The German right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) ranks among the harshest critics of the countries refugee policy. In November 2021, the representative spokesman of the party, Stephan Brandner, released a statement in which he claims that not only urgently needed specialists have been let into the country. We rate this claim as mostly true.…
Harald Schwarz, Professor for energy distribution and high voltage technology at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus – Sentencer, stated in an article released on 7th May 2021 on tagesschau.de that in 2023 Germany lacks 15 to 20 gigawatt of secured power output. This claim turns out to be mostly true. In light of the…
The German politician Malte Kaufmann from the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) wants to classify anti-fascist groups as terrorist networks and have them banned. He cites the rising numbers of left-wing extremist crimes in Germany as justification. The claim turns out to be mostly true. The reason for Kaufmann’s claim was an article by…
The director of the organisation Human Rights Watch Germany, Wenzel Michalski, has again criticised the upcoming World Cup in Qatar. He claims that major sporting events never lead to an improvement of human rights in the hosting country. This statement is mostly true. Frequently, major sporting events are held in countries where human rights organisations…
The European Commission is hiding fatal side effects after a corona vaccination – this is what Joachim Kuhs, Member of the European Parliament for the German right-wing populist party AfD, claims. He supports his statement with respectable sources that are right in themselves. However, his interpretation of them is wrong. On October 5, 2021, AfD…
As climate change becomes ever more apparent, calls for action and consistent measures are multiplying. Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), says as part of the launch of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report (EGR21) that to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, we have eight years to nearly halve greenhouse gas…
Nikola Milina, the head of Croatian police, said that the violent pushbacks at the Croatian-Bosnian border filmed in October 2021 were an “individual event” and that he doesn’t want that to “affect the praise the police receive for their everyday sacrificial work”. Data from NGOs and media reports show that these events may have been…
On September 7th 2021, Alice Weidel, member of the German parliament and part of the AfD, a right-winged populist party, claimed that only 11% of German citizens feel free in their everyday lives. She stated that the disoriented and excessive corona policy of the German federal government has played a considerable role in this. We…
German politician Stephan Pilsinger (CSU) has criticized the considerations of the newly elected German government to decriminalize cannabis. He claims that after legalization, cannabis consumption will increase. Pilsinger refers to studies from the USA. Even though there are numbers which support his claim, there is no clear evidence that legalization automatically leads to more consumption.…
Elon Musk criticises Bitcoin for its enormous energy consumption of fossil fuels. Without further ado, he drops it as a payment option at Tesla, whereupon the Bitcoin price falls rapidly. Musk is mostly right about the greenhouse gas emissions involved in Bitcoin mining, but he is mostly wrong about the trend. Creating and destroying values…