Coffee From Togo To Be Heavily Taxed

At last count, Germans who purchase coffee from Togo toss some 3 billion of the disposable cups used to temporarily carry it in each and every year.

Togo

Predictably outraged by this, German green shirts have predictably outraged German coffee vendors by suggesting that a 20-cent tax be placed on this luxury drink to encourage coffee Togo connoisseurs to bring along their reusable and occasionally re-washable coffee Togo coffee cups with them, preferably hanging on the environmentally friendly coffee Togo belt loop hangers attached to their biodegradable pants.

Should this prove to be too impractical for some customers, the ecological crusaders suggest, vendors should offer them a discount option (taxpayer subsidized) of drinking the invigorating beverage directly from their trembling cupped hands.

“Nehmen Sie sich ein wenig Zeit und trinken Ihren Kaffee vor Ort – aus einer Tasse.”

Racism Not Eastern German Problem

Hell no. It’s all over the place here. Although actually, what we’ve really got here is another good old case of classical German schizophrenia in action again.

Germans

The real issue isn’t the humanitarian one, however. Of course the refugees currently flooding Europe have to be helped and have to be helped in an equitable manner, i.e. each country takes on its fair share of the burden. The real issue is the unspoken one: They have to be stopped from coming here in the first place. The problems that are causing them to flee aren’t being addressed but Europe can’t solve them. Europe can’t even solve its own problems.

And the reason this issue is still unspoken is that keeping them from coming here implies doing something really unpleasant. You know, something really unpleasant like Americans and Israelis do? You know, like putting up a wall of some kind to keep them out. Set your clocks. This issue won’t remain unspoken for very much longer.

“At the moment, refugee shelters are burning night after night all across Germany. And the hot spots for far-right violence are spread in all directions.”

Weird Science

More German environmental backwardness in action. Or would it be better to call it genetic illiteracy?

So much for Europe’s efforts to put the junk science surrounding genetically modified (GMO) food to rest. Berlin this week signaled it will prohibit cultivation of GMO crops in Germany, even if the crops have been approved by EU scientific bodies and despite an attempt by Brussels to legalize them.

Science

Sure enough, neither environmentalists nor German politicians have come up with a justification for Berlin’s looming ban other than, well, because. Supporters cheer the move as an expression of “food democracy” in a country where opposition to GMOs is widespread and the government faced intense pressure to ban them…

Back in reality, EU scientific and food-safety authorities have repeatedly cleared various GMO crops for human and animal consumption. The process often takes months to complete, and in 95% of cases EU regulators ask producers for more evidence before greenlighting GMOs, so it’s hardly a rubber stamp.

Top Speed Ever: 26 Percent

Wind energy is inexhaustible, right? Well, not really. The talk about it is, though.

Wind

Researchers now tell us that when it comes to wind parks, due to a saturation effect, the upper limit for natural wind energy produced is one watt per square meter – not the seven watts per square meter as we had been told about before now. This means that a maximum of 26 percent of natural wind energy can be turned into energy here. “The more wind turbines I install, the less energy is produced by the individual turbines.”

“Wind turbines remove kinetic energy from the atmospheric flow, which reduces wind speeds and limits generation rates of large wind farms. These interactions can be approximated using a vertical kinetic energy (VKE) flux method, which predicts that the maximum power generation potential is 26% of the instantaneous downward transport of kinetic energy using the preturbine climatology.”

Maximal 26 Prozent der natürlichen Windenergie lassen sich für Strom nutzen.

How Do You Want Your ID?

Rare to non-existent, many Germans will tell you. They place them in microwaves here to destroy the RFID chips inside, you see.

Or boil them – if they’re paranoid about microwave ovens, too.

Otherwise most of these folks appear to be able to live normal, somewhat productive lives.

When it comes to privacy, Germans can’t take a joke. After it was revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency had intercepted calls in Germany, sales of old-school typewriters were reported to have skyrocketed, as some Germans assumed that sending letters might make communications surveillance harder for U.S. officials.

It’s not only American surveillance that Germans are concerned about, however. On Tuesday, a 29-year old man was arrested at Frankfurt Airport after authorities noticed that he had microwaved his German identification card, reported German news agency dpa.

German Of The Day: Umweltunfreundlich

That means eco-unfriendly. Or in the case of biodiesel, this means “being so eco-friendly that it is eco-unfriendly.”

Umwelt

More starry-eyed government interventionism in action. To save the world from destruction by using biodiesel they have to destroy the world first by producing it. This reminds me of those good old communist planned economy days. And we all know how that went with the best made plans of mice and communist men.

Dem Biokraftstoff gehört die Zukunft. An negative Begleiterscheinungen dachte keiner. Doch die Indizien, dass vermehrt für das Weltklima wichtige Wälder gerodet, Sümpfe entwässert und in Ackerflächen umgewandelt werden, mehren sich. Nach Informationen der Weltagrarorganisation FAO dienen nur noch 47 Prozent der Weltgetreideproduktion – Weizen, Reis, Mais – der Ernährung.

German ISIS Defectors Explain How Terrorist Lifestyle Was Actually Somewhat Disappointing

Clearly not the sharpest knives in the drawer, two Germans who fought for ISIS in Syria are standing trial back home and are now prepared to give “deep insights” into the life of foreign fighters in Islamic State.

ISIS

One of the very first deep insights appears to be that life as an ISIS terrorist really, really, really sucks. Who would have thought that?

Although facing a potential jail term of 10 to 20 years, the IS defector called Ebrahim B. claimed to have gone through such horrible atrocities during three months in the Islamic State that “for him jail in Germany is preferable to freedom in Syria.”

You Shining Symbol Of Socialist Superiority, You

You’re 50 years old or something. And you’re still ugly as sin.

Tower

But I love you, you big dummy.

It took four years to build the prestigious building, and the construction costs were three times higher than initially planned – a fact which only emerged after the fall of the Wall.

“Journalism Isn’t Treason”

That’s very true. But that’s not the issue here. Go ask folks like Edward Snowden or Julian Assange and they’ll tell you. We now live in an age where treason isn’t treason, either.

Treason

The case centres on the Netzpolitik.org (Net politics) blog, which earlier this year published documents on plans by Germany’s domestic security agency to expand its Internet surveillance.

“The freedom of the press and of expression is a valuable asset. But this freedom, including on the Internet, is not limitless. It does not absolve journalists of the duty to comply with the law.”

German Of The Day: RIAS

That stands for Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor and means radio (or broadcasting) in the American Sector – of a place they used to call “West Berlin.”

Now Father Time has managed to take care of something that the East German jamming stations were never able to do back then in the good old bad old days: Shut this broadcasting tower down. With explosives, in this case.

Von Britz aus ging 1946 der Rundfunk im Amerikanischen Sektor (Rias) auf Sendung. Später entstand dort Europas damals leistungsstärkster Mittelwellensender, mit dem jahrelang auch die Störsender aus Ost-Berlin überwunden werden mussten. Heute gilt die Übertragung per Mittelwelle als veraltet.