No Berlin Wall Here

Not unless you look at how Berliners vote, that is.

Berlin

There was no great cross-border migration in the city after 1989. People had security of tenure in their flats, and they stayed put. Berlin had a large concentration of members of the Socialist Unity Party (as the communist party in East Germany was called), as well as the civil servants and Stasi operatives who kept the communist state running, and they have remained in their areas and transferred their loyalty to Die Linke.

PS: Speaking of cross-border migration, whatever happened to Ray? You know, that Dutch dude who ripped off Berlin’s youth services for 30,000 euros while doing his memory loss show for months on end? Well, he just got slammed with all the Härte (severity) of German law and will now have to perform 150 hours of community work AND receive counseling. Yowie. Let me tell you what. The Germans do NOT mess around when it comes to dishing out draconic punishment.

Inconvenient Truths

Greens

No, not just the one about top German Green party leaders having to resign after seeing their party’s vote drop to 8.4 percent under their leadership (from 10.7 percent in 2009).

Climate

There is also the one that climatologists are going to have to face – according to the Spiegel, of all places – about the data showing how global temperatures just aren’t rising the way they had so alarmingly and repeatedly predicted they would.

This is a dilemma. Or another moment of inconvenient truth? I guess the question now is how the Greens and the climatologists are going to get together and manage to kick-start the fear and get it reved up again. Or what other options could they possibly have?

The number of people who believe in such a coming apocalypse, however, has considerably decreased. A survey conducted on behalf of SPIEGEL found a dramatic shift in public opinion — Germans are losing their fear of climate change. While in 2006 a sizeable majority of 62 percent expressed a fear of global warning, that number has now become a minority of just 39 percent.

PS: It must be hard to be cool and smug and still get whooped bad by  a dull, frumpy and uncharismatic “Swabian houswife.”

Creepy Northhampton Clown Identified

Grusel

In Berlin of all places.

Clown

The Northampton Clown, who spooked residents with a series of freaky night time appearances, has said that he never wanted to scare anyone with his antics.

The figure, who made global headlines when he was spotted in full clown attire on Friday 13, has said that he “just wanted to amuse people.”

“Wie bei einem Horrorfilm.”

Syria

Beautiful German weapons sale of the week – or between 2002 and 2006, I mean.*

Chemicals

Because somebody has to admire them.

*It was only just a few harmless tons of chemicals (111 tons worth) that could have been used to make sarin nerve gas but it was absolutely perfectly legal so don’t anybody out there get all hot and bothered about this, OK? Thanks. I know you wouldn’t.

Green Frontman REALLY “Regrets” It

Less than a week before the election, I mean.

Green

Germany’s Green party is under renewed pressure to defend its stance on paedophilia in the 1980s.

In a newspaper article, the historian Franz Walter had accused the Green’s co-leader, Jürgen Trittin, of signing off a 1981 pamphlet calling to abolish the decriminalisation of sexual acts between adults and children “that occur without the use or threat of force”. In response to the revelation, politicians from the Bavarian Christian Social Union have asked Trittin to withdraw his candidacy from the upcoming election.

Trittin is quoted in the article admitting that his party had failed to block a proposal by the activist group Homosexual Campaign Göttingen for such a measure to be included in the pamphlet. He told the paper that this was “also my mistake, which I regret”.

“Die Grünen sollten darüber nachdenken, ob sie mit dieser Besetzung weiter den Wahlkampf in der letzten Woche fortsetzen.”

The Dresden Drone Escapade

I guess this was the last Pirate Party fraternity boy prank before the election. Or forever, for that matter. They’re history here now, just in case you didn’t know.

And just in general, the varying reactions to the drone’s presence (Merkel’s smirk, the death stare from the other lady, and the range of reactions in between from the men on the podium) hint at the general way humans will react to the increased presence of robots and drones in everyday life.

1,700 Affordable Homes To Be Built At Tempelhof Airport?

Planned by Berlin’s city government? Shouldn’t they figure out how to build one affordable airport first?

Tempelhof

I dunno. I still like that Tempelhof mountain thingy plan the best.

Berg

Tempelhof, whose stone-clad terminal built by the Nazis in the 1930s, was closed to air traffic in 2008 and its main building is used for events including an annual beer festival. The airfield, which has two runways, has been turned into parkland where visitors jog, roller-blade on the tarmac and barbecue.

You Gotta Have Courage

68 years after Adolf Hitlers’s death, Left party town councillors in the German city of Goslar have decided it is now time for the city to show its colors and some backbone and fearlessly strip the unpopular Nazi leader of his honorary citizenship.

Hitler

It’s civil courage like this that made Germany what it is today. Or something.

Some 4,000 German towns made Hitler an honorary citizen, and many have since stripped him of the title, some right after the war, while others did it only recently, such as the southern town of Trier in 2010.

Drive More Slowly, Take The Bus, Turn Off Your Lights, Turn Down The Heat, Ban Large Livestock Farming…

To name just a very few popular (?) German Green initiatives.

Greens

“The Greens have this ‘ecological dictatorship’ feeling about them now. I used to always vote Greens. But not anymore. No one likes to be told what to do. It feels like the Greens are going to make everything more expensive.”

“Germans don’t have a sense of humor when it comes to cars and meat.”

The Big Green Machine She Is Broken

Wah? The “energy turnaround” is going to be expensive as hell? Raising taxes? Veggie Day? And the hits keep on coming. I’d ignore the polls these days too if I were a greenie.

Green

The Greens have been consistently bleeding support ever since the spring of 2011. Along the way, they have achieved a few notable successes in state elections, but the trend has been a downward one for over two years. It is as if the German electorate has suddenly decided that the party is no longer needed.

“Der Wahlkampf mit den Rezepten, wie man Kohlrouladen herstellt, ist zu Ende.”