We’re Not Doing Anything Wrong

The following was taken from the aricle “Wir tun doch nix…” in this week’s Die Zeit.

Weapons

Germany is neither this consistently pacifist country (described beforehand in the article) nor this worldly-wise state dealing in power politics, rather a bad mix of both: A country that strictly refuses to participate in military interventions but makes every effort to export its weapons instead, gladly to dictatoships in crises regions; a country that is very guarded when it comes to criticism concerning human rights issues in China and Russia, a country that has even begun to wonder if democracy itself is always the best answer; and all of this while acting as if it were the world champion of morality at the same time.

No, nobody would want to live in a country like that. Not even the Germans themselves.

Profitieren statt intervenieren. In einem solchen Land möchte man tatsächlich nicht leben.

Der Spiegel Ten Years After: Iraq Invasion Commemorated By Unleashing Obsessive-Compulsive Headline Offensive

Bam, bam, bam! The Spiegel just had to knock off three of these puppies in a row, that’s how excited they must have been about the tenth anniversary of the US-lead invasion of Iraq.

Iraq

I didn’t actually read these, of course. Why should I? I already knew what was in them.

10 Lessons from America’s ‘Dumb War’

This article reminds us once again how invading Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a really dumb thing to do and how smart and farsighted and enlightened Germans were for having said no before anyone ever even had the chance to ask them.

Iraq War Seen as ‘Strategic Failure by Many’

This explains why the invasion made everything so awful “down there” and how it has turned that entire region of the world into the terrible, dreadful and hopeless place it is today.

Baghdad Then and Now

This is all about how much nicer it was living in Iraq before that dumb old strategic failure of an invasion took place.

Where bombs once fell, residents now buy groceries. Where militias patrolled, campaign posters now hang. Yet peace is still a long way off.

Ja zum Klimawandel!

Ja zum Klimawandel? Yes to climate change? I guess I just don’t get this Earth Hour thing. I thought everybody was supposed to be against climate change.

Earth Hour

But that’s going to be Hamburg’s motto this Sunday when the Hamburgers turn off their lights for an hour for, uh, the Earth or something. Man oh man. Berlin could never take part in an event like this. Berliners would worry too much that the power wouldn’t switch back on again once the hour was up.

And I really don’t see what all this organizational fuss is all about, either. With the German power grid in the condition it is in these days, there are bound to be all kinds of Earth hours right around the corner here before too long.

Unter dem Motto “Ja zum Klimawandel!” nehmen auch wieder das Hamburger Rathaus und die fünf Hauptkirchen teil, um ein Signal zu setzen, wie wichtig der Klimaschutz ist und dass den Beteiligten die Erde nicht egal ist.

Warning Strikes Led To Big Train Delays In Berlin This Morning

But fortunately, nobody here in Berlin seems to have noticed.

Strike

The trains here are always delayed, get it?

Bei den Warnstreiks der Bahn-Mitarbeiter sind die Berliner relativ glimpflich davon gekommen. Dafür legte ein Zwischenfall den kompletten Schienenverkehr zwischen den Bahnhöfen Zoologischer Garten und Friedrichstraße lahm.

Where’s The Money?

Germany’s Federal Minister for the Environment, Peter Altmaier, will now be shutting down 14 German climate protection programs due to cost conerns, not that anyone here who can do any arithmetic will take much notice or much less care.

Climate Change

Funding for something called Elektromobilität (electromobility) will be cut first, soon to be followed by funding cuts for Stromspeichern (energy storage technology) with the other cuts soon to follow. Billions of a vital natural resource are missing, it seems (they call them “euros” here), this because European CO2 emmission rights certificate trading just ain’t bringing in the cash it’s supposed to do.

Do I detect pattern here? Why is it that the so-called real world is always getting in the way of those way cool dream world plans that so many folks out there want to make come true so really, really, really bad? Who is behind this, anyway? It just has to be a conspiracy (again).

Demnach sollten die Projekte ursprünglich aus dem Energie- und Klimafonds der Bundesregierung finanziert werden. Dort klaffe jedoch eine Milliardenlücke, weil der europäische CO2-Zertifikatehandel nicht genug Geld in die Kasse spüle.

The Green Shirts vs. The Environment

Guess who’s going to win?

Green

One would assume that ecology and the Energiewende, Germany’s plans to phase out nuclear energy and increase its reliance on renewable sources, were natural allies. But in reality, the two goals have been coming into greater and greater conflict…

Since the party’s founding in 1980, it has championed a nuclear phaseout and fought for clean energy. But now that this phaseout is underway, the Greens are realizing a large part of their dream — the utopian idea of a society operating on “good” power — is vanishing into thin air. Green energy, they have found, comes at an enormous cost. And the environment will also pay a price if things keep going as they have been.

“We should overcome the temptation to sacrifice environmental protection for the sake of fighting climate change. Preserving a stable natural environment is just as important.”

Germans Concerned That Facebook Makes Them Even More Predictable Than They Already Are

A recent study entitled “Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior” has some 80 millian German privacy advocates terribly concerned that Facebook might even be more revealing than they already feared it was.

Facebook

The study has uncovered, for instance, that the vast number of users with female first names are in fact women. What is more, users who post pictures of themselves on Facebook run the very real risk of revealing to everyone their racial background. And perhaps creepiest of all was the discovery that the so-called “Facebook likes” a user “likes” with his or her Facebook like button reveal to the entire world just what it is said user “likes.”

This brings with it many sinister implications, of course. Unscrupulous data miners could deduce, for instance, that men who regularly like posts and pictures about beer are very likely to like beer themselves. Women, say, who actively like all things Barack Obama (especially after the first four years) are most definitely Democrats. And the list just goes on and on and on.

It is unclear at the moment what the privacy advocates will be able to do to curtail this flagrant invasion of privacy but at least most have agreed not to like it.

Mein Geschlecht, meine Hautfarbe, meine Drogen.

The Trains In Berlin Are Reliable

And don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

Snow

Whenever it snows here, for instance, like it did big time over the weekend, you can rely on a few S-Bahn and Deutsche Bahn stretches to break down in earnest the next day, or in this case Monday.

Germany is a country unfamiliar with snow, you see, or at least I have to assume as much, because much of their technology is not designed to operate in this weird, white and powdery substance.

In their defense, though: I’m not a scientist or anything, but I think all of this more-snow-and-cold-than-usual has something to do with this global warming phenomenon thingy or something. Because its snowing right now, yet again. As we speak, so-to-speak. In the German Spring.

Auf die Bahn ist Verlass: Nach dem Schneefall vom Wochenende brach der S-Bahn- Verkehr am Montag auf mehreren Strecken zeitweise zusammen. Und am Hauptbahnhof wurden am Mittag die Zufahrten vor beiden Haupteingängen gesperrt, weil Schnee und Eisbrocken abrutschten.

Inequality For All

That seems to be what most Germans think their country provides them with these days. They are forever moaning and groaning about how the German “social divide” keeps widening.

Germans can be pretty innumerate, you see, believe it or not (when the media hype wants them to be). Nobody ever stops to consider the numbers here, either (just like everywhere else). You have to go to professional-like people on the outside (like at The Economist) for that.

DIW, an economic think-tank in Berlin, says that inequality rose significantly after German reunification; but that it has fallen a bit since 2005 (see chart). Awkwardly for the left, that is when Angela Merkel became chancellor, in coalition first with the SPD, then with the FDP.

Numbers

This is the opposite of what the public believes. According to a study by Allensbach, a polling institute, 69% of Germans think wealth and income are unfairly distributed, and almost two-thirds believe inequality has risen in the past few years. That is good for the left.

Germany remains a huge social and economic success, something that it often seems unGerman to savour.

Empörungsprofis

Outrage professionals.

Farce

A farce, this “protest movement” at the East Side Gallery. And a well-written article, this is. But sorry, I don’t have the time or the energy to translate it today.

Wo war eigentlich Claudia Roth?