The German Radio station, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, has broadcast a short piece of mine on a very special German fetish. But before you get your hopes high and send the children out of the room to enjoy some risqué pleasures – it is about the German love of ... academic titles and what they are willing to do to get one.
It is in German. Here’s a link. Although, the website also offers the written version, I recommend the audio version (4 ½ minutes).
Enjoy.
After a year of Corona, most of us are grateful to the pharmaceutical industry for delivering vaccines that will hopefully enable us to return to “normality”.
And yet, with all this gratitude, we should not forget that the big pharmaceutical companies have in the past not shied away from misrepresentations, deceit and even bribery to increase their profits. This time – with billions upon billions available – is unlikely to be different. We all remember Jeremiah’s leopard and his spots.
There seems to be one exception: AstraZeneca @ ca. $3 per dose, has announced that, during the pandemic, it would not profit from the sale of its vaccine. This, most likely annoys the rest of the pack, such as Pfizer (Biontech) and Moderna, whose vaccines are offered @ ca. $20-30 per dose.
It is against that background, that I take in the information we are being fed about the risks connected with the AstraZeneca vaccine. Can one really rule out the possibility that cleverly packaged panic-making information about blood clots here-and-there is being fed to journalists by lobbyists acting for AstraZeneca’s competitors? NO. What we lack is true investigative journalism and some good analysis. Not just panic-making.
Biden has announced that the USA will be leaving Afghanistan. I am sure that they will try to portray their séjour in that country as a success. However, 20 years, thousands of casualties, more than one thousand billion dollars spent – what’s to show for it? Unless you own shares in the arms industry, not much.
Democracies, whose leaders have to face the ballot box every four years do not enjoy the luxury of dictatorships. They normally have to go for short-term results and can rarely take a long view. And yet, I wonder whether somewhere in the toolbox of US strategic planners they did not consider the possibility of luring Russia back into the Afghanistan trap – a trap no outsider has really survived.
Someone in Freiburg had a brilliant idea: they placed a big street-sign offering tests for those suffering from a “burning in the crotch” ... in front of an old-age-home.
What is the idea?
1.remind the residents of the old-age-home of their good old times?
2. remind the residents of the old-age-home of their bad old times?
3. reach the visiting grandchildren?
95 days after I could have had my Corona jab in Israel, 75 days after I would have been offered one in California, 65 days after I was offered one in London – Frankfurt today had finally given me my first vaccination.
Having already completed a registration form on-line, I was sent some more forms to read and sign and bring with me to the vaccination centre. Here, I had to go through seven stations, each verified and re-verified my QR code, I was asked to confirm the responses I had given in my completed forms, I was asked to confirm that I indeed waived my right to a consultation with a doctor, and... I was given the jab. At the last station, at an hourly rate of €130, a medical doctor signed my vaccination certificate.
Post-colonial thinking has long ago taught us not to buy the idea that Europe has a more developed civilisation than other continents. Our vaccination programme is but further proof.
On my way to Frankfurt’s vaccination centre, I walked by the Platz der Einheit, the square of unity, which the street sign explains is “in memory of the German reunification and in the spirit of a united Europe.”
The architects and local planners evidently do not think much of slogans such as unity, German reunification or united Europe.
What soulless unity they are offering us:
Israel voted yet again: fourth general elections within two years. Of the parties represented in the Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, only three oppose Israeli occupation of the West-Bank: two Arab parties and Meretz, the one small remnant of Israel’s “left-wing”. Together they amount to 13.3% (16 members) of the Knesset.
Cigarette-pack-Warning: Boycotting Israel because of this shameful reality is considered by many to be antisemitic.
