But how do you lose a 5.6-foot tall one of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin? It’s not easy, but Berlin city authorities can do it.
It was the star of Good Bye Lenin, Wolfgang Becker’s tragicomedy set around the fall of the Berlin Wall: a statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, suspended from a helicopter, seemingly waving goodbye to the crumbling socialist republic.
But more than two decades after it was torn down, Berlin authorities have admitted the giant monument may be lost in storage.
That’s no way to talk!
Just ask this lady here. Her name is Gitta Connemann and she is a member of German parliament (CDU) who just got uninvited as the main speaker at an anti-war event sponsored by the big German DGB union for making Israel-friendly comments. And they were shocking as hell, too.
This broad actually had the nerve to say “Every death is one too many but Israel has been shot at since 2006 and has the right to protect itself.”
What on earth was she thinking? Political sensitivity is clearly not her cup of chai.
“Jeder Tote ist zu viel. Aber seit 2006 wird Israel beschossen und hat ein Recht auf Selbstverteidigung.”
Well, in the real world… Not at all. But here in Germany…
Employment minister Andrea Nahles (SPD) wants to review the situation to see if an anti-stress law can be introduced. The number of stress-related illnesses continues to rise in this country.
If this wasn’t so funny it would be serious. The problem is that nobody who reads this here is laughing. That makes this much more serious than I thought. Which isn’t funny.
Die SPD und Gewerkschaften fordern erneut eine gesetzliche Anti-Stress-Verordnung. Kann gesetzlich geregelt werden, dass der Chef seine Mitarbeiter nicht anrufen darf?
Only now they’re calling it the Love Pot Parade. OK, the Hanfparade.
Some 6000 activists have gotten together in the Hauptstadt again to demand the legalization of cannabis. It’s the same procedure (and same 6000 participants?) as last year. Countless thousands more really wanted to take pot, I mean part, this year but fell asleep on the couch again next to several empty bags of those cool Dorrito-like chips they sell over at Reichelt.
“Das sind weniger, als wir uns erhofft habe”», sagte Steffen Geyer, Sprecher der Parade. Es seien wieder nur die Leute da gewesen, “die immer kommen”. Die jährliche Hanfparade gibt es seit 1997.
It goes like this: An EU regulation forces Osram and the rest of the industry to shift from traditional light bulbs to light-emitting diodes. They are smaller, more energy-efficient, have longer lifespans than traditional bulbs (except that they don’t really), are very much more expensive and must therefore be forced down the consumer’s throat and, well, everybody here hates the damned things and wants their old light bulbs back.
The benevolent part? Now 8,000 Osram workers lose their jobs because of this.
„Durch die EU-Verordnung ist das traditionelle Glühbirnen-Massengeschäft von Osram weggebrochen. Dort war Osram führend.“
Most of them appear to be aliens from Planet Germany, however.
“Jemand aus dem All will uns hier etwas sagen.”
We all knew somehow that the Germans themselves could not be responsible for this. Now we know why.
Coal mining’s demise in Germany comes as the country is experiencing a resurgence in coal-fired power, one which the U.S. increasingly has helped supply. U.S. exports of power plant-grade coal to Germany have more than doubled since 2008.
“This is a classic case of political greenwashing.”
Or when it’s cloudy and gray and yucky outside (an estimated 359 days a year here). Wind energy does, however. But only when there is enough so-called Wind (wind) to go around.
German environmentally renewable scientists have now been informed, however, and once they figure out a way to keep it sunny and windy all day long this German energy turnaround thing is going to turn everything around for good.
Because Energiewende has been accompanied by a rapid move away from nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster Germany has had to make up its energy deficit by increasing its reliance on coal for the first time in years. German CO2 emissions have actually been rising over past three years.
Enraged at the cowardly Hamas rocket attacks that have provoked Israel’s ground offensive into the Gaza Strip, thousands of Islamists, left-wing extremists and neo-Nazis have taken to the streets all across Germany to vent their hate by chanting clever new ant-Semitic slogans.
“Jew, Jew, cowardly swine, come out and fight on your own!” was a particularly popular one at a rally in Berlin, for instance. “Hamas, Hamas, Jews in the gas!” came in a close second, however.
It is unclear what effect these slogans have had upon the Hamas terrorists firing said rockets but it doesn’t really matter all that much because their capacity to do so is being taken away from them as you read this. Right about… Now.
“Jude, Jude, feiges Schwein, komm heraus und kämpf allein.”
Outraged by allegations that a German employee of the German foreign-intelligence agency BND may have been a double-agent who passed along information to the CIA (about a parliamentary inquiry of NSA surveillance programs), the German public’s level of trust towards the USA has now reached such a new level of low that a color-coded trust level advisory scale will now need to be introduced.
Based on the American Homeland Security Advisory System, the coming German Trust-Amerika Level Advisory Scale will have a few fundamental differences, however. The “normal” green trust level will start out at Absolute Zero, for instance. It will then work it’s way down, or up, if you prefer, to Less Than Absolute Zero, Way Less Than Absolute Zero, Highly Less Than Absolute Zero and then to the Severely Less Than Absolute Zero It Doesn’t Get Any Less Absolute Zero Than This, People level.
It is unclear when the new system will be introduced as these plans are super-mega-ultra top secret and have not been officially leaked by the responsible double-agents yet.
“If the suspicion of a targeted attack on a German constitutional body is confirmed, just one year after the first Snowden disclosures, that would set the level of trust back to zero and result in political consequences.”
Observing Hermann 