Ausgeliefert

As in being at the mercy of.

Ausgeliefert

Everbody agrees that big American hi-tech companies are fundamentally evil, right? Well they do here in Germany. In Germany’s state-run media, I should say (they actually call these channels “public-service broadcasters” here because that sounds better).

Anyways, the latest greatest twist to the anti-Google/Facebook/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon agitpop over at the ARD is breaking new ground (or maybe it isn’t) by unabashedly inventing witnesses and working/living conditions in one of Amazon’s German plants in a scarry documentary about that horrible company called Ausgeliefert - and all of this while using the generous funding provided by the compulsory charge every German household has to pay to support objective “public-service broadcasters” like these, of course.

Germans have to pay this charge now whether they even own a television or not, by the way. Hmmm. The ARD called their documentary Ausgeliefert (as in being at the mercy of Amazon), and that’s something every German knows about personally already. Being at the mercy of the ARD like they are, I mean.

Dort, gezeigt wurde das in einer angeblichen E-Mail, würden Menschen “abgefüttert wie die Schweine”, hieß es. Eine Behauptung, der CoCo von Anfang an widersprochen hat und nun vor Gericht zunächst Recht bekam. Der besagte Speiseraum existiere gar nicht, so das Unternehmen: “Das ist schlicht eine Erfindung der ARD-Journalisten, gegen die wir auch juristisch vorgehen.”

Der HR hat bereits vor der Gerichtsentscheidung bestätigt und eingestanden, dass der strittige Screenshot der E-Mail “fingiert” gewesen sei. Zudem musste der Hessische Rundfunk über seine Rechtsabteilung zugeben, dass auch eine im Film porträtierte polnische Leiharbeiterin namens Agnieszka Lewandowska “niemals als Leiharbeiterin bei Amazon beschäftigt war.”

Hitler Diaries’ Reporter Wants Real Fakes Back Not Fake Fake Ones

They may be a crude forgery, Gerd Heidemann seems to be saying, but they’re my crude forgery (although the actual shabby work was done be a certain Konrad Kujau).

Schtonk!

It’s been ten years now and apparently they’re his property again, or so his interpretation of the original contract, and if he could get them back from the Stern’s publisher, Gruner & Jahr, Heidemann would “make them available to Germany’s national archive,” thus, well, gee, I dunno what the hell for, either.

“I’ve really got to have a serious talk with Eva. She thinks that a man who leads Germany can take as much time as he wants for private matters.”

Der Spiegel Ten Years After: Iraq Invasion Commemorated By Unleashing Obsessive-Compulsive Headline Offensive

Bam, bam, bam! The Spiegel just had to knock off three of these puppies in a row, that’s how excited they must have been about the tenth anniversary of the US-lead invasion of Iraq.

Iraq

I didn’t actually read these, of course. Why should I? I already knew what was in them.

10 Lessons from America’s ‘Dumb War’

This article reminds us once again how invading Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a really dumb thing to do and how smart and farsighted and enlightened Germans were for having said no before anyone ever even had the chance to ask them.

Iraq War Seen as ‘Strategic Failure by Many’

This explains why the invasion made everything so awful “down there” and how it has turned that entire region of the world into the terrible, dreadful and hopeless place it is today.

Baghdad Then and Now

This is all about how much nicer it was living in Iraq before that dumb old strategic failure of an invasion took place.

Where bombs once fell, residents now buy groceries. Where militias patrolled, campaign posters now hang. Yet peace is still a long way off.

Well It’s Certainly Anti-Something

Whether the quotes below from Jakob Augstein (Der Spiegel) are anti-Semitic or not, you decide.

Jakob Augstein

One thing is for sure, though: If a German is not sure about which opinion is the “correct” one he is supposed to have, he takes a quick read through the Spiegel to find out.  These quotes represent mainstream thinking in Germany today.

“With backing from the US, where the president must secure the support of Jewish lobby groups, and in Germany, where coping with history, in the meantime, has a military component, the Netanyahu government keeps the world on a leash with an ever-swelling war chant.”

“Israel’s nuclear power is a danger to the already fragile peace of the world. This statement has triggered an outcry.Because it’s true. And because it was made by a German, Guenter Grass, author and Nobel Prize winner. That is the key point. One must, therefore, thank him for taking it upon himself to speak for us all.”

“Israel is threatened by Islamic fundalmentalists in its neighborhood. But the Jews also have their fundamentalists, the ultra-orthodox Hareidim. They are not a small splinter group. They make up 10% of the Israeli population. They are cut from the same cloth as their Islamic fundamentalist opponents. They follow the law of revenge.”

“The fire burns in Libya, Sudan, Yemen, in countries which are among the poorest on earth. But those who set the fires live elsewhere. Furious young people burn the American, and recently, the German flag. They, too, are victims, just like the dead at Benghazi and Sanaa. Whom does this all this violence benefit? Always the insane and unscrupulous. And this time it’s the U.S. Republicans and Israeli government.”

“Gaza is a place out of the end of times….1.7 million people live there on 360 sq. kilometers. Israel incubates its own opponents there.”

You May Not Know This, Amerika…

But you are paralyzed. And it’s all the Republicans’ fault, too.

Paralyzed

I mean it’s not like it could ever be President Obama HIMSELF who refuses to budge when it comes to matters of the “fiscal cliff” kind. Could it?

What we’ve got here people, the Spiegel tells us, is not just a failure to communicate (and guess who’s Strother Martin here):

We are, in short, witnessing a superpower losing its way in a maze of details, propelled forward by grandstanding politicians (who aren’t the President) hewing slavishly to ideology.

Peinlich, Peinlicher, Am Peinlichsten

Peinlich. You know, as in embarrassing or cringe-making? Berlin’s Tip Magazin has just announced this year’s winners for the city’s “Flop 100″ Most Embarrassing Berliners and did a really thorough analysis, I find. The only difficult part was narrowing the short list down to 100 losers, it seems.

Wowereit in Aktion.

And no, it wasn’t really much of a contest when it came to selecting number one. The Überflieger (high-flyer - as in airport, get it?) himself, Mayor Klaus Wowereit, was never really in any serious danger of not coming out on bottom, although Pirate clown Johannes Ponader gave him a pretty good run for the money. And no, they won’t be receiving any, or any more than they have already.

Einen Ehrenplatz auf der Nummer 100 bekam Altplayboy Rolf Eden – der wäre vermutlich enttäuscht, wenn sein Name nicht in der Liste auftauchen würde.

You Can’t Even Count On German Hypochondria Anymore

One can only muster up just so much angst, I guess. Even if you’re a German. There’s just never going to be enough of it to go around to make everybody happy. I mean unhappy.


 
That’s right. Current German Angstzustände (states of anxiety) just ain’t what they used to be. German angst being the complex, ever-changing and unstable condition that it is, a new Forsa study has indicated that, for the moment at least, Germans are actually more frightened of the ongoing European debt crisis than they are of the worries they make about their own health, or lack of it.

How it could come to this unexpected result is very puzzling for many, myself included, but one researcher has come up with a startling new theory that might explain this sudden and eerie angst turnaround. He believes that the permanent media reports about sicknesses and health risks stir up people’s worries and fears (duh), but with all the media attention being focused on the debt crisis these days, common disease mongering has simply been coming up too short on the angst Skala (scale).

Boy I sure hope that they finally get this Eurpean debt crisis crap over with soon so we can get back to business.

“Es scheint, als ob permanente Medienberichte über Krankheiten und Gesundheitsrisiken auch die Ängste der Menschen schüren.”

Dropping Like Flies?

Or Totgesagte leben länger (there’s life in the old dog yet)?

Last week, the Frankfurter Rundschau filed for bankruptcy. The DAPD press agency had already gone down a few weeks earlier.

Now the German business daily Financial Times Deutschland has become “the latest casualty of the chill winds sweeping the global newspaper industry.”

What was that I read while surfing the other day again? Stuff printed on dead trees? What’s that?

“Ich werde Eure kurzweilige Art zu schreiben wahnsinnig vermissen! Die FTD ist eine tolle Zeitung und ich hoffe, dass ihr wenigstens online weitermachen könnt!”

Take Your Pick

You can have the German headline Zahl der Jobs seit Obamas Amtsantritt gestiegen (the number of jobs has increased during Obama’s term of office)…

Or you can have the German headline Arbeitslosenquote steigt vor US-Wahl leicht (the jobless rate climbs slightly before the US election – with the emphasis on slightly here, people).

The main thing is that they both remain misleading. I guess this psychological prepping now will be needed later to explain how dumb and ungrateful Americans are (if Obama loses) or how truly deserving his magnificent victory really was (if he wins).

Man of man. You can almost cut the nervous German nervousness here with a knife right now.

Arbeitslosenzahlen lassen Obama aufatmen.

Now It’s Getting Surreal

You know, as in having that disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream and being all like, well, unreal or fantastic?

I just stumbled across a German commentary in German published by a German in Germany entitled: Vielleicht ist Mitt Romney die bessere Wahl für die USA (Maybe Mitt Romney is the better choice for the USA).

Toto, you bullshitter, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

Der republikanische Präsidentschaftsbewerber hat als Gouverneur bewiesen, dass er pragmatisch regieren kann. Obama blieb unter den Erwartungen.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 98 other followers