Section:GDN 1N PaGe:39 Edition Date:190830 Edition:03 Zone: Sent at 30/8/2019 0:11 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
Friday 30 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •••
39Analysis
Philip OltermannQuestions
grow over
gaff e-prone
‘mini-Merkel’
S
he was meant to be the
“mini-Merkel” who would
grow to fi ll the German
chancellor’s shoes. But
after a series of own goals
and a poor result for her
party in the European elections,
and with further trouble looming
in Sunday’s state polls in eastern
Germany , questions are growing
over Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer ’s
ability to act as a peacemaker
between the conservative and liberal
wings of her party.
Promoted fi rst to leader of the
Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
in 2018 and then to defence minister
last month, Kramp-Karrenbauer
remains the most promising
candidate to take over when the
chancellor, Angela Merkel, steps
down at the end of her current term.
But if AKK , as she is known, used
to enjoy a reputation as a decisive
risk-taker while state leader of
the Saarland region, she is now
increasingly criticised for her thin
skin and communicative missteps.
In March, Kramp-Karrenbauer
bewildered modernisers in her party
with jokes about gender-neutral
bathrooms. Her clumsy response
seemed to exacerbate rather than
calm the ensuing storm.
“A few little digs are enough for
AKK to break out of her reserve,”
wrote the newspaper Die Welt.
“She’s diff erent from chancellorAngela Merkel, who would have just
pulled the plug by refusing to take
any more questions or escaping into
platitudes.”
This week she faced criticism
from the youth wing of the CDU
for implying that she could expel a
former head of Germany’s domestic
intelligence agency from the party.
Talking about Hans-Georg
Maaßen , who alarmed many of his
peers by sharing far-right views
in tweets and interviews, Kramp-
Karrenbauer said: “There are high
hurdles for expelling someone from
a party, and with good reason. But
in Mr Maaßen I no longer see an
attitude that ties him to the CDU.”
Maaßen is controversial , but
some CDU campaigners consider
the former civil servant as useful
in forthcoming elections in
Brandenburg and Saxony on Sunday ,
where the CDU could be defeated by
the far-right AfD.
The newspaper Die Zeit said of
the Maaßen row: “This would never
have happened to Merkel. She
would have simply ignored Maaßen
until he lost his wits or left the party
for the AfD out of his own accord.”
Opinion polls for the Saxony
elections suggest the C D U could win
by the narrowest of margins over
the AfD. The polls put the party on
28% , compared with 39% in the last
elections in the state in 2014.
In the state of Brandenburg, also
in the formerly socialist east, the
party that has dominated post war
German politics could even come
second behind the far right, with
only 18% of the vote. “If the CDU
drops below the AfD in Saxony
and Brandenburg on 1 September,
it could be the case that she has
to bury her dreams of becoming
chancellor”, said Tilman Mayer , a
political scientist at Bonn University.
The Rheinische Post’s Kristina
Dunz said: “In the age of social
media, it’s increasingly impossible
for politicians to get things right in
the public eye at all. But the fact is
that Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer
is still trying to fi nd her feet on the
national stage, and she is running
out of time.”Kim Willsher
ParisA French court has jailed three mem-
bers of the ultra-right pan-European
group Generation Identity for their
part in anti-migrant action in the Alps.
The tribunal at Gap jailed the three
men for six months and fi ned them
€2,000 (£1,800) each. The organisa-
tion was fi ne d €75,000, the maximum
that could be imposed.
In April 2018, about 100 mem-
bers of Generation Identity – which
has a branch in the UK – set out to
stop migrants crossing into France
near its border with Italy at the Col
de l’Échelle, a mountain pass.
Group members dressed in blue
jackets scaled the mountain to an
altitude of 1,762 metres , unveiled a
giant banner reading “Closed border:
no way” and set up a “symbolic” bar-
rier in the snow using plastic fencing.
As part of their eff orts , they hired
two helicopters to overfl y the site, stat-
ing their aim was to ensure “no illegal
immigrants enter France”.
Organisers said they wanted to
notify migrants “the border is closedAgence France-Presse
MoscowRussia has unveiled a new space suit,
but the design may have to be changed
to continue a decades-old tradition- making a stop to pee on the way to
the launch.
The Sokol-M prototype suit has
been designed as a replacement for
suits worn during launches to the
International Space Station (ISS) on
Soyuz spacecraft. The maker of the
suits, the aerospace fi rm Zvezda, says
they will be made of new materials and
adaptable to diff erent body sizes.
But the new design makes it impos-
sible to carry out one particular ritual
launched by the fi rst man in space, Yur i
Gagarin , who had to pause and relieve
himself on the back wheel of the bus
and they should return home”. They
were removed by police.
At an earlier hearing, the three were
accused of “activities carried out in
conditions likely to create confusion
with the exercise of a public duty
in the mind of the public”, in other
words impersonating offi cials, in this
case border guards. Their uniform s,
marked vehicles and “military lan-
guage” were said to have deliberately
led migrants to think they were police.
In November 2017, an ITV investiga-
tion claimed that Generation Identity,
which started in France – claiming to
represent “indigenous Europeans” –
was recruiting British members.
Generation Identity is a proponent
of the far-right “great replacement”
conspiracy theory, which claims
white people are becoming a minor-
ity in Europe. Damhnait McKenna , the
leader of GI’s UK and Ireland branch,
said its ideology was based on “ethno-
cultural identity” and it wanted all
illegal immigrants repatriated.
Six months before the Alps opera-
tion, G I had chartered a boat to stop
humanitarian organisations picking
up migrants in the Mediterranean.
At an earlier court hearing, Gap’s
public prosecutor, Raphaël Balland ,
had asked for the accused – Clément
Gandelin, 24, Romain Espino, 26, and
Damien Lefèvre, 29 – to be jailed.
Gandelin, from Lyon, is president
of Generation Identity and claimed he
was responsible for an operation the
group labelled “Defend Europe”. The
lawyer for the accused said he would
appeal against the verdict.
Generation Identity insists it is not
far-, ultra- or alt-right and claims to vet
members for extremist views. Police
have been investigating links between
the movement and the Christchurch
gunman in New Zealand who killed
51 people in mosque attacks in March.
It is among groups being targeted by
a proposed new UK law banning hate
groups before they turn to violence.Three jailed for setting up
anti-migrant ‘border’ in Alps
New space suit is
threat to Gagarin
good luck ritual
that was taking him to the launch pad
in 1961.
That stop has been replicated
at every launch from the Baikonur
launch pad, and many male astro-
nauts urinate on the tyre for good luck- something that would be impossible
in the new suit, its maker says.
Female astronauts are not obliged to
take part but some have brought vials
of their urine to splash on the wheel.
“I’m not sure how they will be able
to [carry on the tradition], since we
haven’t designed the fl y,” said Zvezda
director Sergei Pozdnyakov , quoted by
Russian agencies.
“We have the design specifi cations.
They don’t state that it’s necessary to
pee on the wheel. The design speci-
fi cations would need to be adapted.”
The orange Sokol-M suit has one
diagonal zipper, rather than the current
white Sokol-K, which has a V-shaped
opening pointing to the crotch.
Soyuz launches are full of rituals
in which cosmonauts plant trees at
Baikonur, get haircuts, watch the
classic Soviet fi lm White Sun of the
Desert and have an Orthodox priest
sprinkle holy water on them.
Members of
Generation
Identity display
an anti-migrant
banner at a
mountain pass in
the French Alps
in April last yearwhich kickstarted Spring-
Räumschüssel’s career in politics.
Though the AfD has the lowest
percentage of female delegates of
all parties in the German parliament
and adheres to what she calls a
“traditional image of the family”,
Spring-Räumschüssel said it still
honoured women’s issues, largely
through its stance on immigration.
The 2015 refugee crisis, she said,
had brought people to Germany
from countries with “lower levels
of education” and more traditional
views of the role of women. “I
am a woman’s libber through and
through, you can see that. I don’t
want to see my granddaughter
become a housewife again.” When it
comes to women’s rights, she said,
she didn’t “want us to be dragged
back to the middle ages” by refugees.
Other people who were also
involved in projects intended to
help women retrain following the
collapse of the textile industry
disagree with that negative portrayal
of new arrivals. On Thiemstrasse,
south of Cottbus’s central station,
Hanka Lindner runs the “purplevilla”, a women’s centre founded
30 years ago to off er support and
retraining for former textile workers.
“The centre has always been
driven by the idea that we must not
wallow in our misery,” said Lindner,- “When you are down in the
dumps, you have to fi nd a way out .”
Increasingly, she said, there were
calls for a similar centre for the men
left behind by the coal phase-out.
“There is clearly an interest, but men
can be their own worst enemy. They
fi nd it harder to support each other .”
In recent years, the purple villa
has changed its focus to off er
support networks for wom en among
the roughly 4,000 refugees who
have moved to the city since 2015.
“In my experience, the confl icts
between men and women you
fi nd in Syrian families are not that
diff erent to the ones we have in
German families,” said Lindner.
She was unsure what the rise of
the AfD would mean for her centre.
“ I have never had to think twice
about the political consequences of
what I say. That’s a new experience
for me,” she said.
‘I’ve never
had to think
about the
political con-
sequences of
what I say.
That’s new
for me’Hanka
Lindner▼ Angela Merkel
will step down
as chancellorRELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws