Because somebody has to admire them.

The 1960s saw demonstrations across West Germany against the Vietnam war and the 1980s brought large protests outside some U.S. bases against plans to deploy new medium-range nuclear missiles. U.S. forces have always been viewed by some, especially on the political left, with hostility, as occupiers.

“We Germans fought for the Russians to go, now we are fighting for the Americans to stay.”

Well, this isn’t quite Hollywood. It (Iron Sky) is actually a Finnish-German-Australian co-production that will concur the earth next month at the Berlinale.

And it’s a comedy. I think. Isn’t it?

We come in peace.

Unintentional spam attacks from Bundestag employees can take their toll, too.

You’ve all seen this happen, I’m sure. Somebody on a huge distribution list receives an internal email and accidently responds to everyone (instead of just to the person who sent it). Dozens if not hundreds of the recipients who then get that person’s response feel the desperate need to respond to that in some smart ass way (to everyone here, too) and on and one it goes, for hours on end, until a systems administrator finally loses his/her patience and pulls out the plug.

Well, that happened today in the halls of German government. Just your normal everyday dumb office behavior kind of thing again. Or was it maybe a diabolical terrorist attack doch?

“Liebe Britta, wenn Ihr Euch eindeckt, bringt Ihr mir eins mit? Danke und herzliche Grüße.”

Honestly, let’s put this latest study in perspective and maybe not paint the Germans as being the Hollywood Nazis they aren’t for once (but just this once).

Sure, 20 percent is a lot. But you know that you know you thought it was higher (or wanted it to be). And “the study — which draws on several different surveys and other research — puts Germans in the middle of the pack in Europe, showing more latent anti-Semitism in countries such as Poland, Hungary and Portugal, and less in Italy, Britain, the Netherlands and France.”

And what happens to that 20 percent once you subtract the extremist right/Islamic fringe and those who think like and/or support them? I’m all for subtracting them, by the way, but we don’t live in a perfect world. What can I say? It’s a never ending story.

Ob auf Fußballplätzen, im Netz oder in islamistischen und rechtsextremen Milieus – Judenfeindlichkeit ist in der deutschen Gesellschaft noch immer gegenwärtig.

And Germany is empört (indignant), as usual. The interesting thing about the list though are some of the Greek names, I find.  These are names like Grundmann, Hutter und Elstner. They almost sound like, I dunno, like German names. But that can’t be. Germans don’t evade taxes, right? Not unless they live in Greece, they don’t.

Einige der Namen klingen für hiesige Ohren seltsam vertraut: Namen wie Grundmann, Hutter und Elstner. Schulden Deutsche den Griechen Geld?

Evelyn Finger’s main concern here is the German obsession with “the” Krise (crisis) in general (crises plural) and the latest so-called Krise der Demokratie (crisis of Democracy) in particular.

“In the meantime (it started out long ago with “the oil crisis,” she believes) we have become all too accustomed to terms like education crisis, energy crisis, climate crisis and, most recently, financial crisis, debt crisis and euro crisis. We have all hoped that these crises would not prove to become any more threatening than they already are, especially since our linguistic capacity to express more crisis seems to have been exhausted: World financial crisis! But a new threatening term has been spooking the debates as of late: A crisis of Democracy. Is there really such a crisis or is the chatter about it the real problem?”

We all know the answer to that question, of course. She rightly finds this obsessive German Angslust (passion for fear) ridiculous and has no trouble exposing it for what it is; mindless, self-indulgent, neurotic nonsense. But I do wish she would have had the decency to have warned me first. I don’t like stumbling accross articles like this in German newspapers, articles that make sense by expressing something we used to call “common sense.” If I had wanted to read articles like that I wouldn’t have bought a German newspaper in the first place.

But thanks anyway, Evelyn. You may have shaken me up a bit, but I really do hope you have a pleasant week.

Das Wort Krise hatte seinen Schrecken schon fast verloren. Es klang in den letzten Monaten auch bei dramatischer Nachrichtenlage etwas schwach und durch häufigen Gebrauch abgenutzt.

Because somebody has to admire them.

Hey, what’s a little copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering on a massive scale these days? Ain’t no big deal, says German hacker millionaire/thief and self-proclaimed god Kim Dotcom (don’t ask, it’s an old German name or something). “You’ll never get me alive, coppers!” he also said, locking himself in his panic room. But then they got him after all. And now, if found guilty in the US of A, he could get up to 20 years in jail.

But that’s not the worst of it. After they arrested him they did the most worstest and awfulest thing you could ever do to a German ever: They impounded his cars.

Many of the cars had vanity licence plates, including a Rolls-Royce Phantom bearing “GOD”, an AMG Mercedes carrying “HACKER”, and another labelled “MAFIA”. 

This time they’re giving themselves a ridiculously measly 500 euro a month raise, bringing the grand total up to a less than measly 10,700 euros per month.

Now that may seem like a lot to you, but it really isn’t. Ask any SPD man and he’ll tell you why: “Representatives cannot be compared to those in lower income brackets.”

Well there we have it. They have to be on equal footing with others out there with, uh, I dunno,  lots of money? Otherwise they might be susceptible to corruption or something. And we (I mean you) don’t want that because in Germany, as you may know, there is no corruption. So shut up and pay up.

“Abgeordnete kann ich nicht vergleichen mit unteren Einkommensgruppen.”