Category Archives: Hard Facts

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.”

Israel

February 28, 2017 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Beautiful German weapon sale of the week.

Israel

Because somebody has to admire them.

Israel’s state attorney has ordered the opening of a criminal investigation into an arms deal with a German company involving members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s entourage, the justice ministry said on Monday.

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?

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.

German Of The Day: Du Darfst

February 20, 2017 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

That means you may, or you are allowed to.

Kim

You know, as in New Zealand allowing Kim Dotcom to be extradited to US-Amerika itself for racketeering charges? Yes, Kim. You may. The entire Dotcom family is really upset, I assume, but they’ll get over it. In a decade or two.

A New Zealand judge on Monday upheld an earlier court ruling that flamboyant internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom and three of his colleagues can be extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges.

The decision comes five years after U.S. authorities shut down Dotcom’s file-sharing website Megaupload and filed charges of conspiracy, racketeering and money laundering against the men. If found guilty, they could face decades in prison.

Remember The Seven Million Dollar Man?

February 16, 2017 By in Habeas Corpus, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hustle (Hoax) Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Well they’ve got a 1.1 billion Eurofighter over here. Lawsuit, I mean.

Eurofigher

Austria is seeking as much as 1.1 billion euros ($1.16 billion) from Eurofighter Jagdflugzeug GmbH and its main shareholder, Airbus Group SE, after a probe concluded the companies deceived the government in a 2003 purchase of fighter jets.

“We can’t accept that Austrian taxpayers are co-funding bribes by way of the purchase price. We have clear evidence that Eurofighter and Airbus deceived Austria. This deception has caused massive financial damage.”

German Air Farce Ready For Action

February 12, 2017 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Only one of Germany’s eight way-over-budget Airbus A400M military transport planes is working at the moment, if working is the proper word for a military transport plane that will never actually be used anywhere anyway. Jeepers. That’s like, I dunno, less than half or something.

A400M

Germany’s defense minister Ursula von der Leyen apparently discovered this problem single handedly after the A400M she had taken for a visit to Lithuania broke down there.

Meanwhile… Countless aircraft belonging to German Billigflieger (budget airlines) loaded with countless tons of German tourists don’t seem to be having any technical problems whatsoever. Their number will be increasing dramatically this summer. You just got to set your priorities right these days, I guess.

Zum Sommer wächst das Angebot der Billigflieger an deutschen Flughäfen kräftig.

German Of The Day: Schweinefurz

February 10, 2017 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humor Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

That means pig fart. And pig farts are super hilarious here in Germany (Hey, German humor is what it is. I’m not passing judgement here or anything).

Pig farts

Unless, of course, they are directed toward foreign heads of state, so-to-speak.

A German court upheld  ban on a satirical poem which suggested Turkey’s president had sex with animals and watched child porn. The Hamburg court upheld its injunction issued in May banning re-publication of parts of the poem which it called ‘abusive and defamatory’.

A lamb or a llama fart probably probably wouldn’t have been all that bad in this guy’s poem, but pig fart? That just doesn’t cut it (Cut it, get it?).

„Schweinefurz“ ist für Erdogan besonders ehrverletzend.

435,000 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall

February 8, 2017 By in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

435,000 bottles of beer.

Asylum

Expensive bottles of imported beer. No, make that deported beer.

“We carried over 435,000 cases into the new year and we want to have dealt with those this spring.”

“If there is virtually no prospect for a migrant to stay here, it makes sense to push for an early repatriation and to encourage that financially.”