Our coal doesn’t stink

You count them. Environment here, global warming there (while pointing the finger at everybody else in both directions at the same time), when it comes to building new coal-burning power plants in Germany, well, that’s different. No protests in the streets here (or in Copenhagen) about that one.

“The following list shows the status of controversial new coal-fired power plant projects in Germany, which are the focus of environmentalists campaigning against climate-harming carbon emissions from the coal-to-power generation process.”

It’s showtime!

OK, 30,000 additional American troops in Afghanistan, victory guaranteed by the summer of 2011 (or else) and the best part of all? President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, as expected, also envisions a major increase in NATO troop levels there, meaning of course more German troops too.

Go Germany! I’m impressed already, sort of (but not quite yet). What would never have been possible during the reign of his evil cowboy predecessor will now be given to Obama with a smile. Some 2000 troops, or so the rumor goes.

Poor Mr. President. He still doesn’t know who he’s dealing with over here. Here in Germany, I mean. Afghanistan he’s starting to get though, I think.

Die Nato-Staaten müssten ihr Truppenkontingent ebenfalls aufstocken – also auch die Bundeswehr.

GM as in Gottcha Money?

Clearly upset about German Opel jobs staying here in Germany now after all, under such intolerable conditions, I mean (Opel will now remain with that yucky General Motors mother of theirs), a German government spokesman has announced that Berlin regretted GM’s decision to keep Opel and has demanded that the US-American company repay the 1.5 billion euro bridge financing package that German banks and re-election campaign strategists put together in order to convince GM to sell Opel down the river to Russian-backed Magna instead.

I don’t wirklich (really) understand this huffy German reaction, to tell you the truth. Unless of course maybe you consider that Germans are notorious anti-militarists (see Afghanistan, for instance) and hate the thought of working for any kind of general, whatever his or her name may be. This is just pure speculation on my part, however.

“Merkel had personally been involved in talks, offering substantial German government financial aid in return for assurances that jobs in Germany would be protected.”

German locusts attack US-Amerika

With American commercial property prices falling to the bargain basement level, unscrupulous German investors are once again turning into a real plague-like pain in the property market posterior and have begun snapping up properties right and left, many of these located in our nation’s capital his or herself.

Normally quite sensitive about perceived locust attacks taking place in their own county, attacks they invariably see as having been mounted from the United States, these coldhearted clouds of heartless hoards of bloodless brutes will certainly be showing little mercy here now.

Get out the canned goods and potable water. We may need them or something.

“We got one of the best properties in D.C., a brand-new fully rented office on K Street with 15-year leases.”

Restraining ignorance?

Yeah, there sure is a lot of that out there, everywhere you look. Nothing against Herta Müller, I’m sure she does great work, it’s just that practically no one has ever heard of, much less read her. Nope, not even over here in Germany (of course YOU have, sorry, I’m just being ignorant again).

If the Nobel Prize literature circle’s only claim to fame is being predictable in making unpredictable choices, that’s fine. But if that also includes removing entire nations from the selection process (in this case the one that happens to lie between the borders of Canada and Mexico), then it doesn’t really have anything to do with literature anymore. But, then again, maybe this prize never did have anything to do with literature (ignorant, like I said).

“The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature isn’t always a bolt-out-of-the-blue surprise, a writer whose work is known only to an elite fraction of American readers. It only seems that way.”

“There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world, not the United States. The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.”

Steinbrück’s Swan Song

Clearly pissed off about being out of work after Sunday’s election, German finance minister Peer Steinbrück (SPD) has decided to put in one last really annoying punch and declare war on Britain. 

Economic war, but still.

“Every assertion that he made about Britain in his interview with Stern is either factually wrong, or such a serious distortion of events that it amounts to a smear. Furthermore, it was quite threatening.”

“What he said, in effect, is that Germany will marshal its forces to ensure that a chunk of the British economy is shut down – whatever the social consequences. This is the closest thing I have seen to a declaration of economic warfare in Western Europe in my lifetime.”

I say just ignore him and he’ll go away, Britain. Turn the other stiff upper cheek and all that. Even if you don’t ignore him he’ll be going away, so you might as well just ignore him. We’re all going to miss him, though, or at least I am. Thanks for the memories, Peer.

“We must resist Schadenfreude when that moment comes.”

So this is what you wanted?

Europe this, Europe that, but when it comes to jobs and number one… The main thing is that of the 10,500 people who are about to get fired at Opel 1) they won’t be getting fired by that awful American GM company (it will be Magna and Russia and Co. instead), and 2) most of those getting fired will be in Belgium and England.

Oh yeah, and now it comes out that tons of German government support money involved in “the deal” will be flowing off to Russia with love. The technology too, of course, but that’s another story.

“Dass etliche Jobs wegfallen war schon vorher klar, dass es so viele sein werden allerdings nicht.”

Mud is thicker than blood

“Clearly, for the Obama administration, pushing the reset button on Russia did not include dumping a major GM asset to suit a German grand coalition notion for pocketing election campaign fillips for ’saving’ Opel from GM with investment money from ‘strategic partners’ Moscow.

As scrupulously as the administration in Washington has said nothing about it, an American official, who asked that his name not be used, told me, ‘I think in general we’ve come to the point where the Germans feel they can take the United States for granted and do.’”

“Priorities are as clear as mud in Germany.”

Where have all the clunkers gone?

Why they’ve been shipped off to Africa, of course. The German cash for clunkers plan, the so-called Abwrackpämie, was also a roaring success over here, you see.

Not only could anybody with an old car help stimulate the German economy by trading it in for a big rebate to purchase a new, more environmentally-friendly model, he or she could then rest more soundly at night knowing that their old CO2-spewing wreck had been taken out of service for good and that they had done their part to help save the world’s climate as we know it.

But now it turns out that up to 50,000 old German cars which had been declared wrecked were in fact later sold to Eastern European countries or shipped off to Africa. I know this sounds bad at first, ex-clunker owner, but I would not worry my little worried head about it and continue to keep on sleeping soundly through the night if I were you (and we both know that you will). This unfortunate “massive scrapping bonus betrayal” is in fact, well, unfortunate, but it will eventually only encourage the Eastern Europeans and Africans to initiate cash for clunkers programs of their own.

And the best part of all of this? This program only cost the German government (that means the German taxpayers) eighty zillion quadrillion bazillion euros (nobody does billion anymore). Government programs rule.

“By taking clunkers of the road, the thinking went, Germany’s carbon footprint could also be reduced.”

The Renaissance Men are coming

No, not The Transformers or The Watchmen or the whoever else out there on your movie screens is coming these days, the German left-wing terror renaissance types. In real life, here in Berlin, wherever that is (the real life part of Berlin, I mean).

Yup, the subtle pink blossoms of German left-wing stupid violence Romanticism are blooming anew, predictably, in the city that keeps “drawing them in” and never seems to tire of this nonsense. Arson attacks on cars and other left-wing protests are up these days, indirectly encouraged by Berlin’s all too understanding and sympathetic Mayor Klaus Wowereit (the stress in sympathetic should be placed on pathetic here).

And this rise in violence has in fact become so noticeable that even the police up top are starting to notice it – Germany’s police union boss just put out the warning. You see Police here in Berlin, just like everywhere else in the country, pretty much have to apologize whenever they do their job properly, as attested to during the recent senseless violent outbreak at the city’s old Tempelhof Airport. They are the ones always at fault whenever “peaceful demonstrations” planned to turn violent then turn violent so violently. After all, somebody has to be held responsible.

But its yawn time again on this one I guess. The German media landscape, dominated as it is by the older but not at all wiser left-wing parents (or grandparents?) who are throwing the stones now, the same ones who started the fun back in 68 (somehow sound familiar?), will see to it that everyone continues to turn a blind left eye to the good-natured fun these well-intentioned youngsters are having as, well, they only mean well and they are actually quite idealistic and this is for a good cause in the end after all, I think, or it must be, right?

Or what do you think the public reaction here would be if the people “peacefully demonstrating” out there like this were all wearing brown shirts and Nazi regalia? There’s violence, you see, and then there is violence.

„Parts of Wowereit’s administration — the governing coalition pairs the center-left Social Democrats with the far-left Left Party — are openly sympathetic to the left-wing extremists.“

PS: Thanks for the link, Joe.