To Accra, to be specific. The German President Horst Köhler headed a delegation of 170 Germans at the Partnership with Africa conference that included several African heads of state and international leaders: Presidents John Agyekum Kufuor (Ghana), Festus G. Mogae (Botswana), Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (Liberia), Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria) as well as Alpha Oumar Konare of the [...]

A year ago today Angela Merkel succeeded Gerhard Schröder and became the first female chancellor and the first chancellor from the former East Germany. I was not thrilled. She is a political protegé of Helmut Kohl, aka Birne, the corrupt, corporatist pigdog chancellor from hell of the 80s. Yet, 2006 so far was a pretty [...]

November 9 has been a fateful day in German history. The März revolution was started, the emperor was dethroned and the Berlin Wall fell on that day. During the night of that fateful day in 1938 German Nazis damaged or destroyed “1574 synagogues (constituting nearly all Germany had), many Jewish cemeteries, more than 7,000 Jewish [...]

Liebes Deutschland РIch hoffe Du hattest einen sch̦nen Tag der Deutschen Einheit! On October 3, 1990, the states of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) adopted the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and thusly Germany was reunited after 41 years, and the GDR ceased to exist. That day was [...]

The use of biodiesel in Germany has increased by two-thirds compared to last year, according to press reports of the latest issue of the Wochenbericht des DIW Berlin. Germans overall drive a bit less, but the Germans who have to drive a lot, are switching to the more fuel-efficient diesel vehicles, which now represent 21 [...]

Wal Mart is throwing the towel in Germany! Looks like they’ll sell their 85 German stores at a loss of $1Billion to Germany’s largest retailer Metro. I despise Wal Mart, and I find an odd sense of satisfaction in the news that German stubborn attitudes brought Wal Mart, the death star of retail, to its [...]

Last Sunday, a 28-year-old man was attacked in the city of Potsdam (near Berlin) by racist thugs and violently beaten to a pulp, simply because he is black. This racist attack has prompted a fair amount of outrage and analysis, but also some rather telling statements, like the one from Minister of the Interior Schäuble, [...]

The NY Times has a story about an odd bit of information from pre-invasion Iraq: apparently German spies in Baghdad provided pretty important information about the Iraqi defenses to the US-led invasion forces. Two German intelligence agents in Baghdad obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein’s plan to defend the Iraqi capital, which a German official [...]

Old Europe is in a tizzy over finding out more and more details of how the CIA used European airspace and airports to shuttle abducted terrorism suspects to and fro for “innovative interrogation” in what some call a “gulag-like” system of “black sites” – secret prisons. Well, the GULAG it ain’t, but a scandal it [...]

Kanzlerin Pestbeule is ready to lead Germany … in circles probably. On the surface a national consensus government may seem like a good idea to accomplish needed but painful social reforms in the next four years. That would be the case if this was 1) a government with a mandate, and 2) a government with [...]

Kanzlerin Pestbeule?! Jetzt will ich aber nichts mehr hören, von wegen “wie konnten die Amis nur diesen Bush wählen!” Angela Merkel will be Germany’s new Chancellor.

O’zapft is! at the mother of all beer orgies, the oohmpah fest to end all oohmpah fests. With two mighty strokes the mayor of Munich drove the tap into the barrel of beer and handed the first beer to the Ministerpräsident (Governor) of the Free State of Bavaria. The natives went wild! Especially the Japanese, [...]

Early in the morning on August 13, 1961, workers began tearing up the cobblestone and asphalt along the sector boundaries across Berlin. They began erecting concrete pillars and barbed-wire barricades, while units of the the Volkspolizei – the People’s Police – kept the angry people in the eastern sector in check with machine guns. The [...]

It’s about time. Germany is finally ready to dedicate a major memorial to the victims of the Nazi regime: the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe today joins Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Museum and many other places of remembrance. In plain view of the Reichstag building, where the German parliament deliberates [...]