suffrage

The citizens of Bavaria will go and cast their votes for state elections on this Sunday, and I discovered, after appreciating the collusion of events, like the anticipation of the beginning of Oktoberfest, which celebrates into October starting on next Saturday, that state governments do have some discretion in setting the dates for election day—no sooner than 59 weeks before and no later than 62 weeks after the last cycle of four years hence.
And though there was license to place balloting the morning after the bacchanalia, officials put it strategically a week prior to federal elections. There is not the same kind of flexibility in campaigning in the United States, whose moment of decision, by law, falls on the day after the first Monday in November—due to the agrarian nature of the early US and notwithstanding the provisos of early- and absentee-voting. That German federal elections (and neighbouring Hessen's state elections also) come maybe while nursing a hang-over is quite another matter and maybe too by design. Coincidences of the calendar are certainly not always politically advantageous but does make one wonder when it came to the legal convention—like US presidential elections being always (except in the rare case of a year equally divisible by 400) on leap-years or during years of a summer Olympiad—locust plagues, perhaps, in addition to whatever sideshows can be introduced. I wonder if such precedents were considered.

austausch, b-gosh

Long had European Union Commissioner for Internal Affairs Malmström held her tongue over the on-going revelations of the breadth and depth of indiscriminate intelligence gathering on the part of the US—not, I think, out of a lack of concern or zeal but rather to not bait controversy prematurely, but digesting the reported reach of the spying, suggested that the lack of transparency could lead to the EU's withdrawal from the SWIFTBanking Treaty with the United States.

The agreement provides that the signatories hand over certain financial transactions to America, in the name of combating tax-evasion and money-laundering and rooting out all imaginable evils. Malmström, after learning how the SWIFT clearing-house for international bank transfers is apparently already subject to eavesdropping, she questions why they are now asking permission. Her statements have galvanised the parliament in Strasbourg and several factions have agreed to join together with demands that all cards be laid on the table, including back-door practices. Quitting the treaty would be a significant affront US-EU relations and mark the first time that a bilateral data-sharing (Austausch) arrangement was challenged—a few of which the Swedish commissioner herself helped orchestrate.

apiculture or re-colonisation

I fear that worldwide, bees—domestic and wild—are far from being completely out of the woods when it comes to any number of natural and artificial ravages, it seemed like the bees returned this summer in Germany, at least, with a vengeance.
Any number of factors could have been decimating their numbers, which drive worker-bees from their hives and thus the support system collapses—ranging from cellular phone masts, parasites, pesticides, genetically modified crops to mono-culturing, and I wonder what factors shifted here to very nearly make sitting outside intolerable. Or maybe those are just all the prodigal bees that disappeared from their home-hives on the return. Of course, I'll suffer a curious bee droning too close and investigating my food and drink but at times it was enough to move the table-setting indoors. It was worse and more immediate than ants marching on a picnic, and I wonder if the stabilisation of the population will once again make bees the object of irreverence, instead of dire concern, like with the portrayals of killer bees in B-movies and angsty media.

subject-verb agreement or pluralia tantum

Mental Floss has a provoking list to puzzle of nouns that exist in the English language only in their plural form, like scissors, eye-glasses, amenities, britches, riches and remains. There is a complimentary phenomenon called singulare tantum, which are called the uncountable nouns, like information or comparing the last two previous examples—wealth and dust.

The formation occurs in other languages but the set of vocabulary is not the same, such as Eltern (German for parents and never used to refer to just the mother or father without complication) or Ferien (holidays and never singular, even when referring to a specific one or time of the year) or the Dutch hersenen (for brains, but unlike the German Gehirn, is meaningless without the -en). Ciseaux (scissors), lunettes (glasses), ténèbres (tenets, beliefs) are similar in English and French, and some words are flexible. Though it is interesting to try to figure out the logic and influence and imagine grammar another way, it sounds however very contrived to speak of a pant, when not breathless, or of a glass when referring to peripherals.

castellan or look that up in your funk & wagnall's

After work I ascended to the northern most neighbourhood of the city, past the clinics and houses in the hills to seek out the ruins of the Sonnenburg. This fortress was named after the constable of the castle (ein Burgmann), a low-ranking noble title charged with the defense of the immediate surroundings in the early thirteenth century but the place was given successively greater recognition by kings and pretenders throughout the Middle Ages up to the Thirty Years' War that saw its downfall.
 It was a bit of a challenge to find, obscured by terraced homes and not on the high-ground but in a valley, and I had to inquire. “Excuse me but is there a castle-ruin nearby?” The eponymous community is also known as the place where Konrad Duden retired. Duden was an influential lexicographer of the German language, authoritative and the industry-standard like the Oxford English Dictionary or Noah Webster.

pro se or soi-disant

Shaking my head with a touch of disbelief over the way a German political party portrayed itself, I was totally unprepared for the stultifying display of ignorance and insensitivity that a senior delegation of legislators made, while on a fairy-tale princess reception in Cairo, as the New York Times reports.

Their message of solidarity, invoking 9/11 and a chorus of singing eagles was too revolting to stomach, and surely left a country already in flames and under martial law insulted, regardless of what political persuasion or whether considered rebels or patriots, and confused. “Stand strong, Egypt,” they said, promising to vouchsafe the some billion dollars in military aid the US gives Egypt annually. “Stand firm.” Not that this empty praise and grandstanding is not disgusting enough on its own, given that Congress is preparing to vote yea or nay on authority to attack another country in the region, or only give its tacit approval and thus relinquish any semblance of checks-and-balances with its authority to raise armies, make it all the more terrible. The unfortunate timing of the decision also has everything to do with the typical bailiwick of the legislature, having gone on recess and only affording themselves just a few days to tackle old and new business, including formulating a military operating budget and that has happened every year since 9/11.

befürworten

In between the late movie and the late-late movie the other night, there was an extended campaign advertisement, replete with officious warning what message that the viewer was about to be subjected to, despite which I thought was a fake, a spoof even afterwards, for the the Bayern Partei, the sometimes secessionist and euro-skeptic party that proclaims to represent Bavarian independence and champions a more libertarian stance.

I do not want to assume too much about their platform, which I was not really able to focus on through the distracting way their message was staged, since after all they proclaimed to be speaking for all of Bavarian and suggesting policies to curtail immigration do not necessarily bespeak intolerance and xenophobia, but what was presented, which I thought was a joke, was not conducive to understanding and dialogue. In as much as the party-faithful might have preconceived notions about Unionist politicians and outsiders, their little video was absolutely full of dread stereotypes about this region of Germany. In every scene, depicting forced political conversions, people dressed in traditional garb, Lederhosen and Dirndl, were gathered around fest-banquettes and drinking beer. The only substantial take-away was that the Bayern Partei was still upset about the no-smoking laws (das Nichtsraucherschutzgesetz) enacted back in 2009 and which removed loop-holes in 2010 and were dissatisfied with the governance and representation of the EU. Televised campaigning is a rare and regulated thing, however, the next day in the Altstadt of Bad Karma, our fair city, there was a festival which was unabashedly a chance for pressing the flesh and meeting the electorate. Local candidates from the major parties were present and some of the fringe, opposite groups. I could not find the Bayern Partei, though, to ask if that ad was legitimate.