Who is afraid of the bear?

Since more than 170 years he is the first wild brown bear living in Germany. When he crossed the borders of Northern Italy and Austria and arrived in Bavaria some weeks ago, he first was welcomed. People gave names to him: "JJ1" for example, or "Bruno" (it is him on the first picture; on the second one you see an anonymous colleague). He was the media-hype before the World-Cup had started. Then people saw the ugly truth: the bear is a robber and a killer! He killed sheep, rabbits and chicken and attacked a stock of bees. The farmers got angry.

Who is afraid of the bear? Of course any (non-armed) human being is a helpless victim for an aggressive bear in the case of a showdown. And so the Bavarian minister for environment decided that the bear, our Bruno, must be shot. Protectors of the environment protested and try to catch him and bring him to a national parc. The whole case shows us about man´s attitude towards nature in our times: as long as it is harmless, compatible with civilization, we like it, touch it, put in the zoo for watching it. As soon as it gets dangerous, incalculable and out of control we try to regain power and kill the alien. We are so many human beings on earth today and we have taken almost all the space for ourselves. Where should the wild animals refuge to? We are doing the same with our own nature: we suppress the unknown and prefer to live in a golden cage.

Bruno must have get aware of his accusation - soon after he returned to Austria. And the new strategy of his hunters is to search for him with the help of polar dogs from Finland. But luckily for Bruno, it is summer and these Scandinavian dogs do not like the warmth of middle Europe. They are simply not in their best condition - and Bruno is still somewhere in the forests of Bavaria or Austria ...

A country in times of football invasion

We are in the second week of the Football World Cup now and everybody´s glad about the fantastic atmosphere among the fans from all over the world that came to celebrate with the German people. At the moment it seems that some fears did not get reality: also the German team was playing really bad through the last years, Jürgen Klinsmann seem to have found a way to get the team together - and so they played well against Costa Rica and Poland. In almost any places people come together in a good and peaceful mood and Hooligan fights could have been prevented. The fans are waving German flags and show a picture that you could not take for granted in the past. Also the owners of Turkish food-stores hang the black, red and gold flag in their windows. This cheerful and multicultural celebration of the German team blames the nationalists and neo-nazis (they are hissing the Iranian flag now..).

But we should not forget that in the weeks before the World Cup several brutal attacks of neonazistic Skinheads against innocent people who did not look "German" enough in their eyes hit the news. There was the talking of certain "No-go areas" around Berlin for example, which people with a darker skin were not recommended to visit. Then the whole debate unfortunately went politically in the way that some politicians (for example the leading ministers of Brandenburg) saw their area insulted by the bad news and the focus was changed from the victims. Of course the whole thing is more complicated. It is the whole German society that has to reflect and act against racism and neo-nazism and it is wrong to hide and delegate the problems to some politicians and the police in certain areas. Somehow we have to overcome this plague. Also in this perspective the colourful multicultural parties on the streets are a good thing.

Some bad things about the World Cup: the whole commercialization and advertisement (we have to go through this) and the prices of the tickets which are nearly impossible to get.

Back to sports: the question remains open who will win the final this time? Brazil, Argentina or even Germany - and what about Ghana?