And all it took was a short visit to the Berlinale in Berlin.
He certainly knew what he was doing. The films that they play here are no longer famous, either.
Dieser Eintrag im Berlinaleblog ist nicht leicht gefallen. Denn er wird genau das bewirken, was der Autor eigentlich kritisieren will: Dass es in der modernen Mediengesellschaft eine wirkungsvolle Strategie ist, durch Pöbeln und Rüpeln Aufmerksamkeit zu erzeugen.
As if NSA surveillance, Google Street View (and Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), scary drone technology, unbridled imperialism, world domination and McDonald’s were not enough already, a well-intended leak has shown that American diplomats are now even using bad four-letter words when referring to the EU and other sacrosant international-like institutions, too.
And the Chancellor HERSELF is really pissed off about this one this time. Eavesdropping on her cell phone is one thing, but using the F-word is “absolutely unacceptable.”
Of course, how German officials were even able to find out about the story is a bit of a mystery to me. The four-letter word in question is not allowed through their porno censorship system.
U.S. officials blamed Moscow for the Internet leak of recordings of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the U.S. ambassador in Kiev discussing a possible future government for Ukraine, where Washington and Brussels back anti-Kremlin demonstrators.
PS: Talk about stealing candy from a baby. Thieves had no problem breaking into a Bundeswehr barracks in Seedorf (no, it’s not in Afghanistan) and stealing 28,000 rounds of ammunition.
Not if the SüdLink power lines have to go through my backyard!
Network providers planning one of the country’s most important power-transmission pathways presented a proposal on Wednesday for an 800-kilometer, or 500-mile, corridor of high-voltage lines. The power lines would carry electricity from wind turbines in the blustery north states to power-hungry industries in the south...
But many Germans balk at the idea of high-voltage power lines running through their backyards and the fields around their communities. Last week, angry villagers in Bavaria protested plans by the network operator Amprion to construct a similar high-voltage line through their state. An attempt by the power company TenneT last year to have citizens invest in another planned expansion to the grid in the state of Schleswig-Holstein failed to win substantial support.
And mark my words here folks, the real ugliness hasn’t even begun yet. They’re never going to get this thing built.
“The corridor is not definitive, and we need feedback from citizens and communities to be able to plan this important link.”
So. Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit knew for quite some time now that his SPD Culture Minister buddy André Schmitz had some funny money hiding in Switzerland (everybody‘s doing it these days) and just pretended that this problem would eventually go away all by itself. Well it didn’t, of course, and Schmitz has now had to resign and the mayor is in deep Scheiße about this right now or something, right?
Well any other politician would be but you clearly don’t understand with whom we’re dealing with here (unless you do understand). This is Klaus Wowereit HIMSELF (some call him Wowi – with that “v” sound, of course). This is the same guy who “did” the Berlin Airport that still hasn’t been done yet and will end up costing eighty-five quadrillion bazillion euros before it ever does get done, if at all.
Do you think there have been any consequences for that? Hardly. If anything, Wowereit got rewarded for his Engagement (commitment) by being put right back on as the “new” chairman of the board of the Berlin Brandenburg Airport Company after the “old” one had proven just how clueless he had been and had been forced to leave (that had been Klaus Wowereit too, of course).
Why is this guy always free from sin? Beats the hell out of me. There’s teflon, dann kommt eine ganze Weile gar nichts (then you can go on for a long, long while – way past normal teflon), and then there’s Klaus Wowereit teflon. He’s on his ski vacation right now and simply couldn’t be bothered by any of this. And he’s laughing his ass off all the way down the slopes I bet. Damn. Nice job if you can get it.
Kann ein Kinderschänder ein guter Bildungsminister sein?
“While there are genuine pacifists in Germany,” as German President Joachim Gauck recently noted at the Munich Security Conference, “there are also people who use Germany’s guilt for its past as a shield for laziness or a desire to disengage from the world.”
Very true. But believe you me, if he or anybody else out there seriously thinks for one cotton-pickin’ minute that Germans are suddenly going to seriously consider “a more muscular foreign policy” (use their army for what armies are actually intended to be used for) just because of any good points he or anybody else out there might make, he and that anybody else out there should be tested for doping. Ain’t NEVER gonna happen here.
Es darf nichts kosten (it can’t cost anything).
“Germany is really too big to just comment from the sidelines.” Duh. So? How does that saying go again? Germany is too big for Europe and too small for the world.
PS: Germans are still really good at blowing up stuff, though.
Beautiful German weapon sale of the week.
Because somebody has to admire them.
Despite it’s often pacifist positions on global security issues, Germany is also in the seemingly contradictory position of being one of the world’s largest arms exporters.
PS: At least none of those creepy postcards are involved here.
Ein Frührentner (an early retiree). Please laugh, but please also be assured that I personally know a German teenager who actually answered this question this way and was NOT joking.
And this really shouldn’t come as a surprise in a country where, according to the latest poll, 53 percent of the employed don’t plan to work past the age of 63 and barely one third of them expect to work until the “official” reitrement age of 65. Or is it 67 now? Wait, or is it 63 doch (after all)?
At any rate, whatever the official German retirement age may be, rest assured that it will not be the age at which the majority of Germans will be retiring.
Ein knappes Drittel will dagegen bis zum regulären Renteneintrittsalter weiterarbeiten.
Boy, that didn’t take long. Did you read that part about “social” yesterday?
Hardly in the new coalition government with the CDU/CSU, leading SPD politicians are now already preparing the way for their move to form a new “100% social” one with the Left Party.
These things take time, though. And it’s all about psychology. And timing. OK, the SPD has never been all that good with the timing part but they’re numero uno when it comes to subtle psychological manipulation. OK, not so subtle psychological manipulation. And publishing a paper calling for a “progressive left-leaning reform alliance with an aim to take over in 2017” with the Left Party is just the right ticket. For the start, I mean. Did I mention the timing part?
Für ein “progressiv-linkes Reformbündnis mit einer Machtperspektive 2017” müsse man “die bestehenden inhaltlichen und strategischen Differenzen zwischen allen Parteien links der Union” beseitigen.
All of a sudden. For all of that five-year-plan-renewable-energy-turnaround-ideology-project-like-stuff in Germany, I mean. She is gone, señor.
Or at least more and more German citizens are finally waking up and simply just aren’t prepared to keep on paying ever more for less and less of whatever it was that this so-called energy turnaround of theirs was supposed to be delivering.
That is why Superminister Gabriel (didn’t he used to sing with Supertramp?) is now urging (ordering) German parliamentary lawmakers to start cutting state subsidies for renewable energies – for German industry – because they are rich and capitalistic or something and are therefore evil (he’s an SPD Superminister) and haven’t really been milked properly for this one yet. And the po folks just aren’t willing to keep paying more and more, like I said [By the way, the S in SPD stands for “social” and everything with “social” in it means “free lunch.” Read Margaret Thatcher’s quote down there on the right if you want to learn more.].
Of course why the energy turnaround has to keep on turning around the way it does like this in the first place is the really interesting question here, I find, but certainly not one that anyone here in Germany appears to be willing to ask. At least not quite yet anyway.
Yup, renewable turnaround money has sure gotten tight around here these days. Not even a Swabian housewife can help out anymore.
“We need to break the dynamics of ever-rising electricity bills, while ensuring a stable supply of energy for all.”
Born in Königs Wusterhausen near Berlin? Yeah, I’d say that’s a Wunder, too.
It’s a Wunder that the mother survived.
Der Chefarzt der Gynäkologie und Geburtshilfe, Rüdiger Müller, sprach von einem “medizinischen Wunder”, weil die weibliche Anatomie nicht auf ein solches Gewicht eingestellt sei.
Observing Hermann 