Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Turks and Kurds and cops, oh my!

The impending Turkish march into northern Iraq/Kurdistan seems to be getting everybody nervous – in Berlin of all places. “Emotional unrest” is growing between the city’s two favorite laugh-a-minute ethnic groups and came to a boil over the weekend when violence broke out between nationalist Turks and Kurdish rebels in Kreuzberg.



The losers of the first skirmish: The Berlin police department, 18 to 15 (18 injured policemen, 15 arrests). And the cops are sure that this is just the start of something much bigger (but they always are). We are nowhere near the payoffs, in other words, much less finals.

But they should have smelled a rat ahead of time on this one, I think. These clashes took place at the end of a demonstration which had been given the taunting title of “Unity and Brotherhood between Turks and Kurds”. Talk about a provocation. That kind of unity and brotherhood crap makes my blood boil just hearing it and I’ve never even been to Turkey, much less Kurdistan, wherever that is. This week, I mean.

I have also heard from unreliable sources that certain other unnamed and unreliable local "operatives" are considering handing out comic books before the next demonstration in a vain attempt to cool things down a bit. And these aren’t Mickey-Maus-Hefte, either.

P-K-K, B-N-D, M-O-U-S-E!

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:27:05 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Monday, October 29, 2007

Need for speed

Bringing up the subject of tougher speed limits in Germany is a lot like suggesting more stringent gun control in the United States. A polarizing issue par excellence, speedy German people react almost as emotionally to the first suggestion as heavily-armed American people do to the second. Just ask that little old lady in the wheelchair. It doesn’t really matter if it might make sense or not (I think it would), it is a subject that is emotional geladen (emotionally charged, as in loaded, as in gun) and therefore an easy one to have blow up in your face.



That is why it is all the more surprising to me that the SPD would seriously suggest the introduction of a general speed limit on the autobahn (130 kilometers per hour or 80 mph) as they did at their party congress held over the weekend. An environmentally-friendly measure meant to reduce emissions on German roads, many SPD heavyweights themselves (Minister for the Environment Sigmar Gabriel, for instance, a heavyweight in more ways than one) question the logic of speed limits.

Chancellor Angela Merkel jumped for joy at the announcement and jumped on the issue immediately and repeatedly, saying on Sunday that her government would not try to introduce a speed limit on the autobahn never ever and that everybody can keep driving like bats out of hell until they are blue in the face, or pass out, or whatever comes first.

Damn. Just when it looked as though the folks at the SPD might have turned the corner sort of maybe perhaps and begun slowing down their slide into opposition oblivion, they shoot themselves in the foot with a dumb albeit loaded issue again. But the SPD has a long tradition when it comes to stuff like this. It’s just what they do.

Wollen wir noch eine Runde Russisches Roulette spielen?

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Her damit!

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:43:51 | Permanent Link | Comments (6) |

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Halloween Hegemony


alt : http://www.youtube.com/v/wZ4wCC4gVYs
Posted by clarsonimus at 07:07:02 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Who let the minks out?

Elementary, Watson. The fur farm activists did it.



Residents near the small town of Grabow in Saxony-Anhalt have been warned to stay indoors and hid their expensive mink furs after some 7,500 hungry and dangerous mink escaped from a high-security fur farm camp near here yesterday (“You’ll never take me alive, warden!”).

Dozens of specially-trained mink mercenaries and some 20 soldiers from the German Army have armed themselves with hooks and nets and are mercilessly hunting down the vanished varmints as we speak, so-to-speak. Well it's better than being in Afghanistan, I guess.

Not unlike another group of prisoners trapped in another camp near here a few years back, only this time with a little more help from the outside, these marauding minks tell us a noble story about persistence and heroism and determination and baseball and pointy little teeth and hurt feelings and maybe even a little flying fur, too.

Despite their imminent recapture, I mean. Damned nice try anyway though, chaps. Better luck next time.

I did it fur you, baby.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Her damit!

Posted by clarsonimus at 09:20:11 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

Friday, October 26, 2007

The CO2 Chancellor

Strange, isn’t it? On the one hand she is the crusading Chancellor against greenhouse effect continually flying around the globe to talk about saving the world’s climate, on the other hand she is unable to live up to her government’s somewhat ambitious plans to reduce CO2 emissions by 40 percent because of all of the new coal-burning power plants she plans to build. Lesser souls might tend to think that building such plants is not wirklich (really) compatible with having a serious climate protection policy, but then again lesser souls obviously don’t understand what is really going on “up there”.

The words or our fearless leaders are often veiled in ambiguity. And even when they are not, they can remain confusing all the same. Take these, for instance: "Chancellor Merkel is a strong voice of reason calling upon nations around the world to face up to the dangers and seize the opportunity to find a solution”, recently said Gore HIMSELF. "I, MYSELF, am optimistic that we will see a big change in the way the world confronts this crisis and if it does change, it will be in no small part due to the leadership of Chancellor Merkel."

Does HE mean leadership by the way she is maintaining and even expanding Europe’s “dirty thirty” coal-burning power plants when referring to our low-carbon Chancellor or does HE mean her leadership in her continuing to allow the production of Europe’s dirtiest automobiles? The words of Gore HIMSELF are not always clear to those who seek to find his/their understanding but are nevertheless the words of Gore HIMSELF and therefore without reproach.

I think something else is going on “up there” (it always is, isn't it?). Trapped in the warm and cuddly ideological straight jackets “good” politicians insist upon wearing, in this case the phasing out of German nuclear power by 2020, and perfectly aware of her population’s refusal to even consider the possibility of Verzicht (doing with less because of these missing nuclear power plants) when it comes to energy consumption, Chancellor Merkel has no other alternative but to build these 26 new Dreckschleuder (filth spewers). It's a no-brainer for her, in other words.

If Gore HIMSELF only knew. He does? Klappe (shut up)! He is and shall remain without reproach.

Niemand hat die Absicht, ein Kraftwerk zu bauen. Uh, sondern 26 davon.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:20:36 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Thursday, October 25, 2007

If it’s not from China, I don’t want it!

Made in where? American and European neighbor-made stuff is way too expensive, man. And we don’t even want to start talking about our unaffordable German “gold-plated” Qualitätsprodukte (quality products). Give me that el cheapo Chinese crap instead. Or at least that’s what one could think Germans are thinking when you look at some of the recent numbers on foreign exports to Germany.



China has passed by the US and Britain and is now the third largest exporter to Germany, representing 6.7 percent of all products imported into the country last year. Only France and Holland shipped more to the Germans, but not by much. Ten years ago China only accounted for 2.6 of overall exports to Germany. So wow. Hey, third place is third place.

And the magic number is three here, Germany. Enjoy all of those wonderful Chinese products with gusto. Or as long as you can, I should say, because China is also expected to overtake Germany as the world’s third-largest economy within the next few weeks. China’s economy exceeded all economic forecasts yet again (yawn) and grew at an amazing 11.5 percent (snore), up from the previous quarter, which was also double-digit, as usual (drool). Pretty eintönig (monotonous), the Chinese and their economy, don’t you think?

But hey, fourth place is fourth place, Germany. And winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing (if you’re Chinese, that is). So see ya down there soon, know what I’m sayin’, my fellow Americans?

Dabei sein ist alles.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Her damit!

PS: Thanks for the recall link, Wilhelm.

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:55:30 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Strike boss threatens to end his Kur

Only in Germany, you say? Damned right only in Germany. Or can you think of anywhere else where a strike boss demanding a 31% raise for the train drivers he represents goes off on a Kur (a “cure” or a supervised series of spa treatments) smack dab in the middle of negotiations? Me neither. And I’m not making this stuff up either, people.



Manfred Schell, head of the striking train driver union GDL, has announced that notfalls (in case of emergency) he is actually prepared to interrupt the three-week Kur break he is currently enjoying at Lake Constance down on the German-Swiss border to maybe perhaps possibly consider thinking about finishing the strike he and his union have started, but only if the Bahn rolls over and knuckles under first, of course.

A Kur, as you may or may not know, is one of Germany’s favorite traditional health scams. Most Germans insist upon going on one eventually and lots of folks go regularly and the older the “patients” get, the more insistent they become about having them. There is a huge, mafia-like Kur industry out there actively involved in all of this con job nonsense, as usual, and business is still flourishing, too, despite the regular political plea ritual about cost-cutting and health care reform.

Here is one way it works: Joe German goes to his uncle doctor and gets himself written him up as suffering from some terrible and chronic ailment like say, obesity. He then goes to a second uncle doctor specialist who writes him up for a Kur to cure his obesity, get it? In reality it is nothing other than an additional paid vacation at a fat farm spa somewhere where, if he’s lucky and far enough away from home (and that is where everybody wants to go), Joe German gets pampered during the day and spends his evenings hitting on the Kur guest women who came there for the same reason, only to hit on the men, of course. This is where the term Kurschatten (cure shadow) comes from, by the way, meaning Kur fling or affair. Now that’s health care.

It is not known if Herr Schell has found his cure shadow yet, but we should all appreciate just how extraordinary his announcement and/or gesture is. No, not that he runs off to a spa in the middle of battle. I mean that he, as a German, is actually prepared to end his Kur ahead of time to finish the job he began. This guy is obviously the real thing and you can be sure that the Bahn people are definitely shaking in their boots now.

Zusammen sind wir stark!

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

PS: Thanks for the Kurschatten link, uh, Kurschatten.

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:49:15 | Permanent Link | Comments (15) |

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Shortcut to the cemetery nearly becomes shortcut to the cemetery

Germans just have this thing with the autobahn. They really do. For young and old alike it’s a no-win situation really, whenever they start discussing it that is (although driving on them can also be a big pain in the autobahn, too). Just ask Eva Herman. She recently used the A-word directly after using the N-word and got into a big heap of trouble. And she’s not even eighty-one years old and driving around in a wheelchair yet.



But the old lady who wanted to visit a cemetery yesterday was. She got lost and decided to take a shortcut over the autobahn to get there and all the drivers she was passing by who must have been locked up in a Stau (traffic jam) got mad as hell about this and called in the cops on her.

The cops escorted her to the nearest exit were they wished her a nice day and reminded her that she should never do this again as the minimum driving speed a vehicle must be able to do on a German A-word is sixty kilometers per hour. And this made me laugh out loud because, traffic jam or not, nobody in Germany drives a mere sixty kilometers an hour, never ever, unless maybe they have been buried at that cemetery the old lady wanted to pay a visit to. Parked German cars do more than sixty kilometers an hour here. Or they at least certainly give one that impression. Well they do me.

So stay off the A-word with your wheelchair or motorized vehicle when paying your next cemetery visit. There is no sense in going nowhere fast. Or not fast enough, I mean. Whatever.

Wenigstens ist sie rechts gefahren. Nein, nicht Eva. Die alte Dame.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:10:22 | Permanent Link | Comments (3) |

Sunday, October 21, 2007

U-995


alt : http://www.youtube.com/v/VCPZj3wPtXU
Posted by clarsonimus at 09:21:48 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Saturday, October 20, 2007

German geeks steal solar decathlon title

As if their country’s tireless pursuit to produce a small army of elitist, preppy snobs was not tasteless enough, a team of German students from the Technische Universität Darmstadt (insiders call them the Darmstadt Dorks) just won first place in a competition to design and build the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house. This competition took place in the United States of America, of all places, on the freakin’ National Mall, for crying out loud, at Al Gore HIMSELF’s birthplace or something, so-to-speak.



Clearly blinded by all that sunlight reflecting off the solar panels, judges failed to detect just how it was that the Teutonic technicians were able to aussteche (trump) our teams (20 teams in all) and take first place right from underneath our running noses, but anybody with any sense out there knows that it could not have been done in a fair and sportsman-like manner – even though many of these students must surely also take drugs, as well.

The America of my youth was geekier than this, people. American geeks were once world class, cutting edge geeks, geekier than geek, so-to-speak. They used to spread fear and loathing and amusement, all three at once, to anyone willing to watch them, which practically nobody ever was, of course, but still.

Are we just going to stand there and let a bunch of European Möchtegern (wannabe) environmental knights in shining armor come to our country and beat us at our own geeky game? Looks like. But at least there’s still baseball.

Nicht alles, was glänzt, sind Solarpanel.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

Posted by clarsonimus at 09:16:18 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |
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