Germany

Bjorn Lomborg claimed on John Stossel's television show last night that money isn't being spent well to combat "global warming":

"The Germans are spending about $110 billion on subsidies for these solar panels," said Lomborg. "The net effect of all those investments will be to postpone global warming by 37 hours by the end of the century."

"All those billions, for 37 hours delay?," asked Stossel.

The little island of Cyprus is not behaving as other European countries desire and this, according to Bloomberg, is irritating German Chancellor Angela Merkel who “told a closed-door meeting of legislators in Berlin today that she’s annoyed the Cypriot government hasn’t been in touch with the so-called troika of international creditors for days, according to a party official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the briefing was private. Cyprus’s decision to test Europe is unacceptable, she told them.”

The Third Reich hovers over German history.   

Despite the careful, intelligent research conducted by countless scholars in numerous disciplines, those 12 years remain in some essential way incomprehensible. How, we ask—without ever being able to provide a truly satisfying answer—could more or less ordinary human beings have done what they did to other human beings in an attempt to create a racial utopia?  

The Third Reich hovers over German history.   

Despite the careful, intelligent research conducted by countless scholars in numerous disciplines, those 12 years remain in some essential way incomprehensible. How, we ask—without ever being able to provide a truly satisfying answer—could more or less ordinary human beings have done what they did to other human beings in an attempt to create a racial utopia?  

Germany appeared over the past several months to have finally fallen in line behind European Union efforts to stiffen economic sanctions against Iran. But in late October a group of German parliamentarians dealt a blow to the campaign to isolate Iran’s rulers. Bundestag Members Bijan Djir-Sarai of the Free Democratic Party, Thomas Feist of the Christian Democrats and Angelika Graf of the Social Democratic Party traveled to Tehran for a five-day visit.

September 12 was a momentous day for Europe. It saw three separate events that in a powerful way may come to remake the European Union.  First, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled that the nation’s parliament can ratify a new, permanent rescue fund for the eurozone, called the European Stability Mechanism, to the tune of some $645 billion in taxpayer money. The European Union would have been forced into an immediate financial crisis of unprecedented magnitude had the court declared the bailout illegal.

September 12 was a momentous day for Europe. It saw three separate events that in a powerful way may come to remake the European Union.  First, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled that the nation’s parliament can ratify a new, permanent rescue fund for the eurozone, called the European Stability Mechanism, to the tune of some $645 billion in taxpayer money. The European Union would have been forced into an immediate financial crisis of unprecedented magnitude had the court declared the bailout illegal.

A German court has ruled that male circumcision is a crime. "Who cuts boys for religious reasons is liable to prosecution for assault," a report in the German-language Financial Times Deutschland reads, via Google translate.

Today's the twenty-five year anniversary of Ronald Reagan's powerful Brandenburg Gate address in Berlin, Germany. Watch here:

America is the best house in a run-down neighborhood: The famous BRICs are crumbling.

Debtors of the world, unite—you have nothing to lose but your IOUs!

That seems to be what the Greeks are discovering—that they have less to lose by default, with all of its consequences, than by trying to be Germans.

Berlin
One of Germany’s most famous novelists penned a pro-Iranian regime and anti-Israel poem Wednesday in German and Italian daily newspapers, declaring the Jewish state the greatest threat to global security and denying the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.