Energy Turnaround? Nein, Danke!

February 7, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hideology, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Energy Turnaround, Fukushima, German, Germans, Germany, Nuclear power, Renewable energy, Wind Energy Leave a comment

Not if the SüdLink power lines have to go through my backyard!

Network providers planning one of the country’s most important power-transmission pathways presented a proposal on Wednesday for an 800-kilometer, or 500-mile, corridor of high-voltage lines. The power lines would carry electricity from wind turbines in the blustery north states to power-hungry industries in the south...

But many Germans balk at the idea of high-voltage power lines running through their backyards and the fields around their communities. Last week, angry villagers in Bavaria protested plans by the network operator Amprion to construct a similar high-voltage line through their state. An attempt by the power company TenneT last year to have citizens invest in another planned expansion to the grid in the state of Schleswig-Holstein failed to win substantial support.

And mark my words here folks, the real ugliness hasn’t even begun yet. They’re never going to get this thing built.

“The corridor is not definitive, and we need feedback from citizens and communities to be able to plan this important link.”

NSA Hysteria Good For Business

February 6, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Hi-tech, High Art, Higher Education, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Edward Snowden, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, IT Industry, NSA, Paranoia, Profit, Satire, Security Leave a comment

IT business here in Germany, I mean.

Funny how that is. Makes a body wonder sometimes if helping to keep folks all hot and bothered like this about our latest “devastating crisis of confidence” is maybe sort of, I dunno, intentional or something? You know, as in profitable intentional?

I know, I know. German media and industry have higher standards than that and would never try to take advantage of a situation like this but look, if everybody else out there is going to keep going hysterical and paranoid about this novel issue of ours then I can start speculating, too. Hmmm. Now Snowden isn’t a German name, is it? Eduard certainly is, though.

“Our best marketing employee is Edward Snowden.”

Where’s The Money?

January 30, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Cost, Energy Turnaround, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Interventionism, Nuclear energy, Renewable energy, Satire Leave a comment

All of a sudden. For all of that five-year-plan-renewable-energy-turnaround-ideology-project-like-stuff in Germany, I mean. She is gone, señor.

Or at least more and more German citizens are finally waking up and simply just aren’t prepared to keep on paying ever more for less and less of whatever it was that this so-called energy turnaround of theirs was supposed to be delivering.

That is why Superminister Gabriel (didn’t he used to sing with Supertramp?) is now urging (ordering) German parliamentary lawmakers to start cutting state subsidies for renewable energies – for German industry – because they are rich and capitalistic or something and are therefore evil (he’s an SPD Superminister) and haven’t really been milked properly for this one yet. And the po folks just aren’t willing to keep paying more and more, like I said [By the way, the S in SPD stands for “social” and everything with “social” in it means “free lunch.” Read Margaret Thatcher’s quote down there on the right if you want to learn more.].

Of course why the energy turnaround has to keep on turning around the way it does like this in the first place is the really interesting question here, I find, but certainly not one that anyone here in Germany appears to be willing to ask. At least not quite yet anyway.

Yup, renewable turnaround money has sure gotten tight around here these days. Not even a Swabian housewife can help out anymore.

“We need to break the dynamics of ever-rising electricity bills, while ensuring a stable supply of energy for all.”

Next Nobel Peace Prize Winner Prematurely Announced

January 29, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, High Art, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Awards, Edward Snowden, German, Humor, Nobel Peace Prize, NSA 1 Comment

Opps or something.

This doesn’t really surprise anybody though, does it?

Seine Enthüllungen hätten zu einer friedlicheren Weltordnung beigetragen.

US Government Officials Want To Kill Me

January 27, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Edward Snowden, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, NSA, Paranoia, Satire, Treachery, Treason, Whining 1 Comment

A whining Edward Snowden has told German television in an exclusive interview.

US citizen just wants him to finally shut up and to PLEASE go away already for crying out loud, says a thoroughly disgusted me.

“These people, and they are government officials, have said they would love to put a bullet in my head or poison me when I come out of the supermarket, and then watch as I die in the shower.”

Fade To Frack

January 20, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hideology, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, European Commission, Fracking, German, Germans, Germany Leave a comment

The EU’s reputation as a model of environmental responsibility may soon be history. The European Commission wants to forgo ambitious climate protection goals and pave the way for fracking — jeopardizing Germany’s touted energy revolution in the process.

The Commission’s move further isolates Germany. Merkel’s government, a “grand coalition” of her conservatives and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), seeks to increase the share of renewables in the country’s energy mix to 60 percent by 2036.

Germany May Double Number Of Soldiers In Africa To 14

January 19, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Africa, Berlin, Bundeswehr, Central Africa Republic, Eavesdropping, Edward Snowden, EU, France, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Mali, Merkel, Satire Leave a comment

OMG! Is Germany now headed for WAR ITSELF?!? Where is Guido Westerwelle when you need him? “The deployment of German combat troops is not an option. And I have to mention just one more point. We Germans are highly involved in Afghanistan, where the French are hardly involved at all.”

According to a report in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” on Saturday the German government is planning to help reinforce the ongoing military operation in Mali through a larger and more robust French-German contingent. The newspaper also reported that government would support a possible EU military operation in the Central Africa Republic (CAR) with transport aircraft and aerial refueling.

“Europe cannot leave France on its own down there.”

PS: In a related story (not), Barack Obama Tells Germans In TV Interview That It’s OK For Them To Stop Worrying About US Spying Now So Everything Is OK Again.

Sunny, Windy, Costly And Dirty

January 17, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Coal, Consumers, Electricity, Energy, Energy Turnaround, Fukushima, German, Germans, Germany, Interventionism, Nuclear power, Planned Economy, Renewable energy, Subsidies Leave a comment

What’s not to like here?

“Super minister?” I’d say this is more like a job for Superpenner.

The difference between the market price for electricity and the higher fixed price for renewables is passed on to consumers, whose bills have been rising for years. An average household now pays an extra €260 ($355) a year to subsidise renewables: the total cost of renewable subsidies in 2013 was €16 billion. Costs are also going up for companies, making them less competitive than rivals from America, where energy prices are falling thanks to the fracking boom…

Cost is not the only problem with the Energiewende. It has in effect turned the entire German energy industry into a quasi-planned economy with perverse outcomes. At certain times on some days, sun and wind power may provide almost all German electricity. But the sun does not always shine, especially in winter, and the wind is unpredictable. And “batteries”—storage technologies that, for example, convert power to gas and back again to electricity—on a scale sufficient to supply a city are years away. Nuclear-power plants are being phased out (this week’s court decision that the closure of a plant in Hesse was illegal will raise costs even more, as it may entitle the operator to more compensation). So conventional power plants have to stay online in order to assure continuous supply.

Good Privacy Protection Is Good Weapon Protection

January 16, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: Bureaucracy, Crime, Data Privacy, Data Security, German, Germans, Germany, Gun control, Guns, Legislation, Privacy, Registration, State Control, Weapons 1 Comment

When Germans register private weapons, they do it thoroughly. But by always keeping thorough privacy protection policies in mind, too, of course.

There are 550 various Waffenbehörden (weapons agencies) in the country and they must all now register their registered weapons at the Nationale Waffenregister (national firearmes registry) to boot. Sound well-registered? It should. It is.

Unfortunately, for those who advocate strict weapon registration policies here (99.9 percent of the population?), things aren’t going to plan.

First of all, those who advocate strict weapon registration (“the public”) want to KNOW who has the weapons, how many these owners have, etc. but the firearms registry legislation does not provide for this so they are Scheiße outta luck (law enforcement officials have access, of course).

The second problem is that the numbers now indicate (as they always have elsewhere) that registered weapons still kill people. Along with all of those other “bad” illegal unregistered weapons out there, too, I mean.

Wer wie viele Waffen hat, geht die Öffentlichkeit nichts an – “Bitte betrachten Sie unsere Ablehnung nicht als unhöfliches Vorgehen. Wir sehen leider keine Möglichkeiten, Ihrem aus öffentlichen Interesse erwachsendem Anliegen geeignet zu entsprechen.”

No Spy Deal Now No No Spy Deal

January 14, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Higher Education, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Eavesdropping, Edward Snowden, Espionage, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Naivete, No Spy, NSA, Satire, Terror, Terrorists Leave a comment

As Washington said it would announce reforms to its National Security Agency (NSA) later in the week, German media were already focused on a likely disappointing outcome for Berlin in talks on a “no spy” arrangement.

Oh, I dunno. Other than Washington not promising to stop listening in on politicians’ calls or say when they are listening in on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone (or whoever else) or not allowing the Germans access to an alleged listening post on top of US embassy in Berlin, I’d say those “no spy” arrangement talks are moving along pretty well.

Doch der Fehler liegt woanders: in einer naiven Erwartungshaltung. Dass die Drahtzieher des 11. September aus Hamburg kamen, ist den Amerikanern immer noch präsent. Dass es zahlreiche Deutsche gibt, die sich nach Syrien aufgemacht haben, um dort an der Seite von Islamisten zu kämpfen, ebenfalls.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Category Archives: Hysteria