Five Things: Hamas, Middle East, Populism, Birkenstock, Cowboy Boots
Your Sunday Morning starts here.
Now, more than ever, is the time to show solidarity with Israel. We need to make sure that this democracy can defend itself against terrorist attacks from Hamas and Hezbollah. And we need to fight anti-semitism wherever we encounter it - that’s where freedom of expression ends. Germany’s former chancellor Angela Merkel once stated that Israel’s security is Germany’s reason of state. We need to do so much more to live up to this, as Germany is still too lenient on Iran and its desciples of terror.
I hope that Israel will try to do the nearly impossible: to fight Hamas by sticking to the rules of war. We need to show humanity even as our enemies try everything to get us into a spiral of terror. This is so much easier said than done, especially when sitting in Hamburg where the only warning alert of the day is a higher than normal tide of the North Sea, which means that some people better find a new parking spot if they live near the harbour and don’t want their cars ending up in the River Elbe.
The Hamas attack was driven by a brutal ideology
We should not forget that Hamas and Iran are deeply linked and that the fate of the Palestinians will not get any better as long as Hamas is around.
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The End of America’s Exit Strategy in the Middle East
The US needs to recalibrate their Middle East strategy after getting out of Afghanistan. It’s also high time that Europe gets its act together, just like it did when Ukraine needed our support.
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The Hamas horror is also a lesson on the price of populism
It’s always a good idea to read what Yuval Noah Harari writes. As soon as the war is over, the newly united Israel will need to discuss how this Hamas attack could happen and what Israel has to learn from it so that it will never happen again.
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From LSD to I.P.O.
Birkenstock is such a German thing. I have had countless pairs of Arizona and Boston - and yes, for a long time I hated the looks of my Birkenstocks, but they are just so comfortable. In Germany in the 70s and 80s, only Greens, or “Müslis” as they were affectionately called, wore Birkenstocks in public. This has changed and I wear my Bostons everywhere, not just to the organic food store around the corner.
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Meet the Fashion Designer Creating Cowboy Boots With a Little Help From AI
I like it when people use GenerativeAI to get creative, although I think those creations are just a tad too much. As German, can I wear cowboy boots or is this cultural appropriation? I did do some horseback riding when I was a kid, but my focus was Equestrian vaulting. Yes, I know, hard to imagine, but I think I wanted to impress a girl…
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That’s it. Have an amazing Sunday!