You’ve got to have principles if you want to get by in this world. But as long as one’s main principle is “looking out for number one”, you should get by just fine. No matter what your other part-time principles may be, I mean.



Let’s face it. If there is one thing that Germans have an absolute overabundance of it is principles. They have principles of all sizes, shapes and colors over here and keeping them well-organized and handy for whenever you might need them must be a complicated and daunting task indeed. So keeping it simple and real with this above-mentioned golden rule is probably the best way to go. It’s a no-brainer really.

That’s why I don’t understand all the excitement about train union Transnet boss Norbert Hansen’s announced switch-over to the Bahn’s board of directors. What’s so “strange”, “shameless” or even “treacherous” about that? Here in Germany, I mean. This kind of stuff happens all the time over here. After all, German politicians jump from one party to the next on a regular basis (Lafontaine, Schilly, Verheugen, Metzger, etc.) and nobody could care less about that, so why shouldn’t those in the free/unfree economy be able to do the same?

First the good fight for more pay and job security, now the good fight for maximum profit and shareholder value. What’s the difference? There is no difference. Not if you are a German manager, that is. Run with it, Norbert. You go guy.

Das ist bloß das Ergebnis einer konsequenten Politik.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

It’s usually toast, of course. And it’s usually somebody’s face. But here in Germany potatoes are generally bigger medicine than processed wheat products are. Potatoes and beer. And Germans are always cross, of course (cross, get it?).



And here in Berlin people closely examine their potatoes before cooking and eating them too, it seems (they’re less picky about the beer, though – think Schultheiss). And it’s a good thing they do, I’d say, otherwise this one lady here would have missed the latest sign from heaven. And she wasn’t even drinking any Schultheiss when it happened. She may have had a few afterwards, though.

Not that Berliners are particularly religious or anything, because they aren’t (and the few that are aren’t generally Catholic, which makes this even less fun). Not that they understand the gravity of their spiritual situation now. Nor have they ever, for that matter. Not that they will ever see that it’s time to wake up and see the light and smell the coffee and straighten up their sinful and often third-rate act, at least when it comes to brewing beer.

It’s none of my business, after all. I could care less. I just live here. I’m just saying.

Talk to the potato. Talk to the hand.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

When Angela Merkel is not in town, that is. Instead of following the Chancellor’s lead and showing a little backbone by openly receiving the Dalai Lama in the German capital, German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) will officially have other pressing engagements to attend to when the Tibetan leader comes for another visit on May 19 (Angie will be doing South America).



Steinmeier chose not to elucidate further what he will be doing that day, but sources close to him are pretty sure that it will include hiding under his desk while prostrating, kneeling and repeatedly bowing toward China in abject submission.

Clearly preferring to follow the lead of his once fearless leader Gerhard Schröder instead, Steinmeier is beleived to have a mortal fear of the mere thought of possibly ever coming even remotely close to “hurting the Chinese people’s feelings” by making such a risky move like meeting and maybe touching and possibly even talking to Mr. Lama while others are watching so he is absolutely positively determined to stay in hiding until that awful Buddhist madman goes away again.

After all, had we listened to statesmen Schröder and those like him, China and Tibet (but especially China) would not be in the awful mess they now find themselves in today.

„Zu den Gründen dafür machte er keine Angaben.“

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

Everybody knows that Americanization is bad. Just ask any German you may or may not know and he or she will gladly tell you so, although he/she won’t necessarily be able to tell you just why that is. Just is. And this is especially so when it comes to national foreign policy, German national foreign policy, I should say. We don’t need no education, no Americanization, I mean.



So that’s probably why Chancellor Merkel’s CDU is about to unveil a totally way cool and original new foreign policy platform idea which has never been tried before in the Western World and has been custom-made just for Germany. It goes like this: They are planning to consolidate most of Germany’s foreign policy authority directly within Merkel’s Chancellery and thereby create a super-special-super-staff which will then have the capacity to coordinate security policy right there! Wow. Why didn’t we think of that? They are going to call it "the National Security Council", I think, only in German, which will make it sound even more secure. Or maybe they’ll just call it the mini-National-Security-Council-me instead.

None of those reckless, American-style experiments here folks. And it only gets better. Word is that they are also going to propose that Germany take steps to better protect itself from the threat of a nuclear attack from so-called rogue states (no, not France - they mean Iran or something) by supporting the introduction of something they are planning to call “a missile defense shield over Europe”. This is friggin’ brilliant if you ask me, which you won’t, but for that I’m now asking myself why didn’t any of those Schlafmützen (sleepyheads) back in Washington ever think of this. I mean, like what the hell do these people get paid for anyway?

The SPD seems to be against all of this for some reason and has ordered her talking head types to continually repeat the mantra “American-style mistakes, American-style mistakes…”, which wasn’t really necessary because that belongs to their standard mantra repertoire already but sicher ist sicher (better safe than sorry).

Amerikanische Verhältnisse bis zum Umfallen.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag (Happy Birthday), Israel! They’re doing their sixtieth this Thursday, you see. But don’t ever ask for help from us if the going ever gets any tougher than it already is. Military-wise, we mean. We won’t be there any more for you then than we aren’t there now for anybody else out there when the going gets tough, wherever that might be, despite our official foreign policy of explicitly stating otherwise.



Or at least that’s what most Germans think, if you want to believe the latest greatest survey out there. A mere 13 percent of Germans asked would be in favour of providing Israel with military support were that country to come under attack, again, for instance.

The young and the restless-type Germans in particular could particularly care less when it comes to what might happen to the Jewish state, too. A whopping 65 percent of those surveyed below the age of 40 do not believe that Germany has a “special responsibility” towards Israel because of its history.

That results like these seem to make Chancellor Merkel’s ritual recitation of this official “special relationship”, this “cornerstone of German policy since the days of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer”, ring hollow at best, like it has with all the Chancellors before here, well, who cares? She’s just attending a birthday party, after all, everybody here is thinking. And if push ever comes to shove we can always apologize for our official change of heart later.

Eine schöne Bescherung, oder?

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Or thick as a briquette, at least. These thieves here, I mean. As if the rather disrespectful Umgang (dealings) with Lenin’s image (no, not John’s) as witnessed in yesterday’s video presentation had not been enough, souvenir-hunting burglars have broken into former East Berlin’s former Stasi headquarters and stolen one of his rare portraits, a functioning GDR telephone (also very rare), a Soviet ice hockey stick and an important communist coal briquette.



Well, I assume that it must have been important. Otherwise they wouldn’t have stolen it. It did have “30 years GDR” imprinted on it, after all. But just imagine how valuable the briquette with the “40 years GDR” imprinted on it must have been? That one’s probably been stolen long ago. And okay, East Berlin is, genau genommen (to be exact), still in East Berlin, only different. I stand corrected.

Now I know that the Stasi folks were all secret police and Volk-oppressor types before their wall came tumbling down and they became more openly politically active in the PDS, I mean Left party and all, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t disrespect their memory any more than absolutely necessary. Everybody knows you should respect the dead and let bygones be bygones and all that, especially in East Berlin. But Laurel and Hardy here obviously didn’t get it.

Therefore my appeal: Whoever you clowns are out there, please bring back the Lenin portrait and the briquette, now. Keep the telephone and ice hockey stick if you want, but bring back the other stuff. This has a lot of sentimental value for whole brigades of non-sentimental types out there, wherever they may now be. This is your history, too. You no good thieving imperialist vermin.

It’s all about political dissent, not about being politically decent.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

Proving yet again that you can be a smart and politically-aware German intellectual type and still not have the slightest idea what the Berlin Wall was, photographer Kai Wiedenhoefer and his Left and Green Party supporters in Berlin’s Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district will be exhibiting an exhibition which will equate the West Bank “Wall” with the Berlin one. This exhibitionism will be taking place on the eastern walls of the East Side Gallery, itself a wall, the largest remaining section of the Berlin Wall, get it? Am I going too fast?



That he doesn’t know why the Israelis have built the wall in the West Bank is perfectly understandable (he doesn’t want to understand, that would only make him sad), and that the US Americans only want to oppress Mexico by building the one along their border to that country is an established establishment fact (Canada is next, by the way), and that there are many, many, many much more such walls out there of this nature than he or his friends or most of the rest of us are even aware of is also understandable (hmmm, makes you wonder why he picked out Israel, doesn't it?), but die Mauer itself? He really doesn’t know why it was built? I’ll give him a little hint: It was built to keep people in.

But to be fair, Herr Wiedenhoefer has explained why he is so concerned and why an exhibition like this is so absolutely positively necessary right now. “The UN said border walls are illegal,” he said in an interview. “People need to take notice of this.” Well there we have it. Now if the UN ever gets around to making suicide bombings and illegal immigration and all that other nasty stuff some of us insist upon relating to illegal border walls like this illegal, too, well, that will be a great leap forward for mankind or something. Think of all the exhibitions we will be able to do then.

“We don’t need no education.”

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

If you ask most Germans, and I wouldn’t if I were you, they will tell you that they want to have the Berlin Wall back. They also want the Sandmann, the World Cup, cheaper beer and gasoline, snow in the winter and Sabine Christiansen back, too (ich will, Anne Will, we all will). They will also tell you that they want Tempelhof Airport back and it isn’t even gone yet, but that’s another story. Well tough tooties, people. You can’t have them. It’s over. Move on.



And now they come at you heuldend (whining) about wanting to have their money back, too. Their old German as in Deutsche Mark currency money, I mean. Actually, they’ve wanted it back ever since it was yanked away from their cold and clutching fingers thirty or forty years ago or whenever it was and have made no secret about it ever since. The word on the street is, unreliable as it is, that consumer prices basically doubled here with the introduction of the euro and everybody’s still mad as hell about it and isn’t going to take it anymore (that prices here in Germany are greatly lower than in other neighboring countries is something they are either not aware of or don’t care about).

Not only that, lots of these new fangled euro coins and bills are from other European Euroland countries other than Deutschland ITSELF and this appears to make Germans nervous or suspicious or something, having to carry around somebody else’s foreign money like that, I mean. Unless they are coin collectors or something, of course.

In other words, who cares what the Germans think? They are the last to give a you-know-what about whatever it is Germans are complaining about at the moment themselves. They don’t take any of this moaning stuff seriously themselves, in other words. So why should you? Oh, you don't either? Damn. Then you could live here, too.

And überhaupt (and anyway), what’s so bad about the euro? They ought to see how far they get tying to spend dollars these days instead.

Je oller, je dollar.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.