Portside

New Year's Fireworks: While the statistics prove that the immigrants, their labor, their taxes and their children are actually a boon to the economy, those on the right only increase their ranting about the “continuing misuse of European travel freedom for poverty migration”, helped by all those in the media who stoke fears of “free loaders and criminals”.

And yet by now most critical SPD voices, though unhappy, have been won over, partly with threats, but often due to fear of the alternatives. Attempts at a coalition of the CDU with the Greens foundered. A combination of SPD, the Greens and the LEFT party, which would have a very slim majority, is still taboo, leaving nothing but new elections, which could simply repeat the results of the September vote - or be even worse for the SPD. So, say the SPD bosses, vote Yes!

The leaders are currently working almost around the clock in their overriding hope for an agreement with Merkel (CDU) and the Bavarian Seehofer (CSU). For them a great deal is at stake. If a new “grand coalition” government is formed they will get fine cabinet posts, in Gabriel’s case the job of vice-chancellor next to Merkel. But if the attempt breaks down they might end up in the party dust bin.

Yes, Angela Merkel wins. Her 42 percent vote, impressive as it was with many parties contesting, left her with the biggest bloc of 311 seats in the 630-seat Bundestag, but five seats short of a needed majority. So instead of the previous more-or-less like-minded partner, further to the right on most issues, she must try to forge an alliance with her main election opponents, the Social Democrats.

The hot, seemingly untroubled vacation days were disturbed only mildly by two abbreviations, NSU and NSA – not to be confused!

At present the polls wobble between six and nine percent for The Left. Yet if ardent speeches like those three, with no punches pulled, can be followed by an equally vigorous election campaign, that two digit goal, though by no means easy, may not be unattainable.

a very different kind of memorial – the stumble stones

Shadows from the past, sadly evoked by events of the present, from Afghanistan and Gaza to Syria and Mal