But were afraid to ask.
A Rabbi is asked why Jews always answer a question with another question. “Why not?” he replies.
“Für mich gilt jeder als Jude, der meschugge genug ist, sich selbst einen zu nennen.”
Der Spiegel Ten Years After: Iraq Invasion Commemorated By Unleashing Obsessive-Compulsive Headline Offensive
Bam, bam, bam! The Spiegel just had to knock off three of these puppies in a row, that’s how excited they must have been about the tenth anniversary of the US-lead invasion of Iraq.
I didn’t actually read these, of course. Why should I? I already knew what was in them.
10 Lessons from America’s ‘Dumb War’
This article reminds us once again how invading Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a really dumb thing to do and how smart and farsighted and enlightened Germans were for having said no before anyone ever even had the chance to ask them.
Iraq War Seen as ‘Strategic Failure by Many’
This explains why the invasion made everything so awful “down there” and how it has turned that entire region of the world into the terrible, dreadful and hopeless place it is today.
This is all about how much nicer it was living in Iraq before that dumb old strategic failure of an invasion took place.
Where bombs once fell, residents now buy groceries. Where militias patrolled, campaign posters now hang. Yet peace is still a long way off.
Ja zum Klimawandel!
Ja zum Klimawandel? Yes to climate change? I guess I just don’t get this Earth Hour thing. I thought everybody was supposed to be against climate change.
But that’s going to be Hamburg’s motto this Sunday when the Hamburgers turn off their lights for an hour for, uh, the Earth or something. Man oh man. Berlin could never take part in an event like this. Berliners would worry too much that the power wouldn’t switch back on again once the hour was up.
And I really don’t see what all this organizational fuss is all about, either. With the German power grid in the condition it is in these days, there are bound to be all kinds of Earth hours right around the corner here before too long.
Unter dem Motto “Ja zum Klimawandel!” nehmen auch wieder das Hamburger Rathaus und die fünf Hauptkirchen teil, um ein Signal zu setzen, wie wichtig der Klimaschutz ist und dass den Beteiligten die Erde nicht egal ist.
Warning Strikes Led To Big Train Delays In Berlin This Morning
But fortunately, nobody here in Berlin seems to have noticed.
The trains here are always delayed, get it?
Bei den Warnstreiks der Bahn-Mitarbeiter sind die Berliner relativ glimpflich davon gekommen. Dafür legte ein Zwischenfall den kompletten Schienenverkehr zwischen den Bahnhöfen Zoologischer Garten und Friedrichstraße lahm.
He’s Been Looking For Freedom
Or a little media coverage, at least. Damn. Another demo party freak show happening thingy I somehow managed to miss.
Hasselhoff said on Sunday that a real estate developer’s plans to move part of the wall was “like tearing down an Indian burial ground” because of the great historical importance it had.
Where’s The Money?
Germany’s Federal Minister for the Environment, Peter Altmaier, will now be shutting down 14 German climate protection programs due to cost conerns, not that anyone here who can do any arithmetic will take much notice or much less care.
Funding for something called Elektromobilität (electromobility) will be cut first, soon to be followed by funding cuts for Stromspeichern (energy storage technology) with the other cuts soon to follow. Billions of a vital natural resource are missing, it seems (they call them “euros” here), this because European CO2 emmission rights certificate trading just ain’t bringing in the cash it’s supposed to do.
Do I detect pattern here? Why is it that the so-called real world is always getting in the way of those way cool dream world plans that so many folks out there want to make come true so really, really, really bad? Who is behind this, anyway? It just has to be a conspiracy (again).
Demnach sollten die Projekte ursprünglich aus dem Energie- und Klimafonds der Bundesregierung finanziert werden. Dort klaffe jedoch eine Milliardenlücke, weil der europäische CO2-Zertifikatehandel nicht genug Geld in die Kasse spüle.
Sarah J. J.
Speaking Of Green Disasters…
“Germany’s Green Energy Disaster: A Cautionary Tale For World Leaders”
“The costs of our energy reform and restructuring of energy provision could amount to around one trillion euros by the end of the 2030s.”
The Green Shirts vs. The Environment
Guess who’s going to win?
One would assume that ecology and the Energiewende, Germany’s plans to phase out nuclear energy and increase its reliance on renewable sources, were natural allies. But in reality, the two goals have been coming into greater and greater conflict…
Since the party’s founding in 1980, it has championed a nuclear phaseout and fought for clean energy. But now that this phaseout is underway, the Greens are realizing a large part of their dream — the utopian idea of a society operating on “good” power — is vanishing into thin air. Green energy, they have found, comes at an enormous cost. And the environment will also pay a price if things keep going as they have been.
“We should overcome the temptation to sacrifice environmental protection for the sake of fighting climate change. Preserving a stable natural environment is just as important.”
Germans Concerned That Facebook Makes Them Even More Predictable Than They Already Are
A recent study entitled “Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior” has some 80 millian German privacy advocates terribly concerned that Facebook might even be more revealing than they already feared it was.
The study has uncovered, for instance, that the vast number of users with female first names are in fact women. What is more, users who post pictures of themselves on Facebook run the very real risk of revealing to everyone their racial background. And perhaps creepiest of all was the discovery that the so-called “Facebook likes” a user “likes” with his or her Facebook like button reveal to the entire world just what it is said user “likes.”
This brings with it many sinister implications, of course. Unscrupulous data miners could deduce, for instance, that men who regularly like posts and pictures about beer are very likely to like beer themselves. Women, say, who actively like all things Barack Obama (especially after the first four years) are most definitely Democrats. And the list just goes on and on and on.
It is unclear at the moment what the privacy advocates will be able to do to curtail this flagrant invasion of privacy but at least most have agreed not to like it.
Mein Geschlecht, meine Hautfarbe, meine Drogen.
Observing Hermann 