Category Archives: Habitudes

Abdalfatah H. A. Will Not Tell Germans What The H. A. Stands For

March 2, 2017 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

And with good reason. His true identity might be used against him. He is a Syrian refugee who just got arrested on suspicion of having committed war crimes.

Police

As we all know, Germany will allow anybody from anywhere in the world to enter the country as a Syrian refugee (no passport or other identification needed) but being a war criminal who is believed to have killed 36 people might slow down his asylum seeking process considerably. And that would be inhumane.

German police are currently investigating some 30 cases linked to war crimes committed in Syria and Iraq.

Living Up To Contractual Obligations Causing Angst

March 1, 2017 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Concerned about possibly turning Germany into a military superpower again by raising its defense spending from 1.3 to 2 percent of its gross domestic product (as agreed to by Germany many years ago in NATO), Germany’s foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) says that this could cause angst elsewhere in Europe, and most certainly at the German ministry of finance, and therefore maybe ought to be put off for an other 10 to 15 years or so. Or maybe longer. It all depends.

Gabriel

Angst is a terrible thing, people. And so is Verarschung (being bullshited). But angst is worse, I guess.

“Für Deutschland unrealistisch.”

This War On Journalism Must Stop

February 26, 2017 By in Habitudes, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Here in Germany, I mean. It is outrageous, unacceptable behavior and is damaging press freedom in Germany and abroad.

Monitor

Like I said, outrageous. So where’s the outrage, folks?

Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the BND, apparently spied on large numbers of foreign journalists overseas over the course of several years, including employees of the BBC, Reuters and the New York Times. Critics see a massive violation of press freedoms.

German Of The Day: Gegendert

February 23, 2017 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

That means gendered. You know, as in language-wise?

Gender

In Berlin, for instance, male words used on public forms and applications can be very disturbing. At least that’s what SPD politicians here think. So that is why they are seeing to it that more female vocabulary will be introduced in the future. I don’t know quite what that means (the ones with die instead of der or das?) but I’m sure they must know what they are doing, right?

“Only using male words gives the impression that the form only applies to the male population and this is not the case.”

Damn. Why didn’t anybody ever think of this before? No wonder I could never figure out how to fill out my maternity leave application.

„Nur männliche Wörter zu verwenden, erweckt den Anschein, als betreffe der Antrag nur die männliche Bevölkerung. Das stimmt aber nicht.“

PS: What will they think of next? Sending men and women to different bathrooms?

German Of The Day: Populismus

February 22, 2017 By in Habitudes, Helections, Hideology, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

That means a left-wing political doctrine that proposes to help the common people who are being exploited by a corrupt dominant elite. Or at least the one I am referring to here is of the left-wing variety.

Populismus

Ironically, this particular form of Populismus is being proposed by a leading member of that corrupt dominant elite himself. But this is the left-wing variety, as I said, and this type of thing has a long tradition so it is therefore “OK.”

The Social Democrats have presented a serious, new challenger for upcoming federal elections. But they are using the same old lines about social justice when there are more important things to talk about, writes a former economics minister (himself once in the SPD).

The Man In The White Castle

February 21, 2017 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, History, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , 9 Comments

Frightened by unsubstantiated fake news reports that US-Amerika‘s president has turned the place into an alternative history (alternative fact history?) horror-land run in part by their creepy grandparents, German vacationers are staying away in droves.

Castle

Almost half of Germans with an interest in traveling to the U.S. won’t do so now because they feel unwelcome or don’t want to endorse President Donald Trump.

About 46 percent of Germans who would like to visit the U.S. “in principle” have changed their views on that destination since Trump took office and won’t travel there as a result, according to a survey by GfK SE published in travel-industry magazine fvw.

The Polls Are Never Wrong

February 19, 2017 By in Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Right? As we were recently reminded after the Brexit vote and the United States presidential election, the pollsters, survey scientists and media manipulators who publish them are always right on the money.

Poll

So please keep this in mind (and please bring it back to mind in a few months time) when we now read that “the SPD has passed the union in another survey” (the union being Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU) and that this is due to the so-called “Schulz effect.”

This means, of course, that Germans are supposed to believe that the SPD’s candidate for chancellor, Martin Schulz, is wildly popular and on a roll and is single-handedly bringing German social democracy back from the near-death it is now experiencing to march together bravely into the brave new social democratic (socialist) future. They don’t believe it, of course, because he isn’t and he can’t. Germans, too, have also realized that polls have long since failed in their traditional function as poorly functioning forecast tools and are now failing miserably at their latest job: To deftly manipulate public opinion and steer it in the direction these pollsters & co. want it to go.

Nobody buys it anymore, Martin. Just like nobody buys you. You can bring out all the survey results you want but that won’t change a thing.*

Der Schulz-Effekt hält an: Die SPD hat auch laut einer Emnid-Umfrage die Union überflügelt. Die AfD fällt erstmals seit einem Jahr unter zehn Prozent.

*The real issue here is the true degree of Angela Merkel’s unpopularity, another closely guarded media secret.

This Doll Must Die

February 17, 2017 By in Habitudes, Health, Helplessness, Humor, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Don’t EVER let anybody tell you that Germans are lasch (feeble) when it comes to threats posed to them by foreign intelligence snoops.

Cayla

Forget about not caring about Putin & Co., forget about spinning your wheels ridiculously with your NSA spying affair. We’ve got a real live (sort of) freakin’ wi-fi-connected Internet doll on the loose and we’re all going to die if we don’t kill her first. OK. So we don’t know who she’s working for yet. But still.

A German government watchdog has ordered parents to destroy an internet-connected doll for fear it could be used as a surveillance device. According to a report from BBC News, the German Federal Network Agency said the doll (which contains a microphone and speaker) was equivalent to a “concealed transmitting device” and therefore prohibited under German telecom law…

“My Friend Cayla” uses a microphone to listen to questions, sending this audio over Wi-Fi to a third-party company (Nuance) that converts it to text. This is then used to search the internet, allowing the doll to answer basic questions, like “What’s a baby kangaroo called?”

Why would anybody want to know what a baby kangaroo is called, huh?

And this is just the beginning, too. These wi-fi-thingies will soon be everywhere. “It doesn’t matter what that object is — it could be an ashtray or a fire alarm.” Damn right. So after you’ve finished strangling this doll toss everything else out of the window while you’re at it. Just in case. They’re out to get us, people. They’re everywhere, I tell you. Whoever they are. Bad dolly!

At what point did we enter this Philip K. Dick novel, anyway?

Berlinale Has Numbing Effect On Audiences This Year, Too

February 15, 2017 By in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

It numbs them with its politics. And its smugness. Intentionally so. Every year. And if you don’t have the “correct” kind of politics and smugness, it will numb you all the more.

Numb

The opening night of the Berlinale was all about politics, from the red carpet, where Green Party politician and Bundestag vice president Claudia Roth sported a black dress adorned with the word “Unpresidented” in large letters – an apparent dig at U.S. President Donald Trump’s spelling aptitude and/or his perceived behavior as commander-in-chief – to officials and speakers taking the stage to talk about free speech, free art and resistance to oppression.

“It’s kind of an antidote to massive budget films with millions of special effects and stuff, which in the end creates a kind of numbing effect: I want more, I want more, I want more.”