Now That’s What I Call Starting Off With A Bang

A presidential jet carrying newly inaugurated French President Francois Hollande was hit by lightning en route to Berlin and forced to turn back to Paris, but the Socialist was unharmed and took off again in another plane, a presidential source said.

Damn. This Hollande guy is definitely more flashy than his predecessor Sarkozy was. When it comes to lightning, I mean.

Blitzschlag hin oder her. Angela Merkel empfing den französischen Präsidenten im Kanzleramt per Handschlag.

PS: Is there a metaphor here or something?

Germans Now Lecturing Americans About Religion

Or at least I think that’s what they’re doing here. Or maybe they’re just lecturing us about mandatory healthcare insurance, which clearly seems to have some religious significance in Germany.

I mean, we all know how Germans are famous for being so religious and all, but I had no idea that they had begun spreading their evangelical zeal to Obamacare, of all things. But spread they have and we should take their prosthelising in earnest (they certainly do).

Why just take a look at some of the deeper observations to be found within this religious tract, I mean Spiegel article:

In Germany, people are baffled by how hostile a country as religious as the United States can be to the principle of mandatory healthcare insurance.

The US comes across to not only Germans, but to many Europeans, as a religious country. Don’t religious Americans love their neighbors?

“For me the US is a very religious country. It doesn’t matter which religion I look at — love thy neighbor is a very, very important point in religion.”

For her, the apparent deep religiousness of many Americans doesn’t jibe with their unwillingness to be part of a healthcare community.

Well there we have it. Sin and transgression everywhere you look. The devil has entered our US-Amerikan house and will divide and fall it. All because, well, I’m not really sure why. But I think it might be because we as Americans don’t worship mandatory healthcare insurance like other folks do. Amen.

Thanks, Germany. We’ll come to see the light yet. You just wait and see.

Germans Can’t Fathom US Aversion to Obama’s Healthcare Reform

German Ecological Energy Turnaround Working!

As long as power plants that burn fossil fuels remain in operation, that is.

The Federal Network Agency warns that if ecologically questionable coal-fired power stations do not stay in operation, the German power grid will crash. Especially in Southern German “assured capacities” are missing.

Power stations old as dirt (and at least as dirty), ready to be shut down due to the high environmental pollution they cause, will have to remain in operation.

Details, details. The main thing is that Germany’s ideologically-fired power elite stay in power long enough to keep that visionary progress of theirs a comin’.

Die ökologische Energiewende in Deutschland scheint ohne umweltschädliche fossile Kraftwerke nicht zu funktionieren.

The Next Dumb Allusion To The Berlin Wall

Something called the Peace Wall, being part of Berlin’s Biennale, which will focus on political art this year (isn’t all art political?), has been constructed just down the road from Checkpoint Charlie by a Macedonian artist to “underline the gap between the upper Friedrichstrasse – characterized by fancy shops and expensive flats – and the poor southern part of the road which heads to the multi-ethnic Kreuzberg district.”

You know, it’s all about the gentrification “issue” and that terrible gap between rich and poor so prevalent in, uh, Germany.

“A wall is a symbol of division,” the artist says. “And is in itself capable of highlighting invisible gaps.”

True, I guess. But this lady clearly doesn’t know what the real Berlin Wall was about (the fewest out there who make comparisons like these do) or she would have chosen another object to work with. There were no invisible gaps about the Berlin Wall at all. It was for way real, concrete in the truest sense of the word, and had nothing at all to do with any of these fairy tale divisions artists living in free societies today have to struggle with all the time like they do, or seem to want to.

Hey, this is art. And art doesn’t have to have anything to do with reality, does it? Whether you call it political or not.

„Sie erreichen mit dieser Mauer, dass Sie diese Ecke erst recht sterben lassen.“

What’s One More Delay For The BBA?

The Berlin Brandenburg Airport, I mean. Or isn’t it the Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport?

Or does it stand for But Berlin Went Broke Already? Better not Bother With Booking Ahead?

Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit said the delay will cost money but declined to put a price tag on it.

I Don’t Know Weather To Believe This Or Not

“This is how the weather will be in Germany until 2100?”

I’d be happy if they could just get the weather report for tomorrow right once in awhile.

“In the future, climate change will hold ready for Germany more sun and severe storms in the summer and intense rainfall in mild winters.”

„Ein einzelnes zu kühles Jahr sagt nichts über Trends aus.“

Ex-Pirate Girl Treated Like Sex Object By Pirate Boys For Some Reason

She’s tired. She’s tired of being admired.

Just after walking the German Pirate Party plank due to exhaustion, ex-Pirate political manager Marina Weisband dropped the boom on her mobbing male marauders by outing them as being just as chauvanistic and sexist as male types everywhere else are, political or otherwise. Why who would have thought that? You sweet little…

Sie habe sich nie als “Star der Piraten” gesehen, sondern als “von den Medien gehypte Person.”

We Are Still A Popular Front Of The Confused And Mutually Contradictory Yet United In Our Unremitting Rage (We Think)

None of this was meant to be satirical, I believe, but I had to read it three times to be sure, sort of.

Here are few of the more hilarious tidbits:

The Occupy movement got off to a great start last fall, but living in a tent camp seemed less attractive during the Northern European winter.

“People have to see that the hibernation period is over.”

The loose-knit group still needs to figure out what it actually stands for.

A Roma family also moved in recently.

“This will be big. The issue is democracy. There are events planned around the world. We need a truck.”

As an economist and Marxist, she has ideas.

The activists are brainstorming what else they can do to make a big splash. “Maybe some sort of choreography. Can we do that?”

It will give all the people who took to the streets in 2011 to protest against financial capitalism and the political establishment, occupying public squares from Madrid to Athens to Frankfurt, the chance to show that they are still furious and prepared to stage a rebellion.

Some want to eliminate capitalism altogether, while others just want to make it more human.

Castro is still “a great visionary,” she said.

Now that even business owners, managers and bankers are becoming disenchanted with capitalism, the chorus of voices opposed to the “system” is louder and more diverse than ever before.

Will they find new answers, possibly even a new political idea?

“We don’t believe in a humane form of capitalism.”

The activists feel that the Greeks are being put under too much pressure because of their government’s austerity plans, and so they decide to dance the sirtaki.

He is about to meet with people who, like him, still feel something of the original euphoria.

Those who expect more after only a few months haven’t understood the Occupy principle. They need more time.

Those Airbus A380s Look So Freakin’ Cool

Especially when they’re Boeing 747-8-Jumbos.

Mit einer Rumpflänge von 76,3 Metern übertrifft die 747-8 als jetzt längster Passagierjet den Airbus A340-600 um knapp einen Meter und den Airbus A380 um vier Meter. Das Boeing-Flagschiff kann bis zu 600 Passagiere aufnehmen.