Beautiful German weapon sale of the week.
Because somebody has to admire them.
Well, at least the G36 doesn’t shoot straight.
Category Archives: Habitudes
Merkel’s Million Migrant March Marathon Making Masses Mad
Where on earth could all of this German nervousness possibly be coming from these days?
The 1,000,000 refugee mark has almost been reached, the Paris Attacks are barely three weeks old, Saudi Arabia is openly financing religious radicals here, broke-weenie German aircraft are off to Syria and elsewhere (for repairs?), Germany’s AfD anti-immigration party’s numbers keep looking better and better, the Front National is getting fat and sassy in France… What, me worry?
There is one thing that really and truly gives me the creeps, however: Til Schweiger’s threat to make a migrant movie. That might just break this camel’s back.
While vast numbers of Germans have volunteered to help refugees, there has also been a rise in anti-foreigner sentiment that has buoyed the populist and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
German Of The Day: Datenschutz
That means data privacy and Germans are notoriously big on that, as you well know.
Take Germany’s planned reconnaissance flights over Syria and Iraq, for instance. Germans are so concerned about data privacy that they are already planning not to share the intelligence they might gather there with their allies. Sicher ist sicher (better safe than sorry).
The aircraft are expected to operate from Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey, and as Nato allies, the two countries would normally expect to share intelligence. But German commanders are concerned Turkey may use surveillance information from the flights to direct attacks against Kurdish forces allied to the West.
Deutscher Anti-IS-Einsatz: Berlin will Aufklärungsdaten für Türkei zensieren
Then We’ll Send Our Better Half
Syria conflict: Half of German Tornado jets ‘not airworthy’
Ain’t no big deal, as German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has stressed, because Germany only needs to send six Tornado jets for the proposed mission against Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria. Six that maybe ought to be halfway operational, she means.
This German war machine, she is stll broken, señor (thank goodness weapons exports are still A-OK, though).
“Die Lage der fliegenden Systeme bleibt unbefriedigend.”
When In Doubt Just Say No
Nein, nein, nein, already. Nolympics in Hamburg, either.
As you can see up there, Hamburgers were too afraid that the Olympics they decided not to bid to host for yesterday would have brought more police brutality, more barbed wire fences, more school crossing cops escorting people to airports, more big nasty retro surveillance cameras and more US-Amerikan Yankee dollars coming out of the chimney of some Hamburger’s house in a really weird surrealistic fashion (causing particularly nasty air pollution, I assume?).
Put in that light I think it was the sound decision to make.
Let’s see, Munich said no, Berlin said no and now Hamburg says no. I think a pattern is starting to develop here. Boston, too, said no, of course (are there really that many Bostonians of German extraction?). What a minute. Has hosting the Olympics now become some new form of cruel and unusual punishment or something? Maybe we could get ISIS to put in a bid.
“Die Menschen sehen, dass es Sachen gibt, wo das Geld besser angelegt ist.”
Günther Has Left The Building
You know, just like Elvis used to? Only in this case Günther has left the Gasometer. Or will have left it, a bit later tonight.
Don’t ask. This is the spaceship thingy inside Schöneberg’s Gasometer (taken out of service in 1995 – the Gasometer, not the spaceship) where Gunther Jauch has been holding his popular Sunday evening political talk show on German Channel One (Das Erste) since 2011. And he’s done a pretty good job at it, I think, Gasometer spaceship or not.
Another era has come to an end or something. He will be replaced by Anne Will whom he replaced in 2011. Don’t ask. It’s a German öffentlich-rechtlich TV (“public sector” or state TV, if you prefer) kind of thang.
So, Anne Will (her last name could be translated as “wants to,” if you wanted to): May the talk be with you.
Am Ende war es ein eher kurzes Gastspiel für Günther Jauch in der ARD: An diesem Sonntag lädt der Moderator zum letzten Mal als Polittalker ins Berliner Gasometer. Für Jauch könnte es der Einstieg in den Vorruhestand sein.
Stress Lady Back With A Vengeance
Just like she already was here and here and here and here. And here.
Jeepers. What took her so long this time? I mean, what with all of this refugee-terror-soccer-match-cancellation-stress going on around here these days.
But as it turns out, she and her German compatriots don’t seem to be all that stressed out about those kind of things, believe it or not (believe it).
The latest stress survey indicates, for instance, that about one quarter of all Germans are primarily stressed out about the kind of stress that they put themselves under. These are Germans stressed out about being , well, German, I guess you could say. Damn. I wouldn’t want to live under that kind of stress, either.
Some 19 percent are stressed out about not having enough money.
Around 15 percent need more sleep and early retirement, I assume, because having to work for a living is a really big stress factor for them.
And 14 percent are stressed out by not having enough time to do what they want to do. You know, like being more stressed out about stuff?
The Germans remaining, I assume, were not able to adequately stress through verbal communication just how stressed out they really, truly are.
Wie die GfK in einer am Mittwoch veröffentlichten Umfrage herausgefunden hat, stellt der Druck, den man sich selbst macht, die hauptsächliche Stress-Ursache bei den Deutschen dar.
Who Woke Up Insulation Nation?
Like how rude is that? Even if they’re only awake for a few minutes it’s still uncalled for.
* Germans long felt insulated after opposing 2003 Iraq war
* Germany-France soccer game was one of Paris targets
* Cancelled match this week brought threat closer to home
* Vice chancellor shuns war rhetoric favoured by Hollande
After years of feeling insulated from militant Islamist threats, Germans are worrying that they too could be subject to attacks like those suffered last week in Paris.
Ain’t no big deal, though. They’ll be back to sleep in no time, folks. War? What, me worry? The answer is always…
“Die ganz klare Antwort ist nein.”
Germany Says No Before Being Asked, Again
Fearing any possible Alleingänge (going it alone) by Germany, Germany is once again going it alone by telling the world it will not participate in any bombing of ISIS positions before the world ever even thinks of asking it to. This is something it wouldn’t do in the first place, of course, the world not being completely von gestern (born yesterday) and knowing damned well the answer to that question in advance.
Unlike every other country in said world, Germany has an unpleasant past (that it read about once) only it’s called Vergangenheit, which makes it sound even more unpleasant than it needs to, and is therefore permanently exempt from ever having to participate in any kind of unpleasantness that might be overly unpleasant like, say, defending your next-door neighbor’s right to live without fear in a free society, but will be offering moral support instead, the German nation having more morals than it knows what to do with.
Die Ermittlungen nach den Verantwortlichen für die Terroranschläge in Paris laufen auf Hochtouren. 23 Tatverdächtige sitzen mittlerweile in Gewahrsam. Derweil will sich Deutschland nicht an den Luftangriffen gegen den IS beteiligen.
German Of The Day: Lügenpresse
That means the lying press. And, like, welcome to the club already, Germany. It appears that many Germans were not aware of this up until now. I mean, when has the media anywhere ever not been guilty of “embellished and inaccurate reporting?”
In a recent German survey, 44 percent of respondents said they partially, or wholly believe the media regularly lies to the people, as the Pegida movement asserts. Media experts (the people helping with the lying?) examine whether that’s true.
Media outlets in Germany “are controlled from the top,” and therefore spread “embellished and inaccurate reporting.” Nearly half of the 1,000 German citizens recently polled by the Dortmund-based Forsa Institute agreed with these statements.
Currently, the refugee situation dominates media reports. But Germans are simultaneously experiencing the crisis first-hand in their own towns and cities – and often finding dramatic differences between their perceptions of these events and journalists’ representations of them…
For example, Sebnitz: In this village of 8,000 residents in Saxony, where right-wing radicals often make headlines, the son of a German-Iranian couple, both of whom are pharmacists, died accidentally. The immediate headline read: “Neo-Nazis Drown Child.” In truth, the boy drowned after having a heart seizure. A newspaper that reported on the actual facts of the accident nevertheless added: But the way the mood is in Sebnitz, neo-Nazis could well have done it.”
Above all, the issue is often about choice of words: BBC World reported: “Dutch politician Geert Wilders acquitted of hate speech charges in The Hague.” Germany’s national news broadcast, Tagesschau, formulated the same story thus: “The Islamophobe and right-wing populist politician, Geert Wilders…”
Observing Hermann 