europe and the United States. The sums involved are potentially enormous, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more. I am from Gaza, and I challenge anyone to show me a clear, publicly documented aid program through which Hamas has distributed tents or food parcels to displaced families since the war began. I would also like to hear directly from families inside Gaza who have received such assistance from Hamas. Where has all this money gone? And how is it acceptable for Hamas leaders and activists to suddenly present themselves as humanitarian advocates whenever disaster strikes, expressing outrage over flooded tents and demanding that the entire world take responsibility? You are not outsiders watching this tragedy unfold. You governed Gaza, made decisions on behalf of its people, and received enormous sums of money in their name. You cannot continue demanding more money and holding the entire world accountable while refusing to answer for your own decisions or disclose what happened to the funds you collected in the name of the Palestinian people! And I have not even begun to address the charities allegedly linked to Hamas, some of which present themselves as independent humanitarian organizations while raising millions of dollars from donors abroad. Whenever disaster strikes, some of these organizations send photographers into the streets, produce English-language content showing the suffering, and publish it alongside donation links. One fundraising campaign I have been following on Chuffed has, according to the figures displayed on the platform, raised more than $15 million, including approximately $400,000 since yesterday alone! And yet, families whose suffering is featured in these fundraising appeals are still sleeping on the ground inside flooded tents, with little or no information about how the money raised in their name is being spent. I am not calling on the world to stop helping Gaza. Quite the opposite. But the people of Gaza, and the donors who are trying to help them, have every right to know where this money is going, who controls it, how it is being distributed, and why so many families remain without the most basic necessities despite the enormous sums being raised. Yesterday, children in Gaza were shivering from the cold inside flooded tents, while their parents struggled to salvage what little they had left. They know very well who destroyed their homes and displaced them. But they also have every right to question those who made the decisions that helped bring them to this point, and those who continue to raise millions of dollars in their name. It is no longer acceptable for Hamas to evade responsibility for the catastrophe it helped bring upon Gaza. Nor should any organization raising money in the name of Gaza’s suffering be allowed to operate without transparency, accountability, and clear evidence of how those funds are being used. You cannot collect millions in the name of people who have lost everything, leave them without answers about where that money has gone, and then demand that the rest of the world take responsibility. This level of disregard for accountability and for the dignity of the people whose suffering is used to raise money is morally indefensible. #Gaza #Hamas

Zum zweiten Mal haben sich in Halle rechte Verlage zur „BücherMesse Seitenwechsel“ getroffen. Harald Martenstein hielt die Eröffnungsrede und befeuerte so die Normalisierung rechtsextremer Positionen. faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/b…

4 missiles hit one of the biggest bridges in Kyiv this morning because russia is a terrorist nation trying to destroy this major European capital.