Tag Archives: Stuttgart 21

Is It Really Over?

November 28, 2011 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Helections, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Finished? Endlich vorbei? Finito and all that? For real?

 Das Votum der Bürger in Baden-Württemberg ist eindeutig: Stuttgart 21 soll gebaut werden. Das führt zu Erleichterung einerseits, Ärger andererseits. Und Politikern, die sich die Sache schönreden.

I don´t have to hear about Stuttgart 21 demonstrators anymore? I don´t have to wonder anymore about why I´ve never understood how people can go ballistic about rebuilding a city´s freakin´train station underground as if it were some unspeakably important social issue? Honest? You´re not shitting me here? The war is finally over and Johnny can come marching home?

Well then let us all stand and sing together!

Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the Lord;
he is trampling out the vintage
where the grapes of wrath are stored;
he hath loosed the fateful lightning
of his terrible swift sword;
his truth is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

Green Eco Dictatorship

May 17, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Green Types everywhere out there know that this Stuttgart 21 train station thingy cannot be allowed to be built, no matter what (the rest of us out there still don’t know just why that is but maybe we’ll figure it out yet).

And now that Stuttgart (Baden-Wuerttemberg) is Green politically, Green Terror Types are starting to come out of the woodwork and beginning to take matters into their own green hands (just like Oma und Opa used to take matters into their brown ones).

Or as Henryk Broder reports it in that provocative way he does:

The Federal Republic made a great step forward toward becoming a Green eco dictatorship yesterday. The project manager for Stuttgart 21, Hany Azer (migration background, by the way) has resigned from his post.

The reasons he named were “hostility and threats” from Stuttgart 21 opponents. Most recently he has only been able to work while under protection of the company’s personal security personnel. This news item should have caused great alarm (but it didn’t).

Oh I dunno. As long as they don’t start wearing green shirts and stuff like that everything will turn out OK… Won’t it?

Jeder Fall von sexueller Belästigung in einem Großraumbüro löst überregionale Schlagzeilen aus. Aber wenn einer der besten Ingenieure der Republik, der unter anderem Projektleiter für den Bau des Berliner Hauptbahnhofs gewesen ist, aus dem Job gemobbt wird, regt sich nicht einmal Frank Bsirske darüber auf.

Only in Germany

October 6, 2010 By in Habeas Corpus, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , 4 Comments

Possible Al Qaeda terrorist attacks? Who cares? Germans have more important things to get hysterical about: A train station project.

That’s right. But this isn’t just any train station project we’re talking about here, folks. This is the now imfamous “Stutttgart 21” train station project, whatever the hell that means.

I don’t understand this, as usual. And the more I read about it the more I see how I won’t be able to. As far as I can tell, it’s a new station that’s part of a long planned high-speed rail project that would connect Stuttgart to nearby Ulm as part of a major European transportation infrastructure project “that would eventually see a high-speed link running between Paris and Bratislava, Slovakia.”

So far so good. But then “das Volk” in Stuttgart went ape about something. I still don’t really know what it was, other than maybe it’s about having to cut down a few trees to build this thing, but now it’s devolved into out and out Revolutionary Romanticism (German style), complete with heroic demonstrations of resistance and real live police brutality (only after the demonstrators provoked them, of course).

Building a freakin’ train station becomes a Politikum (big political issue) here, in other words. But that won’t really surprise anyone who has spent any time in Germany. This kind of stuff happens here all the time. It’s easy to be part of the German Resistance Movement This Week when what you’re resisting is as, well, about as harmless as it gets. It’s so pitiful it’s not even funny. It’s hilarious.