See? I told ya.
Greenpeace activists climbed on top of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate yesterday to demand a speedy end to the use of atomic energy (by 2015).
I guess 2022 just ain’t speedy enough.
“Every day of Green terror is one day too many (my translation).”
PS: The best part about the article was the Google ad I saw next to it: “Price check for 900 electicity providers: Compare prices and save money today!”
I’m tellin’ y’all, the Green Shirts are taking over here. Don’t say later that you hadn’t been warned. It’s just what the Germans ordered, or wanted all along: A new Tyrannical German State of Goodness and Niceness.* And don’t think it isn’t coming because we all know it is.
Now that the only German party that even pretended to want to give its citizen’s the freedom to choose has shot itself in the foot and will most likely bleed to death (the FDP, the anti-Greens), now that the tsunami in Japan has carried the Greens in Germany to major Volkspartei status, good green intentions will soon begin paving the way to hell in a big way and there is not a thing any of you out there can do about it.
Germans were never able to stomach Liberalismus in the first place (I don’t mean liberalism as in being “left,” I mean liberalism as in advocating the freedom of the individual) and now that the latest advocates of politically correct collectivism have ridden into town to guide their constituents down the proper party path (“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”), everything is going to be alright because, well, we say it is and all are thrilled about the thrilling changes about to appear on the Green horizon.
Some examples of things to come: Now a “traffic light” sticker will be introduced at German restaurants, for instance. This will let potential visitors know (by using the pretty colors green, yellow and red) just how good the hygienic condition of the restaurant they were about to visit might have been. More anti-smoking, women’s quotas, anti-discrimination laws, better waste separation and stricter speed limit laws are soon to follow, along with the solar energy, eco-power and electro cars that will need to be more heavily subsidised because, well, they are the only solution (the final solution?) and that’s why they have to be heavily subsidised, not to mention the host of other environmental protection measures that haven’t even been thought up yet (did I mention the part about shutting down all nuclear power plants?). Laws, laws, laws. It’s not that these are just any old laws however, every state makes laws, these are laws designed to make Germans better Germans, just like the Greens meant them to be. Kontrolle ist besser. Father knows best. I mean Mother does.
This is a great leap forward for Nanny State-kind, in other words. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more nanny-like, too. Liberalism was yesterday, dude. Actually, no. Come to think of it, it has never been tried here yet. But still.
And the reason why it’s never been tried here? “Liberalism knows that what is good in society does not come about through good intention and central planning but through the competition of ideas and their agents.”
“Der Begriff Wachstum ist überholt. Wir brauchen eine neue Größe, die Auskunft darüber gibt, ob das Wachstum auch die Wohlfahrt erhöht.” Eine Bestimmung der Lebensqualität, des zufriedenen Bürgerbefindens, als Maßstab für die ökonomische und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung?
* Read the Zeit article Verschont uns! by Jan Ross (page 10, Die Zeit number 22) on which this post is based. And take a look at Hexenverbrennung on the same page while you’re at it (it’s about retro-feminist terror). Sorry, couldn’t find the links.
PS: Thanks for the Hexenverbrennung link, Indeterminacy.
Turn, as in spinnen (to spin or, in this case, to be mental). This is another one of those only-in-Germany ones.
How long has it been since the latest greatest German Wende (turnaround)? Read some of these:
The U-turn on nuclear policy Chancellor Angela Merkel announced last month following the Fukushima accident will involve a massive expansion of renewable energies — as rapidly as possible. She is giving the public what it wants. But the shift will nevertheless provoke a major backlash. Germans may love their green energy, but they also have a growing proclivity towards not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) lawsuits and referenda.
Many are now asking themselves if the transition to renewable energies will ruin the nation’s countryside.
Germany’s Federal Agency for Nature Conservation is already warning that in the rush to expand renewable energies, nature and wildlife conservation is being put on the back burner.
Germany’s opposition to wind power is well organized. The website windkraftgegner.de (wind power opponents), lists more than 70 protest campaigns.
Opposition is also mounting against the massive power masts that will be needed to transport clean energy across Germany and Europe.
And on and on and on. I don’t make this stuff up, people. Now they’re takin’ it to the streets to protest against renewable energy.
And the Green party’s grand energy strategy after their magnificent triumph down there in Baden-Wuerttemberg last month? Save power.
“We as Greens need to demonstrate our credibility,” national party co-chair Claudia Roth has said. At the same time, though, the Greens are very often active in the local NIMBY protests against the very kind of projects the party backs.
Just in case. For three months or so, I assume.
After the government shut down seven nuclear reactors for fear of, uh, fear itself, German broadcasters have now decided to ban episodes of The Simpsons that poke fun at nuclear disasters.
It seems that now that the Greens have exploited “the situation” (no, not that guy on Jersey Shore) and leapt to power in two state governments after elections held over the weekend, said broadcasters fear that hysterical Germans watching these episodes could die of hysterical laughter.
Chancellor Angela Merkel announced earlier this month a three-month moratorium on plans to extend the operating times of Germany’s nuclear plants and ordered that the seven oldest reactors be shut down.
They would start blending in with the leaves and the flowers here.
Green? They call their bicycles recycles here.
Table legs sprout roots here, it’s that green.
We’re talking green. One guy I know named his kid Kyoto.
Some folks are so green that they carry a tree around with them at all times for optimum air quality.
And German businesses aren’t much better these days. Some have turned so green that employees hug their corporate offices.
Green? They are so green that the very thought of unsorted garbage landing in a landfill makes them turn red.
What is the connection between a 9.0 earthquake that hits Japan and damages a nuclear power plant there and the nuclear power plants operating in Germany?
There isn’t one. But there doesn’t have to be one once the hysteria hits the fan.
Angie Merkel could have tried sticking to her guns and not playing to the crowd like she did but the result would have probably been the same.
Pech gehabt (tough luck).
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats are set to lose the key state of Baden-Wuerttemberg after six decades, exit polls suggest.
Becomes final today. Me and little Sar-ko-sy will be goin’ away…
So much for France and Germany as the inseparable couple at the heart of Europe.
The issue here is not direct German military participation. Everyone would have understood if that was not possible. But how could Germany not support a UN resolution backed by its principal European partners, the United States and the Arab League?
Like so many contemporary European politicians, they (in the German government) follow rather than lead public opinion.
“We calculated the risk. If we see that three days after this intervention began, the Arab League already criticises [it], I think we had good reasons.” While French and British pilots risk their lives in action, the German foreign minister is virtually encouraging the Arab League to make further criticism.
Latest Angst Update:
++ Ticker Ticker++Several German container shipping companies have stopped going to eastern Japanese ports including Tokyo for the time being amid fears of radiation++ Ticker Ticker ++Fukushima radiation detected in Germany!!!
And thanks for this cool Angst Republic link, A.K.
Let’s vote.
“Germany has lost its credibility in the United Nations and in the Middle East.”
“Germany has turned the idea of a unified European Union foreign policy into a farce.”
“Germany’s hopes for a permanent Security Council seat can be buried. Even the idea of an EU seat is damaged.”
“I don’t know what the German foreign minister was thinking, but (the abstention) doesn’t have much in common with a values-driven foreign policy nor with German and European Union interests.”
“German hopes for a permanent seat on the Security Council have been permanently dashed and one is now fearful of Europe’s future.”
“Why is it so difficult for us in Germany to realize that we have to help the rebels in Libya, primarily because a bloodbath is looming in Benghazi?”
“Everyone has seen pictures of the Warsaw ghetto. Everyone knows what happens when an army takes over a city. That’s why all parties in France, including on the left, were in favor of a military intervention in Libya. In Germany, that didn’t happen.”
“The opposition to our closest partner France is a break with all constants of German foreign policy since 1949.”
“I have nothing but shame for the failure of our government.”
“The reform of the United Nations Security Council remains a major goal for the German government. The German government’s willingness to shoulder more responsibility within the framework of such reform is unchanged.”
Toleration?
Here’s how you form coalition governments if you’re the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia (they’ve done this before): First of all, don’t win the election. Then, form a minority government with the Greens which is “tolerated” by the Left Party.
And here’s how the toleration part works: The Left Party quietly qets a whole lot more of what it wants than what it deserves by discretely making agreements with the coaltion partners behind the scenes while boldly threatening to stop its toleration and thus them (the coalition partners) dead in their tracks. Then, in one or two or however many years it takes, the voters get grossed out about the policies they didn’t really support or vote for in the first place, hold the coaltion partners accountable for the mess, vote them out, and the Left Party comes strolling out of the mess and into the opposition smelling like a rose. You know, as in “We weren’t in the government!”
Run with it, Hannelore.
Ministerpräsidentin mit Makel
So when are the Germans going to make up their minds here? The third try’s the charm, I guess.
Get it over with already and let Paul the Psychic Octopus decide.
