Volksverhetzung

Volksverhetzung is a peculiarity of German Law where holocaust denial is a criminal offence. This is how Study Crime defines it:
"Though freedom of speech is guaranteed by the fifth article of the German Grundgesetz (Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany), there are some restrictions, eg. personal insults or incitement of the people (German: Volksverhetzung - known as hate speech in other legislatures). Volksverhetzung includes the spreading of neonazist ideas and the use of related symbols like the swastika, except for purposes of art, research or education. The restrictions' aim is to protect the democratic constitution of Germany."

Though I had heard of this law, I didn't know the German name Volksverhetzung. And to be fair to the law the term "Holocaust denial" is not mentioned explicitly in the blurb above.

I had only recently discovered the name in a Wikipedia debate about Berlin. The web page for Berlin in Wikipedia is of satisfactory qualities in several European languages but not, apparently yet, in English.

That might be because in the introduction, we are given the knowledge that a starship and at least two locations were named for the city in Star Trek. Is this statistic now de rigeur for the Great Cities of the World?

But you'd think that one of the ten most important cities of the world wouldn't have failed to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.

So I took a peek at the arguments in the "Berlin:talk page" to find why it has stalled and found some very interesting legal terms being bandied about.

Such as Volksverhetzung, something that Tsja, a Wiki reviewer was threatening another of should they live in Germany because

"This 'Judea declares war on Germany' stuff is nonsense. A local newspaper can not declare a war, and Hitlers anti-semitism was already obvious at the time of the writing."

What local newspaper has declared war? and what on?

It doesn't say, really.

But its hardly a surprise seeing as they can't even agree on whether it is the second biggest city or not. The problem with early 21st century life is that we no longer know where our cities begin and end.

When President Bush (George II) visited the border of North and South Korea, his main point was the night satellite photo of the Koreas. He said that the south was a beacon of light while the North froze in darkness.

While I would not have particularly wanted to live in North Korea, I didn't mind allowing it to be invisible in the dark from space. Thomas Edison's 1870 lightbulb liberated the planet from the dark and the necessary tyranny of the spin of the globe.

The light in the western world is now a patchwork quilt, slowing linking up. True dark does not exist for many who pack these cities.

None of this helps poor Berlin reach Wikipedia required standard. It's still waiting for someone to clean up the mess. Kurfurstendamnation.

Woolly Slush Fund

At last, my life.
The way I want it lived.
With nothing, without nothing.
The less said the better, Buddha-wise.
The noise of silence within its globes and hopes
and twice-trodden tropes tropicana.
These, lest we forgive, are melancholic about three week old ideas.
Fears borrowed from De Beers,
Here’s Lucy, a girl’s best friend.
Let that be a lesion,
fried-fiery fierceness will grrrr at me with a soliloquy and a silly grin.
Forced jolliness and a bell at the back
to greet whatever nonsense emerges,
long-legged and bedwetting.
“I want you” changes all the compasses
denuding them of sense of direction.
East is east but Easter in the west is best.
Shrieking firestones tired out
lasting no longer than the Bill of Wrongs,
prongs and electrically charged highly strung and well hung.
Tall timbre the quality of which is mercy.
Wet December, red hat and dead rats.
Slats and go-crazy groceries with the best of wholesale intentions.
Bent, seriously bent, hazarding dangerous guesses as to what will come next.
This show is gliding in a hung parliament with a landslide majesty
whose inferiority will mask our certainties
and Alaska Be Dampened.
Joseph Conrad nigs the Narcissus and we all look good in the mirror.
Let me emphasise that my go-dolphin is energised and traumatised in ginger.
Marinade is soaking blind golden behind
while a left-leaning government administers tingle bells.
Cigarettes will fall from trees with the birds and the fleas.
Piccadilly circus performers
loose-leaf liquorice let down from faraway traces.
The coroner’s example is tool-downed and dancing,
cleaved and toe-tapping,
they shout it all about through my captive eyes,
guy-ropes and fireflies.
A hissing seductress free-form and freeze-framed
where the emperor’s new chlorine disinfects
plummets skywards to the gravitational force
within itches the spindly thorax.
Let last flings presume gloriously the fetid outcomes of small clean fruit.
Lichen and luscious lychee listen,
packdogs in top-pockets,
Haemoglobins by the dozen,
smile-lifting flyweight mirrorball,
emissary to the emir,
no rime or reasonableness.
Jealous jewellery smart-bombed
candy-cutting smell of the kine.
Crimson criminal in crimplene,
last call for the Searchers,
lips in the levee,
breasts of pigeon with marmoreal eyes
macaques with wings
and curly peasants etched goldleaf in sharp bas-relief
Loose lips sling chips for their supper
Evangelists with brain tumours
Untreatable and rust-scarred
Pixels a pumping
Garden-green sharia crusttrumpets
Seek fatwa from a hang-gliding prince of the realm
The gills of life are prompting exegesis
Naphthalene coffers bringing mercury to the boil
Temperature dissolves into gas
Tripwires, trapdoors and holy floors
Friends of the kalishnikov
Brown-nosed troubadours, lettuce-preying worms
Hiding in parasite horses
Calamities in the shoehorn
Which penguin callgirls mistake for a good time charlie
Geeks bearing griffons
Archaeopteryx now
Some cutter me brothers
A Plantagenet friend once said
“lie down close to the sanddunes”
as he stuffed his merry face
with pretzels and potted cheese
brief dreams and battlescars.
Defenestration once again
Lupine lapis-lazuli lacks only the Leopard King
Payola
On average it takes seven amoeba to make resin in heaven
Spying on life minus me.
Deriving with trigonometrical intent
I lie, my clothes face downwards
Limpid signals from my exo-skeleton
My hair muffed up
Tankards raised and clinks in Turkish delight
Ataboy, Kemal
The wrench, the wrench, the king of all burdens
Riptide Flavian sewers with monstrous funnels
Gasp the words in thin breathing riddles
Onomatopoeia for Mum
Dragonfamilies are a grills best frenzy
A rod in the right direction
Lily-livered hosepiped helicopters
Dissolved in Omerta
Haiku hidden in mangrove manga
In summary, a goose of the wilderness
Cut to the chase