If It’s Not In Der Spiegel, It Didn’t Happen

Unfortunately, that’s also the case even when it is in Der Spiegel.

Spiegel

And here y’all thought that fake news was fake.

Award-winning journalist Claas Relotius wrote fake news, German magazine Der Spiegel says.

An award-winning journalist who worked for Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s leading news outlets, has left the weekly magazine after evidence emerged that he committed journalistic fraud “on a grand scale” over a number of years, the publication said Wednesday…

Spiegel’s revelations echoed past instances of journalistic fraud by reporters elsewhere, including Jayson Blair of The New York Times, Christopher Newton of The Associated Press and Janet Cooke, whose 1980 piece about a child addicted to heroin won The Washington Post writer a Pulitzer Prize before it was exposed as untrue.

Er hat nach Meinung der Jury des Deutschen Reporterpreises 2018 wieder die beste Reportage des Jahres geschrieben, über einen syrischen Jungen diesmal, der im Glauben lebt, durch einen Kinderstreich den Bürgerkrieg im Land mit ausgelöst zu haben. Die Juroren würdigen einen Text “von beispielloser Leichtigkeit, Dichte und Relevanz, der nie offenlässt, auf welchen Quellen er basiert.”

German Of The Day: Weihnachten

That means Christmas. You know, like the word for Christmas that the German Integrationsbeauftragte (Integration Commissioner) purposely left off of her official Christmas card greeting this year?

Weihnachten

“No matter what you believe in…” She writes, “We wish you a peaceful holiday season and a good start in the coming year.” But no mention of the word Christmas. You know, for like, I dunno, Christians?

You certainly couldn’t call Weihnachten a dirty four-letter word. It’s way bigger than that. But it’s sure dirty enough because in the Germany of 2018 it’s the kind of word you do not to want to put into your mouth, much less into writing, during the Christmas, I mean holiday season. At least not when you’re the Integration Commissioner here.

But wait. Shouldn’t that be one of the first words somebody interested in integration in Germany would want to use?

“Es ist bedauerlich, dass falsch verstandene Toleranz augenscheinlich dazu führt, dass Weihnachten, das Fest der Liebe, unsichtbar wird.”

German Of The Day: Moschee

That means mosque. You know, like the one in Berlin Wedding that got raided today for suspected terror financing?

Mosque

Ask Thilo Sarrazin. He’ll tell you why this type of thing comes about.

Police raided a mosque and several other buildings in Berlin on Tuesday morning in an operation into suspected terrorism financing, prosecutors said…

State criminal police, intelligence officers as well as special police forces took part in the raids, which included the As-Sahaba mosque in the Berlin neighborhood of Wedding.

The As-Sahaba mosque is under surveillance by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency and is considered an important meeting point for members of Germany’s radical Salafist scene, according to the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper.

The mosque was founded in 2010 by the German-Egyptian Islamist Reda Seyam, who is accused of taking part in a terror attack in Bali, according to the paper. He later left Germany to travel to Syria to become the “education minister” for the militant “Islamic State” (IS) group.

Back To Nature

Or don’t turn your back to it, I should say.

Ah, the wolf. What a romantic, wonderful, mythical creature. Until recently, that is, when things started getting real again. Wasn’t nature supposed to be warm and cuddly and friendly and nice? These new wolves are turning out to be real pricks, however. They must have been ruined through their contact with human civilization.

Wolves

Wolves are making a big comeback in Germany, which is making some Germans uneasy.

Farmers and hunters drove the species out of the country over 150 years ago, but conditions for wolves became more welcoming in 1990, after Germany’s reunification extended European endangered species protections to the eastern part of the country.

… He says government officials are insensitive to the worries of people living in the countryside. He thinks urban Germans have come to romanticize the returning wolves. “They think, ‘Aww, it’s a nice wolf, and he needs to be in nature and be free.’ But people raised in the countryside, they don’t need the wolf anymore.”

Don’t We Already Have A Generation X?

Or maybe I just don’t understand x-actly what that means anymore.

Generation X

The German parliament was forced by the courts to make “diverse” an option on the birth register. Critics are split on whether the law goes too far, or not far enough.

I’ll go with too far. I would even be OK with x-tremely too far.

The “third gender” option places Germany in line with other countries that have introduced measures to recognize intersex people or a third gender, such as Austria, Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada and Portugal.

Right. So that’s when the next “logical” step follows…

The Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany also hit out at the law, saying it was disappointing it only took into account physical characteristics when determining gender.

I really feel like an x-traterrestrial on this planet sometimes.

If It Wasn’t For No-Deal I Would’t Have No Deal At All

Germany Prepares for No-Deal Brexit to Avert Financial Turmoil

May

Tick-tock, tick-tock… Wake up and smell the tea, people.

“The only thing I can tell citizens in Germany is that we’re working hard on ensuring an orderly Brexit and that, in parallel, we’re preparing for the eventuality that it won’t be orderly.”

Mays bitterer Sieg – Brexit-Hardliner forderten Theresa May heraus – in einer Vertrauensabstimmung hat sich die Tory-Chefin durchgesetzt. Doch ein Befreiungsschlag gelingt ihr nicht.

Just A Normal German Wedding

You know, Germans with their big families and all?

Wedding

And their extended families? And those that extend from there? Like the Corleones? Only they’re actually Lebanese?

Criminal Arab clans are really big these days in Germany. Literally. So that’s why hundreds of German cops make sure to attend weddings and funerals with thousands of guests whenever “The Godfather of Berlin” or “El Presidente” and their crews get together for social events of this nature. Like yesterday in Mülheim. It helps keep the dialogue between the various Parallelgesellschaften (parallel societies) going or something.

Mahmoud Al-Zein ist kein Geringerer als der „Pate von Berlin“, eine der schillerndsten Figuren der arabischen Clans in Deutschland.

Eco-Death Zone Idylle

Put back up the Berlin Wall again already. For nature’s sake.

Wall

Bombweed. Yum! Wild Thyme, Burdock and Evening Primrose shimmy through concrete and broken stone…

As part of our new series The Illustrated City, Ali Fitzgerald reveals Berlin’s hidden spaces, where the flora and fauna are wild – if you know where to look.

No Subsidies, No Service

Twenty years of government subsidies apparently aren’t enough to make German wind parks profitable.

Wind Parks

Once the subsidies run out in 2020 thousands of perfectly functioning wind turbines will have to be taken out of service. You can only make money with this technology if its subsidized by the tax payer? Maybe there’s something wrong with this business model.

Doch damit ist Ende 2020 Schluss – die Förderung gibt es nur für zwanzig Jahre. Was tun? Die Anlagen einfach abreißen, obwohl sie noch bestens in Schuss sind? Oder lässt sich mit ihnen auch ohne staatliche Unterstützung Geld verdienen?

A Day That Will Live In Infamy

Meet Mini-Me. As in Mini-Merkel. Same as the old boss. Only mini-er.

AKK

That’s just what this country needs. More of the same. But if that’s what Dr. Evil wants, that’s what Dr. Evil gets. Whoopee or something.

Merkel, 64, later handed the baton to a successor at the party congress in Hamburg.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who was widely seen as the chancellor’s favorite and has been branded a “mini-Merkel” by some media outlets, was elected as her replacement on Friday.

Kramp-Karrenbauer — who often goes by her initials AKK — got about 52 percent of the vote in in a run-off with Friedrich Merz, a former lawmaker who left politics to work as a corporate lawyer.

Mini-Me? Mini-Me? For God’s sake would someone put a fricken bell on her or something.