Germany: Thousands evacuated in Berlin as World War II bomb is defused – A quarter-ton World War II bomb was discovered in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes as police set up a radius around the unexploded ordinance.
The ones they actually detonate are pretty rare – and way more fun.
German oddity 15: Germany is a place where huge underground bombs are routinely unearthed all around the country and this barely even makes second page news. In fact, most Germans directly affected are more annoyed about it than anything else. They grudgingly leave their homes until the bomb crews have disarmed or detonated the damned things. Over 5,000 bombs are found in Germany every year.
The place where you don’t want thriving companies offering gainful employment and increasing property value in your neighborhood.
I get it. It’s about gentrification again. But the problem here isn’t the evil capitalist rich swooping in to speculate and force the poor out of their neighborhoods. The problem is a classic case of “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” The German government in general and the Berlin government in particular have been “helping” German renters for decades in ways that have discouraged Germans from owning property of their own (the vast majority of Berliners pay rent). Then when reality finally strikes (supply and demand = rising rents) the same politicians can’t help these renters anymore and leave them high and dry with rents they can no longer afford to pay. Ain’t nothing new.
Kreuzberg has long been one of the most affordable areas of Berlin, making it a haven for students, immigrants, artists and activists, a hub of culture, night life and left-wing politics. But in a pattern repeated in similar neighborhoods in many of the world’s wealthiest cities, affluent people have moved in, too, in recent years, bringing with them the social tensions of gentrification.
It’s May Day in Berlin! And Berliners are big on tradition.
Tuesday I watched the riot . . . Seen the cops out on the street Watched ’em throwin’ rocks and stuff And chokin’ in the heat Listened to reports About the whisky passin’ ’round Seen the smoke and fire And the market burnin’ down Watched while everybody On his street would take a turn To stomp and smash and bash and crash And slash and bust and burn
Berliner Polizei rechnet mit heftigen Krawallen – 5300 Beamte im Einsatz
More budding crime in Kreuzberg. I bet the Greens planted this stuff. Or maybe some other dope. What a bunch of crackpots.
Kreuzberg is a really seedy district, you know. And these weren’t even potted plants. They just found this stuff among the weeds. I tell you, this town is really going to pot…
I got a million of ’em, folks!
Dass in Berlin-Kreuzberg öffentlich ein Joint geraucht wird, ist nichts Besonderes. Aber bei mehreren hundert Cannabis-Pflanzen auf einer öffentlichen Grünanlage wird dann selbst in Berlin die Polizei aktiv.
Talk about your sleeper cell. That smooth-ISIS-rapping womanizer Deso Dog, aka Denis Da Dogg himself, just fell for the oldest trick in the How-to-Spy-101-for-Dummies book and married an FBI operative who just slipped off to Turkey only to be turned over to those caring folks at the FBI in the US-Amerika itself.
But not before she had transmitted tons of way cool information to them about the romantic rapping sap. Like how he throws down his rhymes half-naked in front of the bathroom mirror, I suppose. And what kind of top secret plans he and his ISIS buddies have been working on these days. You know, stuff like that. Dumbass.
Der ISIS-Kämpfer (39) in Syrien war in die Liebesfalle einer Undercover-Agentin getappt. Sie sollte eine enge Beziehung zu ihm aufbauen, um auf diese Weise wichtige Informationen über die Terrortruppe abzuschöpfen.
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.
“We have no intention of building a wall in Kreuzberg.” Not yet anyway. But if record-breaking numbers of tourists keep coming to Berlin all the freakin’ time, Green politicians may have to reconsider that.
It appears that certain residents in Berlin Kreuzberg have become quite hostile when it comes to hostels these days. They don’t want their colorful Kiez (neighborhood) tainted by tacky tourists. They want to keep on doing the tainting themselves.
Remember: This is the same biotope where expensive cars go up in spontaneous combustion on a regular basis and McDonalds restaurants are the work of the devil herself. Tourism? Nein danke!
Die Grünen wollen die Zahl der Hostels und Hotels in dem Bezirk beschränken, außerdem umweltfreundliche Unterkünfte mit Ökosiegel auszeichnen.
Observing Hermann 