No other animal has as many friends and foes, or is the source of so much friction.
The presence of wolves (in Germany) is turning upright citizens crooked and driving otherwise well-mannered conservationists berserk, triggering a wave of harassment, denunciations and lawsuits. Politicians, biologists, forest rangers, hunters, farmers and even city dwellers are involved.
So what do you want, Germany? The Germans don’t even know themselves what they want with Europe and/or Germany: In a survey this September by Der Spiegel, clear majorities of Germans said that it wasn’t right to help Greece and other countries with the bailout fund and that Germany was not benefiting from the euro zone. But a clear majority also believed that European institutions should be given more power in a crisis. Classic German schizophrenia again or what?
Not that it matters or anything. In the final analysis nobody is asking you what you want: The European Union is a union not of peoples but of heads of state. “General Franco was a head of state, too.”
Nope, I still don’t know what “Europe” is supposed to mean here, but I keep getting the sneaking suspicion that I’m not the only one living in Europe who feels that way. It’s just that I, as a non-European, have the luxury of being able to admit that I don’t get it and that I don’t really care.
But as this latest crisis develops, one thing seems certain. Whatever Europe may be, it clearly has something to do with illusion. Illusion with an s on the end. With lots of illusions. One illusion after the next. Here’s one, for example:
Europe is founded on the illusion of German money without German control. And that bargain has worked, until now, because of the way Germany sees itself within Europe (which itself, as the polls suggest, is an illusion).
“As a good German one has to be a good European.”
It’s all over. All over again already, I mean. German press reports have confirmed that typhoon Roke has reached Fukushima ITSELF.
Worse still, the dreadful storm has wreaked havoc there, having damaged one of the facility’s surveillence cameras. It may have even knocked it down. German citizens in or around Japan would be asked to leave the area immediately if there were any there to be asked to do so but there aren’t, so they won’t be. German citizens at home are asked to remain there, at home, until further notice.
It goes without saying that Germany’s nuclear energy policy will certainly be reviewed again although there’s not all that much more nuclear energy left here to policy anymore.
Außer einer durch den Sturm beschädigten Überwachungskamera gab es keine weiteren Schadensmeldungen aus dem bei einem Erdbeben sowie einem Tsunami im März havarierten Atomkraftwerk Fukushima-Daiichi.
In a shocking new study or something, psychologist expert types have just discovered that up to 17 percent of German young people between the ages of 14 and 20 are currently suffering from the what is now to become the dreaded mass illness ailment sickness known as “social phobia” (formarly known as adolescence). No one has bothered to tell them about it yet, either.
These chronic sufferers, especially the girl ones, regularly avoid situations in which they must meet people they don’t know and do things that they don’t want to do. But there is good news, researchers say. This scourge of mankind (teenkind?) can be treated successfully. By finally growing up already.
“Die gute Nachricht ist, dass soziale Phobien erfolgreich behandelt werden können.”
Large portions of the German political left have announced that they will not attend Pope Benedict XVI’s upcoming speech in the Bundestag.
At least half of the Left Party delegates will boycott the visit as will over one quarter of the SPD politicians. The Greens will be protesting around the corner at the Brandenburg Gate during the speech.
“We have nothing against the Pope’s visit per se,” said one anonymous spokesman in clear and palpable angst hooded in black and lurking in the sinister darkness of one of the parliament building’s more eerie delegate seating areas late the other night, “It’s just that we don’t care for all those crosses and the prayer. And the number 7. And the garlic.”
“Er kommt ja nicht ungebeten, sondern alle Fraktionen haben zugestimmt.”
The Fukushima worst case scenario has now actually happened, in Germany. And the Fukushima worst case scenario is that the Fukushima worst case scenario never happened. Sometimes the truth raises it’s ugly and pointy little head, even here. Only for a second or two, but still.
I read the news today, oh boy. And not that any of you out there really care or anything, but I discovered that even journalists with the best of politically correct intentions can screw up from time to time. In this case it was in a Zeit article entitled Stress und Strahlung (Stress and Radiation) by Hans Schuh*. It was about how, well, something called “psychosocial stress” resulting from the Fukushima incident will now be producing more victims than the radiation did (I think he meant in Japan because psychosocial stress victims have been dropping like flies here in Germany for months now).
Like duh, Hans. Something has to produce victims when the “Super-GAU” everyone was banking on never materialized, right?
My favorite line in the article: In hindsight it has been revealed that with regard to one aspect of the accident’s occurance the world community (he actually means Germany here, of course) was taken in by an error: The “worst case scenario in the fuel cooling basin” never took place.
I’ve got to know, folks: How on earth did this ever get past the Brain Police?
I know how. “The people” will automatically understand that the worst case scenario took place anyway, sort of, irgendwie. They have long been aware of the fact that their reality must be made to comply with your/our ideologically motivated fear agenda, so it ain’t no big thing, this one little slip-up. This type of thing only makes Newspeak stronger, I think, although I can’t claim to be fluent in it yet myself.
Im Rückblick offenbart sich auch, dass die Weltgemeinde in Bezug auf das Unfallgeschehen zumindest in einem Punkt einem Irrtum aufgessen ist: Der “GAU im Abklingbecken”, der global Schlagzeilen machte fand gar nicht statt.”
* You won’t be finding this article online for some reason. I guess it’s not fit for the masses just yet.
News Alert! Here’s the article after all. They publish these online a little later, I guess.
A new study from the R+V Insurance Company (hmmm, an insurance company) indicates that Germans have a whole new list of things to scare the Hosen off them that they didn’t have last year. Is there a pattern developing here or something?
Some of this year’s top favorites (so far) are ecological catastrophes (a perennial hit), the “super worst case scenario” that took place after the earthquake in Japan, the so-called EHEC scandal (go organic sprouts!) and those bloody and yucky revolts still going on down there in the Arabian World.
But what really scares them most is, well, their money. Or the thought of losing it, I should say. Along with their fear of rising energy costs (hmmm, where might those rising energy costs be coming from?), over 70 percent of Germans asked are scared to death of the imminent bankruptcy of a few of them there EU countries down south which will cost the German taxpayer dearly.
Hey. No angst, no fun.
70 Prozent der Deutschen befürchten, dass die drohende Pleite einiger EU-Länder den deutschen Steuerzahler teuer zu stehen kommt – keine Angst erreichte 2011 höhere Werte.
Assange HIMSELF just spoke in Berlin (at the Consumer Electronics Unlimited, or IFA), sort of.
Although why he would be asked to speak (via satellite) at an electronics fair is unclear to me, unless it’s to show off that snappy new electronic ankle monitor he is wearing.
But seriously folks, even über popstars (popüberstars?) who speak in the majestic plural while being held under house arrest for, uh, something, I forget (we all do), can contribute greatly to our über pop culture in an über dimensional way, I guess. One just has to be über enough.
And he is, I’m told, and this was it (his über contribution): “We present the truth to the public. We must know how the world functions. We must be clever and brave enough (brave new world enough?) to uncover conspiracies.”
And we must be ready and willing to irresponsibly endanger the lives of other people just to feed our way gone out of control egos for our own sake, ahmen, because we are, after all, nothing but a bunch of insufferable assholes.
“Dass sie ihn wie einen Popstar behandeln, nervt.”
Breaking up is hard to do. But it’s about freakin’ time already, don’t you think?
Now that it is becoming clearer and clearer that the euro crisis is not going to get fixed with the institutions at hand and the will that isn’t, Chancellor Merkel HERSELF has finally had enough and appears ready to do the one thing that will finally make everyone out there happy: Create new institutions and a “two-speed Europe” that won’t work either, but still.
What this means is, uh, I’m not sure really (can someone out there please explain this plan to me?), but I think it means creating something called a “core Europe” (the countries that haven’t filed for bankruptcy yet) run by Germany and then a “rotten to the core Europe” (all the other loser countries that nobody wants anymore) run by nobody. I mean, running on empty.
This won’t really solve anything, of course, but it’s an elegant European way of tossing in the towel and passing the buck on to someone else, in this case someone with absolutely no accountability who nobody out there has ever even heard of before: European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.
Are we having late Roman decadence yet? This divide and conquer stuff, I mean divide and save, makes me wonder sometime.
Van Rompuy doesn’t seek the limelight and enjoys writing haikus about nature in his free time.
Are we having a Reichseuro yet?
“Conceived as a tool for integrating Germany into Europe, and preventing Germans from dominating others, it (the euro) has become the opposite.”
Germany’s neighbors and allies are growing increasingly concerned about Berlin’s foreign policy direction. Some even fear that efforts to export its fiscal ideas could mean the prosperous country has lost sight of the European idea. Or worse yet, that it wants to dominate the currency union.
You will save until it hurts, I tell you! Sign ze papers old man!
