GERMANY: Marijuana & more – 29th Feb 2024

Hallo from BA! This is the Rorshok Germany Update from the 29th of February twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Germany.

On Friday the 23rd, after much waiting and long delays, the parliament has finally decided to introduce legislation on marijuana, which will take effect on the first of April. The parameters of the legalization have changed many times since the first time all ruling parties promised it. The promised controlled distribution in licensed stores is off the table. Now, growing cannabis for private consumption with up to three plants, carrying up to twenty-five grams, and having up to fifty grams per month at home will be legal. People residing in Germany will also be able to become members of growing clubs that sell cannabis, but they will have to pay a membership fee. All current criminal prosecution for carrying amounts under fifty grams will be suspended immediately.

Not surprisingly, the conservative Christian Social Union, or CSU, which has always been a strong opponent of the legalization of marijuana, has announced that they will look into the possibility of filing a suit against the government. Markus Söder, the head of the party and prime minister of Bavaria, will lead the lawsuit. It would focus on security questions around who is responsible for controlling that people observe the law and other technical issues. However, Söder admitted that he doesn’t have much faith in winning, questioning whether it is sensible to even bring the suit. Nonetheless, he said that his state will enforce the law in its strictest form, which comes as no surprise since Bavaria is one of the most conservatively run states in Germany with the most restrictive drug policy in the whole country.

Söder is not the only one worried about the legalization. While of course conservative news outlets and politicians are unsurprisingly criticizing the new law at every turn, there’s also some criticism from proponents as well. One major point of contention between advocates of legalization and the politicians who wrote the law is and long has been the absence of licensed stores to buy cannabis from. One major argument for legalization was that it would work to dry up the black market. However, the law, in its current form, probably won’t have any major effects on the bootleg market since people can only buy marijuana if they are members of a club. So, sporadic users of cannabis will probably still have to turn to the black market.

In other news, on Monday the 26th, shows of solidarity with Palestine at the Berlin Film Festival sparked controversy. Several filmmakers receiving awards at the festival wore Palestinian scarves or signs calling for a ceasefire and also demanded a stop to German weapon exports to Israel. German media has criticized these signs of solidarity with Palestine and decried the statements as outrageous or Anti-Israel. However, the head of the Anne-Frank Memorial said that society would have to learn to live with these controversies.

Moving on, the internal secret service has been carefully watching the right-wing Alternative for Germany, or AFD, party for possibly being a right extremist organization. Now, reports from the daily newspaper SZ revealed that the Secret Service might be changing the AFD’s status to a certifiably right extremist organization. This change in classification would give the Secret Service more tools to observe the party and provide proponents of a ban on the AFD with more arguments. However, this will not directly lead to a ban on the AFD or make it impossible for them to participate in elections.

Still, the SZ reports that the AFD has filed a suit against its current classification as a possibly right-extremist organization, which led to a halt in the official announcement of the change of status. A ruling in that case is expected to come in early March.

From right extremism to left terrorism. In the nineteen seventies, the Red Army Front or RAF, a leftist terrorist organization, carried out several lethal attacks on members of the financial and reactionary political elite. RAF murdered Buback, the attorney general, Schleyer, the head of the lobby organization of capitalists, and Ponto, chairman of the Dresdner Bank board. In turn, the heads of the first generation of RAF fighters, who were imprisoned at the time of the murders, died in jail. Even though the police ruled it a suicide, indications are implicating that it wasn’t. On Wendsday the 28th, the police in Berlin caught Daniela Klette, a member of the last generation of RAF fighters, today sixty-five years old. She and two other members, Garweg and Staub, have been on the run since the early nineties. Klette will be charged with attempted murder and with committing several robberies. It’s yet unclear if she will have to spend time in prison due to her age.

Back to parliamentary politics: The conservative Christian Democrats or CDU stopped working together with the government coalition in an effort to make changes to the judicial system harder.

The effort, started by the government coalition several weeks ago, was aimed at making changes to the process of Germany’s highest court more difficult for future governments, with a possible AFD government in mind. The problem that they were trying to solve was that the parliament cannot currently make changes to the workings of the highest court, which would be unconstitutional without a two-thirds majority. The support of the conservatives is required since such constitutional changes need a two-thirds majority in parliament.

But a simple majority could introduce a new chamber of the court, which the CDU wants to change since this would be an in for a fascist government that aims to overturn democracy via the legal way.

However, the conservatives backed out of the effort to make such changes harder.

Public transport workers are on strike in almost all German states except Bavaria. Trams, Buses, Subways and some regional trains will come to a halt on Tuesday the 5th and Thursday the 7th of March due to warning strikes. The union Verdi is demanding substantial pay increases, better working conditions and a bonus to balance out inflation. Currently, the parties, workers and companies, are negotiating and a compromise is in sight.

And to close this edition, the German telecommunications provider Telekom has presented a prototype for an app-less smartphone on Tuesday the 27th, at a technology convention in Barcelona. The smartphone will not work like we are currently used to, as a platform for an operating system that is itself a platform for several apps with different functions. This new prototype phone will be based solely on AI and will not need any apps to provide services. The idea is that this helper-AI will be able to fulfill all requests given by voice command, like a digital butler. It is still unclear when this phone will be available on the market.

Aaaaand that’s it for this week.

But wait! There's something important we need to tell you: We are taking a two-week break. In the meantime, you can check other updates we do. Our latest ones are the Arctic Update, about the area north of the Arctic Circle, the Ocean Update, about the 70% of the earth covered in salt water, and the Multilateral update about all the world's major multilateral institutions. The other ones are all country updates, we have a selection of countries from Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe. Check rorshok.com/updates to see the full list. We left the link in the show notes as well.

Ciao!