Opinions on Various Topics: Letters to the Editor

Distortion of the silhouette

27. October: “Construction stop on the Elbtower – company stops work”

Finally, our still beautiful Hanseatic city has the chance to maintain its attractive silhouette! It’s high time to question Olaf Scholz’s presumptuous attitude and stop his crazy construction project! Such an oversized glass-concrete block would give our still lovely Hamburg a “death blow” and contribute significantly to its disgrace! May our town hall parties finally have some insight and bring this unnecessary Scholz/Benko prestige object to its end as quickly as possible.

Jon Breckwoldt

Not a big surprise

A small side note reports on the construction stop on the Elbtower. After the construction stop on the Gänsemarkt, now also the Elbtower! This doesn’t come as a surprise to me. Mr. Benko doesn’t have the best reputation anyway. It should be easy for the supposed billionaire to bridge the loans. But at least since the takeover of Karstadt/Kaufhof, in which huge sums of taxpayers’ money were burned, the Signa Group should have been viewed very critically. I fear that the city of Hamburg has once again backed the wrong horse after selling the Holsten site.

Carsten Nicolaisen

Absolute scarcity economy

27. October: “Warning of Putin attack on NATO territory. Head of the Bundeswehr Association, André Wüstner, sounds the alarm. He sees Germany as hardly prepared for defense in the event of a defense.”

A very interesting article that shows how our self-proclaimed peace parties – the Social Democrats and the Greens – deal with the security of the population in the Federal Republic. In the Chancellor’s famous speech at the turn of the era in February 2022, he grandly promised 100 billion euros in special funds for the upgrading of the Bundeswehr plus two percent of the gross national product for the defense budget. But by autumn 2022, the Chancellor could no longer remember his promise from the spring. There he explained during the budget debate that he was probably misunderstood in the spring and that he meant that the two percent target should be achieved overall from the sum of the defense budget and special funds. In the 2023 budget, however, the two percent target was far missed even from the sum of the defense budget and special funds and the result was set at around 1.6 percent. But by continuing to do so in the 2024 budget, this government is demonstrating continued ignorance of the security needs of the population. With the estimated total of around 1.7 percent of the gross national product, the shortage economy will not only continue, but will also worsen without any ifs or buts. So the only question that remains is whether the Chancellor will have a say. However, I believe that this is unlikely to happen in the next few years and that we will continue to not stand by our alliance commitment to NATO.

Heinz Dieter Detzner

Symbol politics

26th of October: “Cabinet decides on stricter deportation rules. More powers for the police – Interior Minister Nancy Faeser rejects criticism of her draft law from Green MPs”

Symbolic politics with slight cosmetic corrections. You can really physically feel how unwillingly the traffic light reacts to the external pressure from the masses of asylum seekers on the one hand and the political pressure from the AFD on the one hand. Citizens will experience that the measures decided upon are mere illusions and that absolutely nothing will happen to stop the mass influx.

Andreas Stiegert

Moral incompetence

27. October: “Fridays for Future shocks with Israel hatred. The climate protection movement has published an anti-Israel post. The content: conspiracy theories”

In doing so, the Friday for Future movement discredits itself, as it shows the moral incompetence of the climate fanatics. Climate, climate above all, the rest is of no interest and you have no idea about it. Someone like Ms. Thunberg and other icons of the FfF movement, or other do-gooders who want to teach and convert people, should also have a functioning moral compass! It is a popular game, especially in the media, to pillory politically active people over every little thing (doctoral theses, loose sayings about refugees, etc.) – if the basic attitude of the politician in question does not conform to the zeitgeist. Why then is the active advertising and support of an inhumane, intolerant terrorist organization (I don’t think Hamas, for example, even knows the word “climate”) by a do-gooder icon, dismissed as a small mistake and yet treated quite mildly? The crude, anti-democratic and anti-human conspiracy theories spread by the umbrella organization of the Friday for Future movement make the Reichsbürger or other conspiracy theorists look pretty old. It would be the task of the media (including the Abendblatt), also in view of the huge fan community, to report on such tendencies in more detail; this was also done about their demonstrations. In the future, every Friday for Future demonstration will probably be understood as a Hamas and Islamist solidarity demonstration – parents are also called upon to prevent their children from participating in the FfF Hamas Hurray demos. However, I expect that skipping school during the next “climate strike” or other FfF actions will no longer simply be accepted or even encouraged by schools! However, it should be borne in mind that Islamists, climate protection activists and other zeitgeist fanatics agree on one thing – with the desire to subjugate people in their own way, Ms. Thunberg & Co. are, from this point of view, already among their peers.

Peter Drygalla

Hamburg is backward

27. October: “Preparations for reburial are underway – but there are concerns. Hamburg cemeteries announced a new procedure for late summer, but approval is still missing. Forensics are critical.”

When will the funeral law finally be reformed in Germany? The pilot project of re-erecting a Berlin company was reported on as early as September 2022. The funeral industry has changed a lot in the meantime, so that new options are constantly being offered after death. As early as September 2023, the Hamburger Abendblatt reported on the urn burial in a pond created for this purpose in the Ohlsdorf cemetery. However, this extraordinary offer would be twice as expensive as a normal urn field. Now there are new considerations for approving a re-interment, but the Hamburg forensic experts are critical of this. Hopefully the relevant authorities will not block each other so that approval can be granted quickly. Hamburg continues to lag behind when it comes to urn burials. The Bremen burial model could be adopted here. For years now, it has been possible to use an environmentally friendly urn in your own garden or, if the deceased wishes, to scatter the ashes in the park.

Rita Humpke

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Updated: Mon, October 30, 2023, 12:01 a.m