That means confiscation or dispossession. You know, like confiscating private property?
And the German Greens hold this to be denkbar – another cool German word meaning conceivable or possible.
After all, the world must be fair and if rising property rents in cities like Berlin – caused by city governments like Berlin (Social Democrats and Greens for decades) – are creating hardship for the 85 percent (!) of Berliners who don’t own property – the government does everything it can to discourage owning property here – then the government that created this mess will simply confiscate the private property of those currently developing new housing and… And what? Give it to the poor? Been there, done that. We all know how that turns out. And who foots the bill. Robin Hoodlums never learn. They have no intention of learning.
Thousands took to the streets of Berlin on Saturday in protest against rising property rents and called for properties of large-scale landlords with more than 3,000 houses to be taken over by the government.
“Das Grundgesetz sieht Enteignungen zum Allgemeinwohl ausdrücklich vor.”
Not if you’ve lived in Germany long enough there isn’t. Or you won’t notice it, I should say.
Germans Invented Daylight Saving Time—Now They’re Going to Kill It – The European Parliament voted in favor of stopping the practice by 2021, following a poll last year from the EU in which 84% of the respondents voted in favor of reverting to one time year-round. The law must now be passed by national governments…
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is a force behind the movement, having vowed to back the end of Daylight Saving Time in September last year, after the results of the poll were released. The survey proved it was the will of the people, he declared; “Clock-changing must stop.”
But in reality, it was mostly just the will of the Germans.
Out of 4.6 million responders to the poll, 3 million were German. (The country accounts for about one-sixth of the EU’s total population.)
“If we didn’t have the time change, and today someone would come up with the idea of introducing it, everybody would think that person was crazy.”
How German angst created the welfare state – The state sets the tone. Your health insurance contributions are deducted automatically from your salary at a rate of 14.6 percent. You and your employer pay half each. Unemployment, pension and long-term care insurance are also taken out of your pay.
Liability insurance isn’t legally required, but people will raise an eyebrow if you don’t have any. Additional dental insurance, for procedures not covered by the statutory system, comes widely recommended. And if you have a pet, expect to be judged for not guarding against all eventualities…
See German Oddity 11. Germans don’t like surprises. That is probably why they have insurance for practically anything you can imagine. It’s crazy. They not only have vacation insurance, for example, they also have what-if-I-decide-to-cancel-my-vacation insurance. They have insurance for their insurance, you see. And if you were to ever tell a German that you didn’t have any Rechtschutzversicherung (legal costs insurance) they would gasp for breath and look at you like you just beamed down from Mars.
Self-abnegating Germans obsess about becoming more European than the other Europeans only to make the EU more German than anyone wants it to be.
What makes me chuckle about the Brexiteers is how little they understand the German mindset. Here in Germany, the European Union is a religion. It is ingrained so heavily in the DNA of nearly every German citizen that any reasoned argument to counter its domination, or challenge its direction, is swiftly dismissed. The integrity of the EU – its unity, identity, money and rules – is central to German identity. That’s why they’ve maintained such a tough stance over Brexit.
And there is a clear reason why. As stated here, The EU is Germany writ large.’
The EU is a religion for Germans – no wonder Brexit is going so badly.
Only the ship already sank and the rats are all wet. In more ways than one.
Sometimes you’ve got to lose in life to get ahead. Like three times in a row. As did the SPD‘s top candidate for the elections in Hesse, Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel, before landing this way cool cushy job as Personalvorstand bei der staatseigenen Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GiZ) – the Human Resources Director at the State-Owned Company for International Cooperation – yesterday. For 200,000 euros a year.
Now that’s the kind of Social Democracy I can live with, pal. And hey; without losers, where would the winners be?
KÜNFTIG RUND 200 000 EURO JAHRESGEHALT FÜR PARTEI-VIZE SCHÄFER-GÜMBEL. Spitzenjob als Belohnung für SPD-Wahlverlierer!
After Missing Emissions Targets, Germany Creates Climate Watchdog.
Brilliant, really. First you shut down all your nuclear power plants, build more coal-firing power plants to compensate for them (renewable energy isn’t enough here for some odd reason) and then fail to meet the ridiculously ambitious emissions reduction goals you have set.
Then, once you’ve finally come clean about not being able to come clean, you “set up a ‘climate cabinet’ to coordinate emissions reduction efforts and ensure politicians(you, that is)keep their promises.”
I thought Kafka was dead. Come on, now. Did he write this?
Environment minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) detailed the plan to create a ministerial group to German newspaper Tageszeitung on Saturday, saying it would ensure that ideas to lower the country’s emissions don’t slip through the cracks.
It’s not like the Bundeswehr‘s aircraft can fly anywhere now. This way they can at least ship them from A to B.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is endorsing the idea of developing a joint European aircraft carrier, as suggested by her party’s leader. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who succeeded Merkel in December as leader of the Christian Democratic Union, made the proposal in a weekend response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposals for European Union reform. She noted that Germany and France are already working together on a future European combat aircraft.
Uhm, have they maxed out on her medication? I guess it really is time for her to leave.
German academics and authors call for end to ‘gender nonsense‘ – .Open letter hits back at demand for more gender-neutral nouns.
A group of German authors, comedians and academics have added fuel to the flames of an increasingly bad-tempered culture war over language bias by calling for a fightback against “ridiculous linguistic constructions” designed to make German more gender-neutral.
“And no one has been bothered by the fact that everything feminine has for 1,000 years been based on the [neuter] word das Weib.”
Not. Same old same old, if you ask me: Germans see ties worsening as Americans remain positive.
In the U.S., seven-in-ten say that relations with Germany are good, a sentiment that has not changed much in the past year. Germans, on the other hand, are much more negative: 73% say that relations with the U.S. are bad, a 17-percentage-point increase since 2017.
Americans want more cooperation with Germany, but Germans don’t reciprocate.
German students walk out of school in climate change protest – Germany’s Angela Merkel backs student ‘Friday for Future’ climate protests.
The protest is part of a global movement known as “School Strike 4 Climate” or “Fridays For Future” launched last August when Thunberg began protesting outside the Swedish parliament on school days.
About 3,000 students marched through the streets of the port city chanting: “We are here, we are loud, because you are stealing our future.”
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