Local newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt said the event ended at 4:45 p.m. local time on security grounds since it was feared that “people could fall into the Alster,” the river that flows into the Elbe in Hamburg, in the snowy conditions.
Damn climate change this is how the Alster is supposed to look right now. (The Alster is not just a river it’s a large lake created by damming it up for a mill, cut in two by a damn and bridge originally part of the original city walls. The lake is ludicrously large compared to the river which makes it freeze up real nice. If we still had winters).
That’s the exception, not the norm. I’m closing in on 50 and the Alster being frozen so thick that you can safely walk on it was always something special. Besides, with climate change you get more extreme weather and not just warmer weather.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
German chancellor Olaf Scholz has again strongly condemned alleged plans by right-wing extremists and politicians from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party for the mass deportation of migrants, drawing parallels with Nazi racial ideology.
Around 90 further demonstrations have been planned in cities across Germany this weekend, including in Nuremberg, Dortmund, Hannover, Erfurt, Magdeburg and Frankfurt on Saturday and Munich, Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, Leipzig and Bonn on Sunday.
Scholz’s comments came on the day that the German parliament, the Bundestag, voted to relax the law on naturalization and widen access to dual citizenship in Germany.
News of the far-right gathering in Potsdam drew added attention in Germany given that the AfD is currently polling as the second-largest party nationwide, just months ahead of three major regional elections in the eastern German states of Saxony, Thüringen, and Brandenburg, where their support is strongest.
A group of eastern German bishops warned against “distrust and scorn” for democratic processes and cautioned that populist, extreme-right and antisemitic positions were becoming “increasingly socially acceptable.”
Footballers and coaches from Germany’s Bundesliga have also spoken out against the AfD, with SC Freiburg manager Christian Streich saying that “anyone who does nothing now has learned nothing from school or history” and numerous clubs calling on their fans to take part in demonstrations.
The original article contains 686 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
