600 Detained For Having Too Much To Think

And for refusing to think correctly. A dangerous mix indeed.

Berlin protesters decry coronavirus measures; 600 detained – Local authorities had banned several different protests this weekend, including one from the Stuttgart-based Querdenker movement, but protesters in Berlin defied the ban.

As one high-level Arrogance Expert noted: “If practically all experts worldwide say the coronavirus is dangerous and vaccination helps, then who actually has the right to say, ‘Actually, I’m smarter than that?’ To me, that is an almost unbearable level of arrogance.”

German Of The Day: Verbot

That means ban.

You know, as in Berlin court bans anti-lockdown protests?

These Querdenker (people who think outside the box) keep thinking outside the box so it’s time to box them up and move them out.

Judges in the German capital have moved to ban a number of weekend demonstrations amid fears they will lead to a rise in coronavirus infections. Police expect protesters to travel to Berlin nonetheless…

The upper court said the Querdenker movement was characterized throughout Germany “by the fact that the participants used them to violate legal norms created to contain the risk of infection in a way that attracted public attention, in particular by disregarding the social distance requirement and the mask requirement.”

The Perfect Storm?

Inflation is up. Beer sales are down.

Let’s party!

German inflation levels exceed 3% for first time since 2008 – It’s the first time since the 2008 global financial crash that inflation in Germany has reached such levels.

German beer sales in this year’s first half were 2.7% lower than a year earlier, dragged lower by closures of bars and restaurants that stretched through winter and into spring, official data showed Friday.

How To Deal With Him?

German authorities are wondering how to deal with a pensioner who stored a World War Two tank, anti-aircraft gun and torpedo in his basement?

Very carefully, I would say.

The items were removed from a house in the northern town of Heikendorf in 2015 with the help of the army.

Prosecutors and defence lawyers are now negotiating possible penalties, including a suspended sentence and a fine of up to €500,000 (£427,000).

The defendant, aged 84, must also find new homes for the monumental items.

German Of The Day: Abschiedstournee

That means farewell tour. That’s right. Angela Merkel is farewell touring these days.

And she won’t be satisfied until the tour is over and she has left her party, the CDU, in a shambles as she walks out the door and turns off the light. She has spent the last sixteen years taking the wind out of opposition parties’ sails – through compromizing her own party’s principles – and has not only managed to destroy the SPD (Social Democrats), for instance, she has turned her once conservative CDU into the new SPD. Conservative CDU voters are perfectly aware of this, of course, and the polls for the upcoming election are showing it. And that’s one of the reasons why her hand-picked mini-Merkel-man, Armin Laschet, does not exactly inspire confidence with the German electorate. This election might just get ugly, in other words. But Merkel will be fein raus (gone and off the hook). Can’t wait for books to come out. Not.

Merkels Abschied vom Kanzleramt: Was kommt nach der Bundestagswahl? „Werde mit der Zeit schon was anfangen können.“

But Saving People’s Lives Might Negatively Affect Their Data Privacy!

Cell broadcasts and other mobile phone disaster alerts are dangerous. Whoever does the broadcast has your data. You know, like your telephone number? And they could reach you if they wanted to, which is the point. To save your life, for example. But Germans don’t want that. After they save your life what happens then? What happens to the data? Who regulates it? A complete, unauthorized stranger could save your life next and nobody wants that. No, thanks. Data privacy comes first in this country, pal.

German authorities faced pressure on Tuesday to set aside longstanding privacy concerns and send mobile phone alerts directly to people in potential disaster zones following the devastation wrought by last week’s catastrophic floods.

Warnung per “Cell Broadcast”: Viele Länder setzten auf das System, das per Mobilfunk in Sekunden fast die komplette Bevölkerung erreichen kann. Deutschland aber wählte eine andere Technologie.

Germany About To Get Its Way

After Russia gets its way, of course. And Sleepy Joe will just sleep right through it.

U.S., Germany to announce deal on Nord Stream 2 pipeline in coming days – The United States and Germany are expected to announce in coming days a deal resolving their long-standing dispute over Russia’s $11 billion Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.

President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel failed to settle their differences over the undersea pipeline when they met last week, but agreed Moscow must not be allowed to use energy as a weapon against its neighbors.

There’s An App For That

Not that anybody has installed it. But still.

After the German Deluge, a Flood of Political Recriminations – The Federal Office for Citizen Protection and Disaster Assistance did issue alerts on its app about coming floods, say officials. But critics say that a very small fraction of the German population has downloaded the app on their smartphones and that a much louder warning should have been sounded to allow local communities to better prepare for the deluge of midweek rain.

“For so many people to die in floods in Europe in 2021 represents a monumental failure of the system.”

German Of The Day: Schwarzfahren

That means “riding black.” That is, using public transportation without having a ticket.

Or at least that’s what it used to mean before the Woke Folk took control of Berlin’s public transport operator. There are no racial connotations with this word unless you want there to be so now there are and that’s why its use has been verboten.

Berlin public transport operator BVG will stop using the German term “schwarzfahren” (or “blackriding”) to describe travelling without a valid ticket, it said on Friday.

The decision to discontinue using the expression, which is common in colloquial speech, implements a recommendation from the Berlin Senate’s diversity programme, a spokesperson told broadcaster rbb.

Tesla Now Building Tanks

Bombastically bureaucratic and terribly touchy about tanks ever since World War II, German authorities will now be fining Tesla for building them at its new car factory near Berlin.

Its planned new car factory near Berlin, I should say.

The environment ministry for Brandenburg, the state that surrounds Berlin and in which the factory will be located, had found that Tesla had constructed tanks on the territory for which it had no authorisation, wrote Tagesspiegel newspaper, which first reported the fine.

The company was banned from using the tanks it had already built, the newspaper added.