News: Samuel Paty, Google, Donald Trump, Bill Barr, Horst Seehofer

France commemorates the murdered teacher today with a State ceremony Samuel Patywho was beheaded by a murderer. The teacher had spoken in class about freedom of belief and freedom of expression and used controversial cartoons of Muhammad to illustrate. President Emmanuel Macron will be at the national commemorative event in the courtyard of the Sorbonne University talk. Paty was posthumously accepted into the Legion of Honor, and the murdered man is already transfigured into a hero. Macron is due to deliver a speech today that will console and unite the country and declare war on extremists.

It will be a solemn ceremony. But Macron will hardly be able to heal the deep wounds in French society. The Islamist-motivated attacks of recent years were successful to the benefit of their perpetrators: the social division in the country worsened. On the one hand, in France it is the Secularism State religion. On the other hand, in no other country in Europe have there been so many Islamist attacks as here, and at the same time Right-wing extremists who hate Islam It has long since hit the mainstream. Nerves in the country are on edge, especially for Corona. The country is divided by the debate over religion and the limits to freedom of belief and expression. Society is distancing itself, every terrorist attack brings the country closer to a nervous breakdown. And Macron, the center president who should unite the nation today, is under fire from almost all directions a year and a half before the next election.

Trump vs. Google

the Donald Trump Justice Department filed a sensational lawsuit shortly before the election. But not on the politically motivated charges against Joe Biden that the president of his Minister of Justice Bill Barr For weeks, increasingly desperate demands, but one Antitrust lawsuit against Google, which also has the support of many Democrats: Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren had always demanded that big tech companies split like Big Oil in the past. In Europe, Facebook, Google and company have been subject to critical scrutiny by cartel authorities for a long time, and now the tide has turned in America as well.

The US Department of Justice is Aggressively Targeting Google Quasi-monopoly before, even if their own lawyers apparently warned against a hasty approach. It is not clear why the government is acting so shortly before the elections. Is it because Trump feels badly treated by them or does Bill Barr want to make sure he doesn’t go down in history as Trump’s henchman? One thing is certain, as my colleague Ines Zöttl writes: The era of laissez-faire for technology companies is coming to an end.

Racism, police and Horst Seehofer

Identity politics plays a role in the German debate on the police a role in two political fields: left and right. The further to the left you ask the question about the police, the more likely you are to think that it is not just from start to finish. racist, but in case of doubt also as a “fascist”. And the further to the right you go, the more clearly you can hear that not only is there not a guarantee that there is no systemic racism in the police, but there are basically police officers. be able to act much tougher especially against foreigners. The results are usually very boring discussions in which each side always knows everything and does not want to learn anything.

Therefore, it must be welcomed the coalition has now agreed to a compromise: Of the Racism in the police it must be examined in a study after much back and forth. However, the study should also include other questions about the position of the police in society. Yes Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer Now you are wise, you do not use this compromise as a trick to let the question of racism fall under the table, because otherwise you will drag the debate to infinity. Behaving wisely was not always Seehofer’s strength in the past. But you can learn something new. Just as, by the way, anyone who is really interested in results could learn something from a really serious study that is interested in knowledge. If they wanted.

I would like to draw your attention to an investigation of my colleagues that sheds light on a very important and little discussed topic: At the moment, more than a third of the entire EU budget is decided, 387 billion euros! Member states agreed on a compromise proposal that night, and parliament wants to set its line this week. It is only decided every seven years which agricultural subsidies will go to European farmers under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Unfortunately, what is happening right now is Lobby policy the worst kind. Actually, the head of the commission had Ursula von der Leyen promised that in the future Environmental criteria They should play a bigger role, but they hardly played a role in the reform negotiations. No wonder: as research by SPIEGEL and the media platforms Lighthouse Reports, Mediapart and Follow the Money show, some of the relevant actors benefit directly or indirectly from the agricultural subsidies themselves – Your interest in real reforms is likely to be just as low. “This is not normal lobbying, because farmers are at many crucial checkpoints,” says Green MEP Daniel Freund. Read all the research here:

On the death of Volkhard Windfuhr

He was a correspondent who no longer exists, as he can no longer exist, because the world has changed so dramatically: Volkhard windfuhr, who died on Monday at the age of 83 in Cairo, was around 40 years old for SPIEGEL Middle East Correspondent. He knew this region like no other. He spoke Arabic in various dialects and interviewed the young and old Muammar al-Gaddafi, multiple Sadat, Arafat Y Mubarak, lived revolutions and wars, drank tea for hours to meet the one he wanted to meet. None of us knew Windfuhr as well as his successor, Bernhard Zand, who accompanied him on many trips. Here he describes an eventful life.

Loser of the day …

… are those people who, like me, I really find the Corona warning app good they want and also want more people to use it, but they also remain puzzled: what is the point if the application “4 low-risk encounters” indicates? Where? With whom? What follows from this for me? And why do you sometimes just stop “risk assessment”? Everything is very difficult to understand. I am glad that data protection was a high priority when developing the application. Therefore, it is surely better accepted. But Could it be that data protection is so good that it limits the usefulness of the application? I wouldn’t care if I knew where and for how long I had the sinister low-risk contacts. The application is undoubtedly of great benefit to those who may have been infected and who are informed about it. But the app also has a kind of pocket oracle that tells you something over and over again, but without you knowing what it means.

The latest news of the night

• EU states agree to agricultural reform: Negotiations lasted almost two days, and on Wednesday night EU agriculture ministers agreed how they want to organize agriculture. It is about hundreds of billions of euros.

• NASA’s probe successfully removes asteroid dust: The “Osiris Rex” plane has approached the asteroid Bennu in a complicated maneuver and has aspirated samples. Now they will be delivered to earth in three years.

• Pelosi expects a deal this week; Trump wants to oppose the party colleagues: Apparently, the American economy can prepare for new trillions of aid. According to the spokeswoman for the US House of Representatives, Democrats and Republicans are about to reach an agreement. Also because the president suddenly gets excited.

The SPIEGEL + recommendations for today

I wish you a good start to the day.

Yours sincerely, Mathieu von Rohr

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