Better not laugh at nazis – they might sue

Activism, Fascists
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What do you do if your clothing brand, ever so slightly tweaked to appeal to neonazis though you swear that’s not your intent, is parodied? You appeal to the decadent weakling courts of course to stop it:

Storch Heinar has been around since the winter of 2008, and is the brainchild of a left-leaning youth group called Endstation Rechts — which translates as “last stop for the right wing” — set up to combat right-wing extremism in the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony. As members of the groups discussed the opening of a “Nazi shop” selling, among other things, Thor Steinar in the middle of Rostock over a bottle or two of wine one night, they decided to respond by starting their own clothing label. And so the tale of the unhappy stork was born. “We were not drunk though,” Mathias Brodkorb, a Social Democrat and member of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state parliament, one of the people behind Storch Heinar, told the daily Die Tageszeitung.

Storch Heinar’s popularity has increased over time, no doubt due partially to increased local media coverage of the brand — the range of goods available via their website is now large enough to include baby bibs and Frisbees and the brand has around 4,000 fans on Facebook. The label has sold “more than we thought it would,” Brodkorb told news weekly Focus. The profits fund the work of Endstation Rechts. Storch Heinar is only a small, and relatively uncomplicated, part of their work, Brodkorb, 33, who studied philosophy and classics, explained to Die Tageszeitung: “We are all fixated on neo-Nazis and often we overlook more subtle opportunities for people to be inhumane and right wing extremist.”

[…]

Unsurprisingly, Mediatex GmbH, do not like any of this. The owners of Thor Steinar are known for their litigiousness and, as one local commentator put it: “Right wing extremism and humor go together like combat boots and Birkenstock sandals.”

Brodkorb told local media that the day after Storch Heinar was founded, the company that owns Thor Steinar tried to copyright the avian name. They were rejected. Mediatex then filed a complaint against Brodkorb, saying that Storch Heinar was injuring and “disparaging Thor Steinar.” The case went to court on Wednesday in Nuremberg. The small group behind Storch Heinar has been raising funds to fight the case — they even have a new T-shirt for sale that boasts the garment’s owner is part of the rescue team for the beleaguered bird.

Germans do have a sense of humour, but those who hanker back to the good old days of the Third Reich? Not so much.

Metal Monday: R is for ummm

'Eavy Metal, video
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Plenty of metal bands starting with “R”, but none that I actually like all that much. Rainbow? Rush? Not my cup of tea to be honest. The only band I actually got music from at the moment is Rammstein and personally I always think of that as industrial rather than metal, though I do have a fairly personal definition of industrial, true. So what the hey, let’s have some Rammstein anyway.

The band is actually named after that US Airforce base, Ramstein, which you may know of that horrible airshow disaster back in ’88. Their self-titled song on their first album Herzeleid refers back to that disaster:



As per usual when any German band actually sings in German, goes for a heavy sound, goes for militaristic looking outfits and dark lyrics, they’re accused of glorifying nazism or terrorism. To be fair, Rammstein does like to challenge their critics, with songs like this:



Actually one of their less offensive songs about (homo)sexuality and such — Buck Dich:



And let’s end with two videos for the (old) superpowers — Amerika:



Moskau



Afghanistan: the Warlogs

US foreign policy, War on Afghanistan
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Yesterday The Guardian revealed it had recieved, via Wikileaks a massive collection of US military logfiles which showed the War on Afghanistan going even worse than we already knew about:

A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

The war logs also detail:

[…]

• How a secret “black” unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial.

• How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.

• How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.

• How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.

Interesting material and I’ve seen people on Twitter refer to it as the Pentagon Papers volume II, but does it change anything significantly about our view of the war? The original Pentagon Papers had an impact because they were the first source to make fully clear the catastrophe the War on Vietnam was and how culpable the US military and government were in covering up the truth. With the current wars on Afghanistan and Iraq this was known or suspected from the start and too much shit has already come out to be too surprised by what’s in those logs.

But it is important as a cache of evidence, for historical purposes if nothing else, to show that once again those who were against the war from the start where right about it, that the reasons we opposed the war have been proven right. Not to brag, but as a warning for the next time our leaders want to sell us a humantarian intervention.

The raw logs are available as a torrent from the Piratebay, or downloadable in spreadsheet (.csv), database (.sql) or Google maps (.kml) format from Cryptogon. It’s only some 15 megabytes big, so easy enough to get.

UPDATE: a better torrent.

Sherlock

geekdom
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“It’s a three patch problem”.

I had no great hopes for this remake of Sherlock Holmes but the trailer looked intriguing enough. Usually nothing is more guaranteed to turn me off than a “reimagination” of a classic story, but this was a masterstroke. Putting Holmes into the 21st century, keeping the core of the myth (Holmes, Watson, 221b Baker Street, Mrs Hudson, the deductions, oh god the deductions, Lestrand) , ditching the fog and cobblestones, actually using modern tech rather than pretending mobile phones don’t exist, it all works. And it works especially because the tone is kept light. It reminds me a lot of Dr Who, especially the latest series, which may just be because Steven Moffat is involved in both series. Sherlock has a bit of the Whovian spirit, the sane one in a mad world; he could be wearing a fez.

Two problems with doing an updated Sherlock Holmes. There’s the usual one of course for how to show brilliance, to show somebody being much more intelligent than normal people without making the latter look subnormal. Then there’s the added problem with putting it in the here and now, when the police has so many more toys and science at their disposal and deduction looks decidedly old hat. For the most part of the first episode they’ve managed to avoid both pitfalls, helped by having Martin Freeman as Watson, as there really isn’t another actor that can pull such intelligent dumb faces…

Gio bedankt

Football
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Giovanni van Bronckhorst plays his last match ever tonight. It would’ve been nice if he could’ve ended his career by winning a Worldcup, but in any case he has had an amazing career.