They really do.
Germans are often very naive and childlike when it comes to their beliefs, don’t you think?
Nur 9,5 Prozent glauben, dass keine höhere Macht in der Entstehung des Universums und der Entwicklung der verschiedenen Tierarten involviert war.
In this here Berlinale article, I mean.
And this is mainly because none of these clips have been taken from any of the films that are being shown here at the Berlinale this year.
You know it’s Berlinale time when coffee has been spilled all over the benches in the Sony Center early in the morning already.
Du weißt, es ist Berlinale, wenn… Dir irgendjemand nach Ende des letzten Berlinale-Tages erzählt, dass er es jetzt schon kaum erwarten kann, wenn das Filmfestival nächsten Winter wieder in die Stadt kommt.
My how time flies. Especially when it’s only been fifteen minutes.
For the rest of us, I mean. Edward Snowden still has a whole lot more time on his hands.
The European parliament is to ditch demands on Wednesday that EU governments give guarantees of asylum and security to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower.
In Brüssel ist ein Vorstoß von Grünen und Linken gescheitert, dem Whistleblower Schutz in der EU zu gewähren. Der Innenausschuss des EU-Parlaments stimmte gegen den Antrag.
IT business here in Germany, I mean.
Funny how that is. Makes a body wonder sometimes if helping to keep folks all hot and bothered like this about our latest “devastating crisis of confidence” is maybe sort of, I dunno, intentional or something? You know, as in profitable intentional?
I know, I know. German media and industry have higher standards than that and would never try to take advantage of a situation like this but look, if everybody else out there is going to keep going hysterical and paranoid about this novel issue of ours then I can start speculating, too. Hmmm. Now Snowden isn’t a German name, is it? Eduard certainly is, though.
“Our best marketing employee is Edward Snowden.”
A survey conducted among German men soldiers in the Bundeswehr has revealed that 34 percent of them do not believe that German women soldiers are up to life in the field. 52 percent say that women cannot physically carry out the demanding duties required of them. A third of the men asked believe that women in these positions have led to a reduction of something they refer to as “combat strength.”
So maybe that’s why fifty-five percent of women in the Bundeswehr have reported some kind of sexual mistreatment on the job, with 47 percent citing verbal abuse, 25 percent saying they had been confronted with pornographic images and 24 percent telling researchers they had experienced “unwanted sexually motivated physical contact.”
But wait a minute here. That line up there about German combat strength just doesn’t fly. The real question here, if you ask me, is what does the Bundeswehr even need combat soldiers for in the first place? The Bundeswehr doesn’t “do” combat as all the world knows that Germans are pacifists and combat is strictly verboten.
Das Leben im Feld? Dem seien die Frauen nicht gewachsen, sagten 34 Prozent (2005: 28 Prozent). Körperlich anspruchsvolle Aufgaben? Die könnten Frauen nicht ausfüllen, sagen inzwischen 52 Prozent (2005: 44 Prozent). Über ein Drittel der Männer beklagt inzwischen durch Frauen den Verlust der Kampfkraft.
What’s not to like here?
“Super minister?” I’d say this is more like a job for Superpenner.
The difference between the market price for electricity and the higher fixed price for renewables is passed on to consumers, whose bills have been rising for years. An average household now pays an extra €260 ($355) a year to subsidise renewables: the total cost of renewable subsidies in 2013 was €16 billion. Costs are also going up for companies, making them less competitive than rivals from America, where energy prices are falling thanks to the fracking boom…
Cost is not the only problem with the Energiewende. It has in effect turned the entire German energy industry into a quasi-planned economy with perverse outcomes. At certain times on some days, sun and wind power may provide almost all German electricity. But the sun does not always shine, especially in winter, and the wind is unpredictable. And “batteries”—storage technologies that, for example, convert power to gas and back again to electricity—on a scale sufficient to supply a city are years away. Nuclear-power plants are being phased out (this week’s court decision that the closure of a plant in Hesse was illegal will raise costs even more, as it may entitle the operator to more compensation). So conventional power plants have to stay online in order to assure continuous supply.
As Washington said it would announce reforms to its National Security Agency (NSA) later in the week, German media were already focused on a likely disappointing outcome for Berlin in talks on a “no spy” arrangement.
Oh, I dunno. Other than Washington not promising to stop listening in on politicians’ calls or say when they are listening in on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone (or whoever else) or not allowing the Germans access to an alleged listening post on top of US embassy in Berlin, I’d say those “no spy” arrangement talks are moving along pretty well.
Doch der Fehler liegt woanders: in einer naiven Erwartungshaltung. Dass die Drahtzieher des 11. September aus Hamburg kamen, ist den Amerikanern immer noch präsent. Dass es zahlreiche Deutsche gibt, die sich nach Syrien aufgemacht haben, um dort an der Seite von Islamisten zu kämpfen, ebenfalls.
Google Maps has, I mean.
Sure, Theodor-Heuss-Platz may not exactly roll right off the lips for some of us here but to rename the thing Adolf-Hitler-Platz simply does not solve the problem.
Der Berliner Theodor-Heuss-Platz ist beim Google Kartendienst Maps zeitweise auch als Adolf-Hitler-Platz bezeichnet worden. So hieß der Platz im Bezirk Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf in der Nazizeit von 1933 bis 1945.
Germany’s oldest “Occupy” camp, thought to have been established sometime during the late Römerzeit (Roman Age), was cleared yesterday by brutal financial shark-like city cleaning employees in a hush-hush operation that had been announced several weeks before.
Many of the occupants were caught unawares in their sleep yesterday afternoon when the profit-greedy imperialist lackeys stormed the camp with brooms, trash bins and protective breathing devices, forcing the dirty dozen of unemployed occupiers into unemployment somewhere else.
Now that the “Occupy” movement has been crushed for good in Germany, many here miss its romantic lack of class struggle and crude fear-mongering antics already and have most likely begun occupying themselves with inventing other forms of worldwide occupation-like phenomena that will also lead to absolutely nothing whatsoever at all one day but will at least feel kind of sort of like they maybe could have, as long as they don’t get too uncomfortable or begin to resemble anything that demands any real commitment or anything, that is.
“Wir wurden von diesem Räumkommando überrascht”, sagte ein Demonstrant der noch etwa ein Dutzend Mitglieder umfassenden “Occupy”-Gruppe. Eigentlich sollte das Lager jedoch schon bis zum 31. Dezember abgebaut werden.
PS: USA Forcing Iraq To Defend Itself Again
A 4-meter-long UFO landed near a place called Zwickau yesterday and nobody there seemed to notice and/or much care.
I guess this kind of thing happens down here all the time (what else are you going to do in Zwickau?). Unfortunately for the rest of humanity, the object in question turned out to be a remote-controlled mini-me-Zeppelin and no trace of the alien intelligence responsible for its construction has yet been found.
Später stellte sich heraus: Bei dem Ufo handelt es sich um einen ferngesteuerten Zeppelin, der „Ufo-Konstrukteur“ ist ein Hobby-Modellflieger aus dem Ort.
Observing Hermann 