• Berlin
  • Konrad Werner: Half-hearted terrorism

Berlin

Konrad Werner: Half-hearted terrorism

Konrad is very proud to be a Berliner. Not only do we have the least likely-to-riot teenagers in the world, we also have the most half-hearted terrorists.

Image for Konrad Werner: Half-hearted terrorism
Photo by formatbrain (Flickr CC)

Konrad is very proud to be a Berliner. Not only do we have the least likely-to-riot teenagers in the world, we also have the most half-hearted terrorists.

German politicians, especially Bavarian ones, have been struggling to strap down their massive erections this week about the “rise in left-wing terrorism” that has been sweeping the German capital. “Well,” the Christian Social Union was thinking as they idly stroked their monstrous purple-headed man-swords, “Bottles of inflammable liquid near a box of cables? If this doesn’t make every decent German vote for us, nothing will.”

That’s right, the “Hekla reception committee,” a radical left-wing activist group that couldn’t have thought of a less menacing name if they’d called themselves the Womble Pencil Case Society, has been compared this week to the Red Army Faction of the 1970s and the “revolutionary cells” of the 1990s. Der Tagesspiegel gibbered about “how vulnerable our highly technological society is.”

At one point, Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer couldn’t take it anymore, and, with his giant throbbing serpent straining his jeans, suddenly began waffling incoherently about “criminal, terrorist intentions of a new dimension,” but that’s all anyone heard.

What he failed to add (probably because at that moment, overcome by how he’d hit the nail on the head so precisely, he ejaculated uncontrollably for a full 30 seconds, pumping out great ruddy rural ropes of jism all over his notes) was that this new dimension consists of trying to stop people from getting to Hamburg so quickly.

To be fair, the Hekla committee have a distinct masturbatory tendency too. “This morning we slowed down the German capital and its function as a global player in the export of armaments!” they declared in their responsibility-claiming email. Slowed down people trying to get to work, more like.

But then, what’s wrong with that? Sure, it’s a more modest objective, but what more perfect manifestation of Berlin-style terrorism could there be? These bottles of petrol left on a train track were a gift, a token of sympathy, for lazy people across the city. It remains to be seen whether the US military, cowed by the cunning and tenacity of the Hekla reception committee, bow to their demands and release Bradley Manning, but at least it gives some S-Bahn passengers an excuse to defy work for at least a little longer.

By the way, Mr. Ramsauer, I think you should know there are children who live downstairs from me who keep letting the air out of the tyres of all the bikes parked in our Hinterhof. Maybe it’s time for another press statement? These fearsome strikes on our fragile modern infrastructure are unrelenting.