What's In A Name? #2

W - T - F??!! Ze roadsign for zis quaint little hamlet in northern Austria (population 107) - right up by ze German border - says it all really!
Achtung! Ze newspaper clip below is even funnier zan ze sign - ja?
So, some burning questions:
+Are the town residents called Fuckers?
+What are the mothers called?
+What would you be learning at the Fucking High School?
+Does the Fucking Hospital help you with anything else?
+And I guess if your friend came from another town, he wouldn't be your Fucking friend then, would he!

Korean War II?

It's THE Asian flashpoint: the UN-imposed border between Nth.and Sth.Korea, a dotted line on a map after a war that never ended. Much more volatile than China's territorial tiff with Taiwan, the Korean War is still being fought nearly 60 years on - socially, psychologically, idealogically, economically... and every now and then, physically.
There've been many clashes over the years between Nth and Sth: border incursions, snipers, fishing boats sunk or confiscated, a naval vessel torpedoed earlier this year. And now this week, just after a pep-talk visit by He-Who-Shall-Be-Obeyed, the Nth.Korean artillery rained down fire on a disputed island. The South responded in kind, nations condemned, the world held its breath...
Living peacefully (albeit nervously) on a disputed island and fishing in its disputed waters is not provocation enough for an hour-long barrage. However, USA and Sth.Korea start playing wargames in that disputed sea today, saying to the North: "Do ya really wanna mess with us?". Now that show of brute strength and solidarity is surely nothing else but provocation. If no response comes from the North over those military exercises, I'd be surprised.
And yet, is there really that much to fear? After all, Nth.Korea had years to target their weaponry. And in one hour of intense fire, they only managed to kill four people and destroy some lightweight construction. I would have expected such a planned attack to have caused near obliteration!
This smells merely like noisy northern sabre-rattling. And knowing full well that USA is bound by agreement to back the South right up to and even into Korean War II, would the North be stupid enough to push things to the brink for the sake of principle?
The answer's probably "yes"...

Who Is "Ginza Glenn"?

Anti-whaling activists Sea Shepherd call him "Ginza Glenn".
To his clients he's Wellington-based Omeka Communications, voicepiece for the tobacco industry and the Institute of Cetacean Research, lobbying on behalf of the nasty Nippon whalers.
Glenn Inwood is an award-winning kiwi PR specialist. He's been a journo, radio producer, communications manager for the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission. He worked in politics but, after ex-PM Helen Clark had called his whaling connections "distasteful", he resigned.
Wikipedia has quite a bit of detail on him actually...Inwood works for Te Ohu Kaimoana, the sole voting shareholder in Aotearoa Fisheries, which owns 50% of Sealord (the other half is owned by Japanese company Nissui, a major shareholder in Japan's Antarctic whaling fleet).
Inwood also works for Imperial Tobacco NZ, Japan Fisheries Agency, Japan Whaling Association, Species Management Specialists, and the World Council of Whalers.
As you may assume, Glenn Inwood is not a friend of whale conservators.
Various news agencies have had their eyes on Glenn too. They reported that back in Dec.2009/Jan.2010 someone chartered several 'spy flights' out of Tasmania: that was "Ginza Glenn". Paid for by Omeka, they tried to find Sea Shepherd's vessels en route to the Southern Ocean. SS claims Inwood lied by saying he was a NZ Govt employee monitoring the ships for search and rescue purposes. This led to a bill in the Oz Parliament, to ban nasty Nippon whalers from using Aussie planes to spy on protesters.
Now, on one hand, Glenn was just been doing his job and, in his controversial customers' craniums, doing it well. Consumer-killers and whale butchers would not feature highly on many PR firms' "preferred client" lists, so as long as Glenn beats the drum as hard as he does, he gets guaranteed good income!
But on the other hand, blood money does leave a stain...