God punishes us, I mean you, by giving you what you want.
The 1960s saw demonstrations across West Germany against the Vietnam war and the 1980s brought large protests outside some U.S. bases against plans to deploy new medium-range nuclear missiles. U.S. forces have always been viewed by some, especially on the political left, with hostility, as occupiers.
“We Germans fought for the Russians to go, now we are fighting for the Americans to stay.”
Greece’s finance ministry has named 4,152 individuals as major tax dodgers that owe the state a combined 14.9 billion euros in unpaid back taxes as part of a campaign to name and shame tax evaders.
And Germany is empört (indignant), as usual. The interesting thing about the list though are some of the Greek names, I find. These are names like Grundmann, Hutter und Elstner. They almost sound like, I dunno, like German names. But that can’t be. Germans don’t evade taxes, right? Not unless they live in Greece, they don’t.
Einige der Namen klingen für hiesige Ohren seltsam vertraut: Namen wie Grundmann, Hutter und Elstner. Schulden Deutsche den Griechen Geld?
And I’m bigger, too (maybe bigger than two or three of them). But I’m in jail now, which isn’t all that smart, although it smarts my pride, which is at least as big as I am.
Hey, what’s a little copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering on a massive scale these days? Ain’t no big deal, says German hacker millionaire/thief and self-proclaimed god Kim Dotcom (don’t ask, it’s an old German name or something). “You’ll never get me alive, coppers!” he also said, locking himself in his panic room. But then they got him after all. And now, if found guilty in the US of A, he could get up to 20 years in jail.
But that’s not the worst of it. After they arrested him they did the most worstest and awfulest thing you could ever do to a German ever: They impounded his cars.
Many of the cars had vanity licence plates, including a Rolls-Royce Phantom bearing “GOD”, an AMG Mercedes carrying “HACKER”, and another labelled “MAFIA”.
German lawmakers are like lawmakers everywhere else on the planet. At least when it comes to giving themselves raises, they are. They give themselves modest raises, of course, albeit at very regular intervals, and as quietly as humanly possible.
This time they’re giving themselves a ridiculously measly 500 euro a month raise, bringing the grand total up to a less than measly 10,700 euros per month.
Now that may seem like a lot to you, but it really isn’t. Ask any SPD man and he’ll tell you why: “Representatives cannot be compared to those in lower income brackets.”
Well there we have it. They have to be on equal footing with others out there with, uh, I dunno, lots of money? Otherwise they might be susceptible to corruption or something. And we (I mean you) don’t want that because in Germany, as you may know, there is no corruption. So shut up and pay up.
“Abgeordnete kann ich nicht vergleichen mit unteren Einkommensgruppen.”
Remember how the Greens in Berlin shot themselves in the foot after elections last fall by sticking ever so stickily to sticky green principles by just saying no to a two-mile stretch of Berlin autobahn that everybody in town wanted but them?
It was a stellar performance in reality check checking and how not to form a coalition government with the SPD even though everyone seemed convinced up until then that the Greens were either going to take over the Berlin city goverment completely or at least play a major role as junior partner (neither happened).
Well surprise, surprise. Green shirt ideologues what’s upstairs have now just okayed a working paper calling for a more offensive and quite massive expansion of the German autobahn system in West Germany. This is not a sell-out of green principles, however, not that you were even thinking that.
Green autobahns, as you may know, are made of biodegradable concrete and recycled plastic ALDI shopping bags, constructed using environmentally friendly green technology (wind-, I mean hot air-powered) and progressive landscaping techniques which allow for low carbon tire prints, renewable eco-outhouse rest stop stops and an overal eco-friendly and very green if not rather high global environmental greenhouse impact.
Alles im grünen Bereich, wie immer.
Not that anybody out there knows who the German President is or could really care less if they did, but a new German verb has just entered the language (in his honor?) referring to, well, referring to what, anyway?
The new German verb refers to the manner in which scandal-plagued President Christian Wulff has sought to manage revelations that he accepted a favourable home loan from a businessman, holidayed at the villas of the wealthy and left a threatening message for the editor of Bild newspaper.
It’s called wulffen and actually has two meanings (at least two), according to the director of the German Language Association in Dortmund. The first is to talk on and on unprompted. The second means to be evasive about a particular issue without actually telling a lie.
Damn. I really had no idea that politicians the world over have actually been wulffen with me the whole time.
“It means something in-between.”
I always knew that I never liked George Clooney and I thought I knew why (he makes such lousy movies), but this latest comment of his has made me reevaluate my opinion.
He announced that he would like to play the role of Angela Merkel, if anybody would ever offer it to him, because “I‘ve always wanted to be like a small German woman.”
No, I don’t know what that was supposed to mean, either.
And no, it’s not just his films anymore, nor his boring pacifism and human rights concerns or his inane and poorly acted political morality made in Hollywood that gets my goat this time, it’s the fact that he clearly wants to dress up like a woman (albeit as one who wears pant suits all the time) and just doesn’t have the guts to do so.
And here I thought the guy prided himself in having a little integrity. Puh-shaw.
“Fast jeder hat doch mal einen Joint oder eine Wasserpfeife geraucht.”
Now if we could only learn to harness the power of falling solar energy company stocks…
Solar Millennium AG plunged by a record in Frankfurt trading after becoming the second publicly traded German solar company to file for insolvency.
Let’s face it, people: The sun and Germany just don’t mix.
Solar Millennium war ein grüner Börsenstar. Beim Solarkraftwerk-Hersteller klang immer alles nach Weltrettung, ständig ging es um die Zukunft der Menschheit. Seit Donnerstag ist das Unternehmen pleite und es wird klar: Viele hundert Millionen Euro sind weg. Es droht einer der größten Anlageskandale der Geschichte.
Remember long, long ago when the US messed up so awfully and needed so desperately to get out of Iraq as soon as possible (I’m talking the German view here, folks)?
Well, now the big American mistake is that they just left. Everything is falling apart again already and it’s all our fault, again already.
The Germans should know what they’re talking about here this time, though. US troops are still in their country and have been since 1945.
Kaum haben die letzten US-Truppen den Irak verlassen, brechen im Land alte Konflikte auf.
“Fukushima changed my attitude towards nuclear energy,” she said.
Now, though, it would appear that German industry is relying on government assistance to pursue the construction of nuclear power plants abroad.
Four applications for government export guarantees on nuclear power plant projects are currently under consideration. Known as Hermes guarantees, the program protects German companies from non-payment on overseas deals. The four projects are located in Finland, Great Britain, China and India.
“The nuclear phaseout must also apply to export guarantees.”
Observing Hermann 