Don’t the Libyans appreciate everything the Germans have done for them? Gee, I guess they don’t.
Before the Libyan revolution, Germany was the country’s second-largest trading partner. But then Germany abstained in a 2011 UN vote to militarily intervene in its civil war. Now that the war is over, German businesses and think tanks are finding that most Libyans want little to do with them.
“Water doesn’t flow uphill on its own / And wars, too, don’t stop themselves.”
Actually, it’s only the older, digital immigrant kind of Germans who are still scared of the Veb. You know, around 85 to 90 percent of the population?
And these are the folks who want politicians to introduce ever more stringent anti-Internet legislation (more is more here) and get all hysterical about data privacy for data that nobody’s interested in and ran Google Street View out of town and would never think of ever putting their faces (or anything else) on Facebook, provided they could even find the dad dern thing, and think that flash mobs are real mobsters with machine guns and stuff like that and on and on and on. And, oh yeah, these are also the folks who vote here. So there we have it. Old dogs, nix tricks. Tricks are for kids.
Sogenannte Digital Outsiders hält die Angst, die Kontrolle über ihre persönliche Daten zu verlieren, davon ab, überhaupt online zu gehen. Sie fürchten zudem, mit einem versehentlichen falschen Tastendruck das Internet zu löschen.
How about a little more sensitivity here, Greece? Germans are only trying to help.
And it doesn’t look like they’re going to stop trying to help you anytime soon, either. That’s why if they can’t get that “budget commissioner” they proposed to help monitor the Greek government’s (lack of) management of its finances, some 160 German tax collectors have now selflessly volunteered for assignments in Greece to help gather Greek taxes more efficiently. And as you can imagine, when it comes to taxation and tax collection, German efficiency can really hurt.
A recent flurry of acrimonious exchanges between Athens and Berlin reflect deepening doubts among mainly northern members of the 17-nation euro zone about Greece’s ability and willingness to overhaul its economy to satisfy lenders’ demands.
In a sharp response to the pure unadulterated fear caused them by the deadly protests now taking place in Afghanistan after the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran by a US soldier…
The German military has decided to join in the protests itself by rapidly deploying the closure of one of their bases in the north of the country and having their soldiers hightail it in the opposite direction really schnell like where they can run around in sheer panic and large concentric circles not knowing what to do next while screaming oh my God we are all going to die or something to that effect. The few, the proud, the Bundeswehr.
The base would have been shuttered in March, but officials worried its security could not be maintained in the face of the demonstrations.
And it’s the worse that it’s ever been. And it’s only getting worse, right?
And if you ask this Heidelberg research group who just put out their “Conflict Barometer,” they will tell you that more wars took place worldwide in 2011 than at any time since 1945 (and 2012 doesn’t look all too promising, either).
But what does that mean?
If you really want to put our dreadful, horrible and unspeakably violent age into true historical perspective, do yourself a favor and take a look at what this guy has to say about it.
Thanks for the letting me stumble on to/over this, ¡No Pasarán!
In ihrem “Konflikt-Barometer” zählen Heidelberger Forscher so viele Kriege wie seit 1945 nicht mehr.
The German government is about to cut solar subsidies by 30%.
Despite the massive investment, solar power accounts for only about 0.3% of Germany’s total energy. This is one of the key reasons why Germans now pay the second-highest price for electricity in the developed world (exceeded only by Denmark, which aims to be the “world wind-energy champion”).
According to Der Spiegel, even members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s staff are now describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rösler, Germany’s Minister of Economics and Technology, has called the spiralling solar subsidies a “threat to the economy.”
Germans can’t seem to get enough of watching Promis on TV (German TV Promis are second-rate celebrities, usually of the third- or fourth-rate kind).
They drop them off in the jungle and let them scratch and bite for Promi fame there, they make them prepare awful Promi dinners at home for their unwelcome Promi guests, there was even one show where I saw some Promis going on a freakin’ Promi pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
But now they’ve finally developed a concept that will open up that prominent Promi TV world for the rest of us out there. They’re going to put them in a boxing ring and let them beat the Promi crap out of each other.
Großes Promiboxen mit Dschungel-Prominenz
This year’s winner of the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlinale was actually a real dog, German film critics and other intellectual thinking folks and artist types everywhere are saying.
It’s not that the Italian film “Caesar Must Die” was bad in a cinematic sense or anything. It just didn’t meet the standards that modern film-makers and their kind aspire to, that’s all.
It was, in other words, too “humanist,” not at all a “strong, political film from young, engaged film-makers” (the film-makers who made this non-political film are old, engaged film-makers) and, worst of all, “it was a very conservative selection.” Pfui (yuck)!
Geez. If they had wanted to watch human, uplifting drama they would have gone to some other film festival. I don’t know which one that would be, of course, but it certainly wouldn’t/shouldn’t be the Berlinale.
“The jury shunned almost all the contemporary films that were admired or hotly debated at an otherwise pretty remarkable festival.”
That’s German for deficient coverage. And German readers might be reading that word a lot in the weeks to come, at least when it comes to the electricity supply in Germany.
„We have been observing for weeks now that something with the system just doesn’t seem to be right,” one market expert said.
And in a letter from Germany’s Federal Network Agency to the power traders it deals with, it makes clear its concern about the rather volitile situation going on at the moment and has even warned of the collapse of the German power network. It almost happened on Febuary 6, already, they wrote, as “substantial undercoverage continuing over several hours” nearly brought the system to its knees.
Hmmm. Last year at this time, during one of the coldest winters ever, there wasn’t any problem with the German electricity supply at all. What on earth could have possibly happened since then and now to have caused this disturbing situation?
Nach dem Reuters vorliegenden Schreiben stand das Stromnetz in den vergangenen Tagen mehrfach vor dem Kollaps.
But three films about Fukushima are being shown this year at the Berlinale.
That was to be expected, I guess. Especially now since Fukushima hysteria has all but disappeared from the Bildfläche (screen), even here in Germany.
It’s hard to keep people scared for months on end, now matter how important you think your agenda is. They just get tired and want to move on with their lives. The latest media stunt I just barely heard about had a lot of potential, for a few minutes, but then it rolled over and died, too.
I am looking forward to the big one-year anniversary media terror show bombardment to be held here in Germany next month, of course. But what are they going to be able to scare us with then? The German nation threatening to shut down all it’s nuclear power plants? Been there, done that. It makes you wonder sometimes why they even take the trouble to keep on agitating at us like they do. Now that the war is over and all, I mean. There’s just no place else to agitate at the moment, I guess (thanks for nothing, “Occupy Movement”). It must be hard being progressive sometimes. Much less all the time.
The 11-day film festival, which prides itself on its generally edgier and more politically-overt line-up over other film showcases, was perhaps a fitting backdrop for the documentaries.
Observing Hermann 