I don’t want to be your friend anymore

Occasionally even I get “friendship” offers on facebook. If it is someone I don’t know, I try to understand who they are and what their reason might be for wishing to “befriend” me. A few months ago, I was offered friendship by an activist in the Deutsch-israelische Gesellschaft (DIG), a German-Israeli friendship society. I was somewhat bemused, as DIG activists find views which are critical of Israeli government policy hard to take. Was Ms. X more broadminded than her breed, or did she befriend me thinking that I was a German speaking, Jewish, Israeli academic, who philosemites love to love? It was evidently the latter: today, I noticed that she had “unfriended” me. Ms. X no longer wants to be my friend.

German Courts

A Berlin court recently decided that the German politician, Christine Künast, of the Green party, who has been referred to as “crazy”, “old green dirty pig”, “sick woman”, “hazardous waste”, “piece of shit”, “slut”, “brain amputee”, and “old perverse bastard” on Facebook, would have to accept it. Künast had attempted to get Facebook to hand over the details of those who had posted the hate speech. The court ruled against her.

I wonder what would happen, if anyone would dare to use the same language about the learned judges?

The Joys of Facebook

Facebook is not only about people showing off their own or their children's bodies. 

Yesterday, a Facebook “friend” of mine, informed his “friends” that he would be going to an event at a kneipe, a sort of a pub, in the NeuKölln district of Berlin. The thing is - I hardly know the chap, my Facebook friend - and he would not have emailed me or phoned me to alert me to the fact that he was going to that specific event. But, it sounded interesting and I went there too. 

And it was worth it, despite the fact that I came out after two hours smelling of ten thousand cigarettes. They were all at it, rolling one cigarette after the other and it was just pure boring tobacco. Evidently the laws about smoking in public spaces are not very strictly adhered to. 

It was a sort of a talk-show, in which Peter Wensierski, an interesting and charismatic Spiegel journalist, spoke about the years in which he reported from the former DDR (East Germany).