barsoap

They're in fact forbidden from broadcasting within Germany, doubly so: First off they're not public but state TV. secondly, they're federal while broadcasting is state prerogative.

Expect their editorial policy to align with Germany's foreign policy, and there's some selection and framing going on occasionally in the sense of "we'll report about a problem but only in the context of it being addressed" kind of deal. They'll report about arguments within Germany, but they won't start any. When it comes to raw factuality they're highly reliable.

I think the ARD membership is just about access to each other's programming, there's zero overlap when it comes to editorial staff, running the channel etc. That would be highly unconstitutional.

Arte does have some English, Spanish, Polish, and Italian stuff but it's quite limited and generally only subtitles. Other languages if they happened to have bought it from somewhere else, say a documentary about Kafka where you can select the original Czech audio. News won't be among the English subtitled stuff but there's a good amount of documentaries, background and big-picture stuff. Not just society and politics, all kinds of topics.

Just go browse. And, separately, a metric fuckton of live concerts from all genres.

Just for the record, and context: That wasn't misogyny, it's not calling any woman anything (though using a word vulgarly referring to female genitalia), it's the established insult for Merz. Really doesn't translate well, not so much word-wise but connotation and implication-wise. Cf. the American vs. English vs. Australian usage of the word, doesn't translate at all and that's within the same language.

It's an imputed high-school nickname calling him, in my reading, an immature braggart. You know, 12yold brags about their extensive sexual experience, gets called "pussy hunter" in return to make fun of him. There's also the additional linguistic quibble that the word, to the amusement of the rest of the republic, simply means "face" in Bavarian and can be used there more or less in the sense of "gob", as in "shut your gob". He indeed has a big one.

The EU is a defensive pact in itself and while "defend our brothers" sentiment is not tightly woven, there's a tripwire cascade. You cannot attack Estonia without every single Finn being personally offended, and you cannot separate Finland and Sweden in military matters, the list goes on and on. The effect flattens out the further away you get but you'd be hard-pressed to find a member thinking twice about sending arms and MREs. Poland would have boots on the ground before Spain gets the call.

Estonia. The fuck has Estonia ever done to anyone. They're essentially a mascot of the EU: Them being, willingly, part of the pack is witness to the EU actually being a post-colonial project. They're way too precious to be left hanging. I can't even bring myself to make an alcoholism joke right now.

They aren't strong enough to take on each separately, either. For Russia to attain their coveted superpower status they'd need to stop fucking around and actually invest in themselves. They do have more than enough land and resources, they have a reasonably well-educated population, it wouldn't take that long trouble is they're a kleptocracy and the chief kleptocrat thinks being a superpower is measured in land mass.

The EU accepts countries with border disputes into the union (in fact there's a couple very fun ones between member states, generally low-intensity though, e.g NL and DE even agreed to disagree in perpetuity), the EU is also a defensive pact, trouble being getting into the EU is quite a bit harder than getting into NATO: Vastly stricter rule of law and democracy standards, on top of that trade integration, economics and everything.

OTOH the EU is also not above creating new ad-hoc treaty structures with unimaginative names so a... DCENSV, "Deep and Comprehensive European Neighbourhood Security Vehicle" is absolutely within the realm of possibilities. People are basically waiting for Trump to move while preparing responses for every scenario, very little if any of this kind of preparation will reach the public eye.

NATO member Finland has a land border of many hundreds of kilometers with Russia’s mainland territory. That doesn’t seem to be hurting anyone or anything, except perhaps Mr. Putin’s ambitions to one day reconquer Finland.

Fun fact: The border is essentially unmanned on the Russian side, they moved pretty much everyone to Ukraine. Doesn't look like they're expecting to be invaded. You may or may not be interested in what military installations exist up on the Kola peninsula and how many roads and rail lines go south.

Habeck is a realo, not fundie. Support for him among green voters (which is what actually counts, not party members, he'll get his nomination because who else should they run) is overwhelming, very good among SPD voters, AfD voters hate him and that won't change any time soon, CDU is where he's going to have to make inroads. Perception-wise the problem is competence, blame that on the Bild campaign and I absolutely expect that to shift very quickly once people actually hear him in a debate.

No it doesn't, and I never implied that. But Zion, aka a place for Jews to live in peace, happiness and prosperity? Why not NYC? It certainly can be a Zion for some who look for one, I didn't bother to go all "some but not all" for an off-hand quip.

I'll quote myself:

I don’t want to make this a comparison, much less an Olympics.

I hereby formally concede. I want to win this even less than I wanted to start it.

Let me know when you walk by someone and they give a Nazi salute.

You're asking a German whether that happens. Yes, yes, it fucking happens occasionally when abroad and I can't even punch them right there in the gob for it because the self-defence laws abroad don't tend to include insult. We also have actual Nazis here and they don't tend to like it when you look like a punk.

I don't want to make this a comparison, much less an Olympics. What I want to say is that I recommend against getting into the habit of assuming you're the only one, or part of the only group, which experiences shitty things. You're not alone, by a long shot. Especially kids are awful and will other you for every- and nothing just because they can. Least of all should you make it, even to the slightest degree, part of your identity: Standing up for justice doesn't require self-victimisation, on the contrary, self-victimisation tends to obscure perception, lock you into tunnel-vision, isolate you from solidarity because why would potential allies give a fuck about your struggle if you can't even see theirs. It's all in all a bad, self-defeating and self-destructive, trip.

can be construed as offensive.

"can be construed". You can construe anything to be anything if you try hard enough. I could say "Turkish Halva is better than Israeli Halva" and you could take offence at that, and interpret it as antisemitic (for the record: I can't tell a difference). The Israeli music scene certainly sucks, by and large and maybe glossing over two or three bands you have the choice between escapist electronica and escapist electronica with fascist texts. Was that offensive enough?

This is some “I can tell racist jokes because my grandfather was half-black” territory.

I'm perfectly aware of the difference between Jewish jokes and Jew jokes. The former are actually good.

...and different ethnicities outnumber Jews pretty much everywhere? Or is this about Wall Street? To that I have to say that I'm simply not antisemitic enough to even think about connecting the two, had to wreck my brain for a bit what you might be trying to get at. Certainly more (ethnically) Christian bankers there than Jewish ones.

(And just so you know where I'm coming from: German, grandpa was prosecuted as "half-Jew" (barely enough "German blood" to not end up in a camp, also, Lutheran, great-grandparents not so lucky), I have family in Israel. Long story short: Taking the lessons from my ancestry together, there can be no non-anti-fascist Zionism because fascism is a tragedy also for the perpetrators. There'd never be peace. hevenu_shalom_aleichem.opus)