dieter

In German we say, Ach du Liebe!

Man, you wanna just talk peanuts by the sound of it. For a start, bananas are about just as boring as nuts. Wanna talk about the weather? Okay, it's nice and cool in Melbourne at the moment, though we are heading for a 38 degree Tuesday, though the weather bureau keeps changing its mind about the exact figure. Have you ever noticed that? Does it annoy you too?

Yes, we have no bananas today.

What logic?

If he'd been born in Osaka though he wrote in German probably, by your reckoning, may not make him Japanese though.

Obama did nothing but toady to Israel and drop bombs and talk sweetly. Clinton was just as bad. The damage he and Albright did to Iraq, just for starters, was way beyond the pale. Obama will be compared to the great fairy flosses of the world, full of sweet sound and broken promises ( Quantanimo, exiting Iraq and Afghanistan) while piling on the murders by Drones, not to mention his complicity in the rape of Libya and Syria.

We are all blips, my friend.Some of us blip more honestly and benignly. I take my hats off to those who do. As they say in the classics, my buckin hats cover my buccaneers. Also, the terrors Alexander wrought on the world as he knew it ought to be compared to the terrors Napoleon, Churchill, Stalin and Hitler wrought on the world. I simply hate those clowns who thought it was their destiny and privilege to wreak terror. Bush, Blair, Howard, Obama, Clinton, Netanyahu, and their ilk should be put away.

Just had a geek at so-called Croats: they even claim Marta Agerich and Joseph Haydn. Agerich has Catalonian background on her father's side, Russian Jewish on her mother's. Whatever, let's claim her!

Especially one with the lot.

True: in fact most of the east coast of Scotland and England has more Viking gene that any other. The salutary aspect of this is the relevance that boat people have to civilization and the evolution of the human species. Dutton, Turnbull, Abbott, Shorten, please take note.

Good riddance.

He wrote in German:the Hapsburgs/Austria/Hungary ruled what becamse Czechoslovakia.

You mean the Sassenachs?

He'll marry three Ottoman Muslim refugees who sought sanctuary in Ho Chi Ming City and claim the dole for all of them.

She's dead, you necrophiliac.

As is his wanton. Or, wantoness. But all in all, because he's [redacted], we can yield him a wanton or two. But no more.

Ah, I forgot, this is Demonland. I've just thought about it, being brought up as a Roman (sic) catholic, maybe I should be a Saints supporter. After all, they have as many Germans as the Demons...

Beelzebub, do you really reside in Hades?

Hey man, what would you know about my futile overs? I only bowled them in my later years. At my best I was as fast as Charlie Griffiths.

They in fact lost both wars in big ways, especially the second, Mr Biff, because the idiot Churchill put the Empire on the line and it vanished in a poof of smoke, not cigar smoke either. They lost the First because through their sheer greed and stupidity they made the second inevitable. Serves them right because it was mainly their idiotic notion that they were the world's top dog and it ought to stay that way that caused the First.

That's why I love ya, Mr Biff, despite your tendencies to exaggerate.It's the weird factor. Are you, by chance of Slavonic Origin?

We're just proof that Demonland acknowledges that Australian culture is more than Agriculture.

I was referring more to the pre-WW1 era. Britten especially post dates, here. You could get away with Elgar, Vaughan Williams just. To counter, I could claim Arnold Schonberg as well. He, ironically, was going to 'ensure the dominance of 'German' music for the next 100 years'.

Yes,I'll take Musil as well. And Joseph Roth. My ancestors descended on Banat during Maria Teresa's reign. They came from Alsace and the Black Forest. - hence the Donauschwabs as both those areas are populated by Schwabian Germans. Maria Teresa was a Hapsburger, if you like, that's why I threw in Schubert and Mozart.

By the way, my mother and grandparents were part of 'that other pointless empire, the Austro-Hungarians' as you so kindly put it, and put entirely in a way I've come to expect from people descended from British so-called culture. Some good things came out of Austria-Hungary, not the least Mozart and Schubert. And Bruckner and Mahler. Stefan Zweig, Sigmund Freud,it could also claim Kafka. Britain at that time gave us Lord Balfour, Churchill, Gordon of Khartoum, mainly war mongers, all told. Oh, and Rudyard Kipling and great rhyming couplets about all good things British, and all the while, while inventing concentration camps during the Boer War, and stripping India and China bare, and Malaya of its rubber, well, what else did the British leave behind? Oh yes, railways so they could pilfer more productively.