Another Year has Passed and the Apocalypse is yet to Come

Image taken by caruba

Everybody is talking about the past year and what will come next year. In 2009 you could have thought that the apocalypse, which was already missed at the millenium change from 1999 to 2000, would happen slightly delayed. And still we have not been taken by the mighty Lord, seems that we get some more time.

“Super election year”

Due to the mass of elections this year media and politicians—the latter ones probably copying the words of media—spoke of a super election year (lit. translated from Superwahljahr). These many elections must have turned political parties mad or made them confused.

Nowadays, we have a liberal party (FDP) which fought for less value-added-taxes for hotels, even though it said—I know, I know... this was before the elections—that subventions were bad. SPD lost a lot of votes and now they’re turning round and round. You can even follow their change of mind from one day to the other. Only CDU remains successful, which is probably due to their good relationship to the most read German news paper called BILD (their journalists lie even more than politicians).

PC games destroy our youth

Every few years there are school shootings in Germany and each time politicians begin arguing that the most important, if not only, reason for this were PC games. Children would become killing machines by playing ego shooters. Depressions and sadness cannot be exploited for politics, therefore they need another scapegoat.

People are always hysteric after such incidents, when there was another school shooting in Germany some parents did not even want to send their children to school. As if the chances of being killed in school were so high. Instead of giving real information about the reasons, everybody is just talking about the same aspects over and over.

When Bastian B. published a suicide note in 2006, police even censored everything and took down his website. If other people had not copied it before, nobody would have known his criticism of society. Moreover, some news papers have even censored the criticism of media in his letter. While the real reasons are deeply beyond all understanding, both politicians and media are searching for a scapegoat just to attract voters or viewers.

Stop abusing our children, stupid Internet!

Mrs. von der Leyen, a German conservative politician, has established the image of an evil Internet which is only waiting to rape children in the heads of many people. I am sure she never uses the Internet, and still she was really sure that there were markets transfering millions or even billions of dollars (I think she never mentioned a period) with child pornography. She only somehow must have forgotten to give some valid arguments for her thesis... A German lawyer, who already fought for people accused of the possession of child pornography, however made clear that his clients never paid even one cent for their material.

Von der Leyens masterplan against this “cruel” market was internet censorship. She even managed to ignore a petition of 130.000 people against the censorship and an association of abused people against the censorship. According to her it was also a security measure for ourselves, because we could just meet child pornography somewhere in the evil Internet while planning our next journey.

In the end the politicians made a mistake, not passing the law to the European Union fast enough (or some other rule...) and it was not passed in the past legislative period, anymore. Nowadays, since Mrs. von der Leyen has left her position as family minister, nobody wants to have the law anymore, even though the majority of the current coalition voted for it. And guess: the law is not passed yet, I never came across child pornography and we are still alive.

Spoilt for choice

While the financial crisis has already been known for some time, there was a new disaster in 2009: the so called swine flu (also known as H1N1 by a small circle of the more intellectual) arrived. People now had the problem that they did not know which one to worry about: either economic crisis or swine flu.

The decision fell on the swine flu endangering not only our material prosperity, but also our physical condition. TV stations and news papers were reporting about new incidents very deliberately, each death was analysed. Due to the massive information the government felt like having to do something (maybe they also felt like having to do something against the economic crisis by helping pharma industry) and bought millions of vaccination doses. However, when people were able to get the vaccination it already seemed to late: Only few really took one.

Were they already dead? Why did nobody go to the doctor to get the vaccination? I did not hear that cities became smaller, however I also did not hear anything about swine flu anymore. Seems like the interest has sunk and it does not behave noticeable different than a normal flu.

Climate Summit failed

When there was a chance to change the Climate, politicians of countries all over the world could not agree on fixed aims, instead they tried to rescue the whole summit with a document which only mentions that the temperature should not rise more than 1.5°C (or was it 2°C).

Europe and Japan are trying to get a clean record by demanding high CO₂ reduction rates which is obviously a good target, however nobody of them mentions that this is only industry based. Germany and Japan both have very good industry for renewable energy, so that’s why Merkel always fights for a reduction of CO₂ emissions. If we were a developing country as China, Merkel would fight for looser rules.

We will all die in airplanes

“Yet another” terror attack has happened, a terrorist tried to blow up an airplane to America but was stopped by other passengers. Only watching the media you could think that terrorists blow up planes every week, but—regarding the statistics—there have been only 6 attacks on airplanes within the past 10 years, of which only 4 were “successful”.

In Germany hysteria about terrorism is beginning to rise now and the discussion about stricter personal search was started once again. I didn’t even hear one TV station mention that the aim of terrorism is to make us afraid—why otherwise would it be called terror (latin fear). Instead, media spreads the fear that we are all going to die in airplanes if no new security model is established—yeah, even people who never use an airplane could be killed by terrorists in an airplane.

In the end it’s elementary particles which destroy the universe?

The LHC in Switzerland, a physical scienctific station for the analysis of elementary particles (smaller objects than atoms) and research about the big bang, has been started again this year. When it was started for the first time, some people were worried whether the earth could collapse if the tests were continued. The only thing which has collapsed yet, was the technology of LHC itself. It took many months to repair it and now we can be curious what will happen (Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?).

Will we be able to gather new information about the big bang, will we see a bing bang reverse ourselves when the world collapses? Maybe you know something? I can only say that the apocalypse is yet to come.

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Friday, January 1, 2010