“We can continue to screw up our image just fine all on our own, thank you,” A party spokesman said.
With comrades like these who needs enemies?
“Seine Zeit ist einfach vorbei.”
Category Archives: High Art
An Old School German Intellectual Poetry Attack Par Excellence
Günter Grass has it all: That fat and sassy moral high ground he’s king of the hill of, that left-wing obsession for defending brutal regimes in the name of “world peace,” that Nobel Prize for literature and that SPD party membership book (I’m not sure which one gives him more legitimacy here).
But above all else, he’s got that which all successful peacenik artists and Künstler the world over must invariably have: That inability to keep their mouths shut when it comes to addressing issues they clearly know nothing about.
At the moment Grass is worried about how “the nuclear power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace” (think Iran) and has written a shockingly predictable poem about it. It must be a real humdinger, too, but to be fair I must admit that I haven’t read it yet and most certainly never will because I’m waiting to read his poem about Iran’s threat to world peace first. I assume that he will publish that one next week, but you know what they say about when you assume things… Blah, blah, blah. Meet the new school. Same as the old school.
Israel currently has three Dolphin submarines from Germany – one half-funded and two entirely funded by Berlin – two more are currently under construction, and the contract for a sixth submarine was signed last month. Dolphin-class submarines can carry nuclear-tipped missiles, but there is no evidence Israel has armed them with such weapons.
State Subsidies In Action
This would be funny if wasn’t so funny. Where do we want to go broke today? Q-Cells is now the fourth major bankruptcy in the German solar industry sector of late and although they are sure to have made a lot of dumb mistakes themselves, they certainly couldn’t have gone bankrupt “this well” without the German government’s relentless and merciless help.
It’s all about drugs, subsidy drugs. And once these subsidy drugs had been administered – in this case promoting wonderful and environmentally friendly solar technology for the good of all German-kind (in a country where sunshine is still a news item) – most of these companies failed to wean themselves from their reliance upon them and made some bad business decisions as a result (decisions they wouldn’t have made if they had been clean).
In the meantime, Asian competitors in the real world learned to produce the solar technology cheaper (as usual) and, just to add a little insult to injury here, it turns out that the German government helped the Chinese solar industry with financial aid , too. Only they did this better than they did in Germany.
Then Berlin finally got tired of shelling out all this money back home and started reducing the dosage faster than the addicts could adapt to and, well, the rest is history, or Geschichte, if you prefer.
So what’s the moral of the story? Remember those nine most terrifying words in the English language: “We’re from the government and we’re here to help.”
Somehow the German government must have lost sight of the fact that its policy in fact encourages the demise of Germany’s own solar industry. The development bank of the government-owned KfW group of banks supports China’s green industry with low-interest loans. Ironically, the German Investment and Development Company (DEG), also a subsidiary of KfW, is one of the financial backers of Chinese industry giant Yingli Solar.
Lights Turned Out Last Night To Save Planet Earth Again
Damn. I always knew that I was ahead of my time when it came to saving our world as we know it, but up until last night’s “Earth Hour,” I honestly had no idea just how ahead of my time I was, I mean am.
I’ve been turning the lights out at night (when I go to bed) for as long as I can remember, and I’m as old as the hills.
So come on, people. Stop living in the dark and start turning off your lights now, too!
“Indem wir das Licht ausschalten, setzen wir ein Symbol für erneuerbare Energien weltweit.”
Nekkid A.
Artistic Productions Like This Cost Money You Know
We’re artists. So give us your, I mean our money.
This is what Germans get for a billion euros of arts subsidies each and every year. Jiminy Crickets. I don’t even want to think about what they’d be getting for less.
Please, Berlin. For the love of all that is holy freakin’ cow. Keep those subsidies coming.
“Der Kulturinfarkt: Von allem zu viel und überall das Gleiche.”
I Thought He’d Never Leave
Contrary to popular belief, Germans have a great sense of humor. What they’re not terribly good at, however, is imitating other comedy formats, something they insist on doing time and time and time again. Harald Schmidt is a prime example of this and – glory hallelujah let the saints be praised – they’ve finally gotten around to cancelling his show for good.
He has been Germany’s late night Tonight-Show-David-Letterman-Conan-O’Brien-like clone for many, way too many years and I’ve never understood why people here pretend that he is funny, but, then again, maybe that’s just me (uh, who else is it going to be?).
I’d give you an example of some of his highbrow, sophisticated humor (see above), but that would only make me feel more aggressive than I do already so go out there and dig up something on YouTube yourself if you absolutely positively have to and good luck with the translation because it won’t be worth it.
Geh mit Gott, Harald, aber geh.
It’s OK That Obama Got Caught Saying That
Der Spiegel rushes to tell us.
Because other politicians have been caught on mic saying bad things, too.
Only they were bad. So there.
“Nach meiner Wahl habe ich mehr Flexibilität.”
Gentrification Giants 1 – Subculture Vultures 0
An evicted group of about 20 subculture artist/activist types chained to the remains of Berlin’s graffiti-covered Tacheles alternative scene “living space” ruin is about to be forcibly dragged out kicking and screaming into German reality by black-clad gentrification special forces troops right here live on TV, I hope, but nobody can tell me when. Or on which channel or anything (maybe later in the Internetz?).
The group is defending “one of Berlin’s last bastions of alternative subculture, and are fighting eviction ahead of plans to develop it (the Tacheles) as an office and luxury apartments complex” and has to be dealt with accordingly, of course. After years of pussyfooting around with them first, I mean.
I would advise them not to let the door hit them on the way out but there are no doors at the Tacheles as they were surely used as firewood long ago during one of those quaint, Stone Age let’s-not-freeze-to-death-tonight gettogethers so popular with artist types there and elsewhere here in Berlin.
Tacheles “is just the latest in a long line of public spaces that have been lost to private investors” and will surely be missed by all, myself not included.
Darko stands behind an iron gate, his bare chest daubed in red paint with the words “victim of bank.”
PS: This German subculture is not to be confused with this other German subculture here.
Germany In Grave Danger Again
It’s all over but the crying now. Or whining, if you prefer. German Wetter (weather) just keeps getting wetter!
A new study tells us that the number of “devastating” storms, heavy rains and other weather-related “natural catastrophes” has tripled in Germany since the 70s! Wow. Have there actually been three already?
Scarier still is that the climate model for the next thirty years (this in a country that can’t get the weather forecast for tomorrow right, mind you) calls for even more “heavy precipitation” that will most likely lead to – oh my God we’re all going to die – flooding! That’s right, the f-word. Oh the horror or something. And you thought it couldn’t happen here.
„Für die nächsten 30 Jahre rechnen Klimamodelle in Deutschland vor allem mit einer Zunahme der Sturmintensität und mit mehr Starkniederschlägen, die zu Überschwemmungen führen.“
Observing Hermann 