The Mystery Of The Dying Dialect

It’s another one of those “not much of a mystery here at all” mysteries.

Icke

Why is “Berlinerisch,” the Berlin dialect, dying out? Do the math.

“Less and less people speak the true Berliner dialect,” was the title of a recent newspaper article that immediately alarmed me. Young people no longer find Berlinerisch cool, and the 60,000 people who move to the city every year aren’t planning on learning it either…

Meanwhile, only a quarter of all Berliners were actually born in Berlin – and that ratio is sinking. It’s bad enough that Berliners are bound to disappear; we can’t just let the language die out.

‘Icke’ should be World Cultural Heritage

USA

Beautiful German weapon sale of the week.

German

Because somebody has to admire them.

German weapons firms have found eager buyers in the United States. Stats show that stock prices of US gunmakers rise after shootings like the one in Las Vegas…

Heckler & Koch (H&K), based in Oberndorf, southern Germany, is currently building a $23 million (€19.55 million) gun factory in Columbus, Georgia, that will exclusively make “sports and hunting” weapons for the US civilian market.

“We’re the Porsches.”

Deutsche Post Introduces New Robotic Technology To Deliver Packages Late More Efficiently

Intent on keeping up with the times, the German Post is now in the process of introducing a so-called Postbot that will help human postmen deliver their packages later than ever before, or not at all.

Postbot

Based on their human counterparts, the Postbot will regularly call in sick, inexplicably lose letters and packages assigned to it once it leaves the post office and regularly pretend to have ringed at apartments located two floors or higher before leaving a notice in the mailbox claiming that nobody was home when they were there. The Postbot will do this noticably faster and more efficiently, however, failing to deliver up to seven times the number of undelivered packages normal German postmen fail to deliver.

Union officials have expressed concern that the Postbot could threaten Deutsche Post jobs and insists that the robot must be granted obligatory union memborship to help slow down this frantic pace of technological advance.

In zwei Zustellbezirken wird das vierrädrige, 1,50 Meter hohe Gefährt den Boten hinterher fahren. Es könne bis zu 150 Kilo Briefe und Pakete transportieren, stoppe vor Hindernissen und überwinde Bordsteine. Mittels Sensoren erkennt er die Beine der menschlichen Postboten und folgt ihnen in Schrittgeschwindigkeit.

 

German Of The Day: Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz

That means… Beats the hell out of me. I think it means something like Internet Enforcement Law.

Mass

At any rate, it’s this really clever new law pushed through by German Justice Minister Heiko Mass (SPD) – a particularly lame duck because his party is now history after last week’s election – that forces Internet companies like Facebook to remove “obviously illegal” posts (whatever that means) within 24 hour or pay big fines. This takes care of “hate speech” forever, see? Brilliant.

Of course it will also take care of a lot of posts that will have nothing at all to do with hate speech but will be blocked anyway by these companies. Just in case, you know?

Free speech ist not quite as free as it used to be in Germany. But it’s worth it, right?

Kritiker bemängeln, dass die Rechtsdurchsetzung in private Hände gelegt wird, und sie fürchten ein “Overblocking“: Die Betreiber könnten im Zweifel lieber zu viele Inhalte entfernen, um nicht mit dem NetzDG in Konflikt zu geraten. Dadurch gerate die Meinungsfreiheit in Gefahr.

 

German Of The Day: Ideologische Leerformeln

That means empty ideological formulas. And that is what author Thilo Sarrazin accuses Angela Merkel of hiding behind.

Sarrazin

“Merkel claims that she cannot see that she has done anything wrong. She acts as though she does not understand what belongs to the core responsibilities of a national government. That is, to decide who is allowed to enter the country and who is allowed to remain. Merkel does not have the Germans or the German people in view, she follows an internationalist and universalistic political approach.”

This guy regularly pisses everybody off with these “incorrect” views of his. And he’s SPD, for crying out loud. More power to him, I say. When he’s right on the money like he is here, at least.

Merkel tut so, als ob sie nicht verstanden hätte, was zu den Kernzuständigkeiten einer Zentralregierung gehört. Nämlich darüber zu entscheiden, wer ins Land kommen darf und wer sich hier aufhalten kann. Merkel hat nicht die Deutschen oder das deutsche Volk im Blick, sie verfolgt einen internationalistischen und universalistischen Politikansatz. Das kann man gut oder schlecht finden. Aber viele finden das nicht gut.

German Of The Day: Gesichtsverhüllung

That means face shrouding or face disguising.

Gesicht

And as of today it is against the law to do so in Austria. It’s a burqa ban, so-to-speak. Too bad about all those other clown masks out there that people like to wear, though. And Halloween is coming up soon too, you know.

The restrictions are aimed at ‘ensuring the cohesion of society in an open society’, it says, and violations will be punished with a fine of up to €150.

Ähnliche Burkaverbote gibt es auch in Frankreich und Belgien. Der Europäische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte hat in zwei Urteilen festgestellt, dass das Verbot rechtens ist.

Kiss Me You Big Dummy

But no more tongues.

Gerhard

Already head of the shareholders’ committee for Nord Stream (majority-owned by Russian state gas company Gazprom), Vlad Putin’s point man/gas man Gazprom Gerd Schroeder (he’s a former German chancellor (SPD) or something) has now been named head of the board of directors of Russian state oil giant Rosneft.

Rosneft is on the European Union’s list of companies facing sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, for starters, but who’s going to make a stink about that?

The chair of the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Norbert Röttgen, told German public broadcaster ZDF on Friday that it was “completely unbelievable” that Schröder would “cash in” on his earlier role as chancellor at a Russian company.

Rosneft was a “central building block” in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s system of power, Röttgen said. He went on to accuse Schröder of working to heighten Germany’s energy dependence on Russia.

Completely unbelievable? This has been going on for years, folks. What’s there not to believe about it now? We live in a world where there are no consequences for behavior like this. Get used to it already.