Would you buy shampoo from this guy?
He’s big in Turkey, I guess.
“Why are you using woman’s shampoo if you’re not wearing a woman’s dress? Now there’s the hundred percent men’s shampoo Biomen. A real man uses Biomen.”
Gentrification Giants 1 – Subculture Vultures 0
An evicted group of about 20 subculture artist/activist types chained to the remains of Berlin’s graffiti-covered Tacheles alternative scene “living space” ruin is about to be forcibly dragged out kicking and screaming into German reality by black-clad gentrification special forces troops right here live on TV, I hope, but nobody can tell me when. Or on which channel or anything (maybe later in the Internetz?).
The group is defending “one of Berlin’s last bastions of alternative subculture, and are fighting eviction ahead of plans to develop it (the Tacheles) as an office and luxury apartments complex” and has to be dealt with accordingly, of course. After years of pussyfooting around with them first, I mean.
I would advise them not to let the door hit them on the way out but there are no doors at the Tacheles as they were surely used as firewood long ago during one of those quaint, Stone Age let’s-not-freeze-to-death-tonight gettogethers so popular with artist types there and elsewhere here in Berlin.
Tacheles “is just the latest in a long line of public spaces that have been lost to private investors” and will surely be missed by all, myself not included.
Darko stands behind an iron gate, his bare chest daubed in red paint with the words “victim of bank.”
PS: This German subculture is not to be confused with this other German subculture here.
Hannelore S.
We’re Only Taxing You For Your Own Good
To protect the climate. And while we’re at it we’ll tax you Americans even more.
A “departure tax?” Then I’ll just stay here. Germany’s Air Transport Tax – somehow meant to save the climate but no one can explain to me just how this works – is penalizing American carriers by taxing them the maximum amount of 45 euros per passenger.
These carriers are now suing the country on the grounds that “Germany cannot arbitrarily close its budget gap on the backs of US airlines and their passengers, who already pay taxes at excessive rates. This is a short-sighted cash grab.”
Of course it is. But they’re going to keep on taxing us anyway. Americans don’t vote here.
Die kurzsichtige Maßnahme werde der deutschen Volkswirtschaft größeren Schaden zufügen als möglicherweise an Steuereinnahmen wieder hereinkomme.
It Still Can’t Happen Here
In Toulouse, maybe. But not here in Germany.
Well nobody here in Germany seems interested in reporting about this, anyway. Hmmm. Why would the German media want to keep quiet about a German hostage-taking? Germans would never quietly knuckle under to terrorist hostage-takers, would they?
“We inform you that that your compatriot Edgar Fritz Raupach is a prisoner of the fighters of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.”
The group said it is seeking the release of Umm Seifullah al-Ansari, or Filiz Gelowicz, a Turkish-born woman jailed a year ago in Germany for aiding terrorism.
Just Say No
As usual, I mean. Berliners in Kreuzberg (or at least that active, left-wing kind) aren’t interested in finding new solutions for urban living, thank you. And they’ll even threaten you with violence if you try to establish “temporary cultural space” to attempt to do so (go ask BMW Guggenheim Lab). Kreuzbergers don’t do culture. Temporary or otherwise.
And speaking of resistence… The rest of the country is pretty much Kreuzberg all over again (only on a much larger scale) when it comes to saying no to the Internet (some call it the Internetz).
This isn’t really a news item or anything, but now certain German businessmen types are actually starting to get worried about their country “sleeping through the Internet” age like it does.
They have come to discover that their fellow Germans provide “too few qualified professionals, suffer way too much from risk aversion and are caught up in a tightly structured regulation frenzy.” Like I said, this isn’t anything new. But the real question is: What are you going to be able to do about that? Not a damned thing, of course.
Das Internet ist ein globaler Treiber für die Wirtschaft. Doch in Deutschland bremsen Fachkräftemangel und hohe Anforderungen an den Datenschutz die Firmen aus.
Germany In Grave Danger Again
It’s all over but the crying now. Or whining, if you prefer. German Wetter (weather) just keeps getting wetter!
A new study tells us that the number of “devastating” storms, heavy rains and other weather-related “natural catastrophes” has tripled in Germany since the 70s! Wow. Have there actually been three already?
Scarier still is that the climate model for the next thirty years (this in a country that can’t get the weather forecast for tomorrow right, mind you) calls for even more “heavy precipitation” that will most likely lead to – oh my God we’re all going to die – flooding! That’s right, the f-word. Oh the horror or something. And you thought it couldn’t happen here.
„Für die nächsten 30 Jahre rechnen Klimamodelle in Deutschland vor allem mit einer Zunahme der Sturmintensität und mit mehr Starkniederschlägen, die zu Überschwemmungen führen.“
Germany’s Energy Turnaround Rocks
They never promised you a rose garden (actually, they did). It looks like Germany’s Energiewende (the energy turnaround = shutting down nuclear power and waiting for solar and wind energy to pick up slack) is going to have its price, too.
And it looks likes the first installment will by about a seven percent increase in energy costs for private housholds. But Germans pay these increases gladly, I think. At least for now (seven percent is just the start, of course). It’s back to the future. It’s for the common good. Or it’s for saving the planet or something.
Uh, like why don’t they just have “the state” pay for it. Oh, that’s right. They already are (the taxpayers are, that is).
Stromtrassen, Umschlagwerke oder intelligente Stromzähler kosten den Staat Milliarden. Draufzahlen muss am Ende oft der Verbraucher – offenbar bis zu sieben Prozent in den kommenden Jahren.
Remember The Ozone Hole?
We were just kidding.
No, seriously. Something called the Montreal Protocol just saved the world as we know it from most certain destruction, bringing about a “healing of the ozone layer” and thus reducing our exposure to harmful UV rays from the sun which was being caused by, well, refrigerators and aerosol spray cans. Just like that. Almost as if by magic or something.
A German research institute has even confirmed this wonderful news, so you can bet that it’s for real (Germans are very thorough, you know). And said German research institute, like all those other research institutes out there, is being completely objective here and has in no way profited from the research funds given it to research said ozone hole phenomena and only böse Zungen (malicious tongues) would suggest otherwise.
The underlying message here: To rid the world of all manner of unpleasantness and harmful gas, both hot and cold, all we need are more protocols (like Montreal or Kyoto, say), and not less. Or fewer, I mean. And more funding, of course.
“The results are encouraging. The fact that the ozone layer in the regions researched has become thicker is a result of the successful Montreal Protocol.”
Observing Hermann 