Or if you combat ’em, join ’em?
The U.S. Army’s 69-year history of basing main battle tanks on German soil quietly ended last month when 22 Abrams tanks, a main feature of armored combat units throughout the Cold War, embarked for the U.S.
“There is no [U.S.] tank on German soil.”
Not all at once, however. They mean on average.
But don’t be alarmed. These numbers are bound to drop soon because crystal meth is getting more and more popular here all the time, too.
Der Stoff macht aggressiv, fördert die Gewaltbereitschaft, kann zu Wahnvorstellung führen und endet mitunter im Suizid. Vor allem macht die Droge sehr schnell psychisch abhängig.
The intense negative reactions to the Cyprus bailout program, including the constant comparisons made to Germany’s Nazi past, appear to have taken many Germans by complete surprise. Most simply cannot understand why people do not like them just because they are big and strong.
Germany has contributed more than 220 billion euros, or $280 billion, pledged through loans and financial support packages for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, all negotiated with those countries’ euro zone partners, for instance. And yet unfair allegations continue to be made.
Nor were Germans alone in insisting on reforms from those European partners seeking financial assistance. The Netherlands, Finland and Austria are frequently mentioned as countries that hold a similar position, yet Germany always ends up being the target of anger.
“We just don’t get it,” one German politician was quoted as saying. “It’s as if they don’t like us just because we are big and strong, because of our affluence and our power. It’s as if they resent our very existence because of this and because of the new soft hegemony we are now practising in Europe. They feel that we are materialistic, hedonistic, egotistical and shallow. I don’t know, in the end they’re just envious and jealous.”
“I mean,” he then continued. “It’s not is if we were some sinister dominating powerhouse like the USA or anything, spreading its corruptive capitalistic influence too widely around the globe the way it does, smothering the rest of us with it’s commercial and materialistic view of life and the world. We’re just well-intentioned Germans, remember?”
“Germany acts in solidarity so that crisis countries will have a perspective in the future. I wish that those people at the top — the president of the E.U. Commission and the E.U. president — would defend Germans against unfair allegations.”
United States military forces have once again dramatically and unnecessarily raised tensions all over the place (but in North Korea mostly) by clearly demonstrating that they intend to react to any preemptive nuclear strikes conducted by North Korea against the United States with what will most likely be a more than sufficient show of overwhelming force.
Concerned European peace researchers are alarmed, of course, and stress that this type of bravado only sends signals that could result in confrontation and should cease immediately already. Or else.
Nordkorea hatte den Amerikanern jüngst mit einem atomaren Erstschlag und dem Angriff von amerikanischen Militärstützpunkten im Pazifik gedroht.
After German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle himself summoned a Russian envoy to “express the German government’s concern” about a series of raids on German NGOs in Russia, the envoy broke down in tears of regret, fell to his knees, grovelled around for a bit and then promised that his country would never ever ever do anything bad like that again.
The Russian offices of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung have both come under intense scrutiny recently by Russian authorities seeking “foreign agents” who support domestic dissidents because, well, that’s what Russian authorities do. But all of this will come to a screeching halt now, I guess.
“Hampering the activity of German foundations could inflict lasting damage on bilateral relations.”
In the end, the Cypriots swallowed the bitter medicine. Facing national humiliation and a bleak future many complain their small nation has been forced to succumb to the will of a larger, merciless power – Germany.
And the Germans also have a clear and consistent analysis of the problem. They believe that fiscal profligacy or faulty business models lie at the heart of the crisis – and the solution is austerity, allied to structural reform. There are many who argue that this prescription is dangerous. But the anti-austerians have failed to come up with a set of alternative policies that is coherent enough to turn the intellectual tide.
…This Germanophobia is unfair. Behind all the shouting and the wrangling, German taxpayers will once again be funding the biggest single share of yet another eurozone bailout.
The following was taken from the aricle “Wir tun doch nix…” in this week’s Die Zeit.
Germany is neither this consistently pacifist country (described beforehand in the article) nor this worldly-wise state dealing in power politics, rather a bad mix of both: A country that strictly refuses to participate in military interventions but makes every effort to export its weapons instead, gladly to dictatoships in crises regions; a country that is very guarded when it comes to criticism concerning human rights issues in China and Russia, a country that has even begun to wonder if democracy itself is always the best answer; and all of this while acting as if it were the world champion of morality at the same time.
No, nobody would want to live in a country like that. Not even the Germans themselves.
Profitieren statt intervenieren. In einem solchen Land möchte man tatsächlich nicht leben.
The Bundesbank (Germany’s central bank) has just published a study showing that the average German household is a full three times less wealthy than its crisis-hit Spanish or Italian counterparts.
Whereas the median Spanish household has net wealth of €178,000, the equivalent in Germany is €51,000.
“These German households are downright poor,” a spokesman for the Bundesbank said after presenting the study. “Relatively speaking, I mean. In fact they are so poor that they have to eat cereal with a fork just to save milk.”
“Poor? These households are so poor they only have two TV channels: On and off.”
“We’re talking poor here, folks. These households are so poor that the ducks throw bread at them.”
Germany’s relatively low level of home ownership is one of the principal reasons suggested for the wealth disparity.
But fortunately, nobody here in Berlin seems to have noticed.
The trains here are always delayed, get it?
Bei den Warnstreiks der Bahn-Mitarbeiter sind die Berliner relativ glimpflich davon gekommen. Dafür legte ein Zwischenfall den kompletten Schienenverkehr zwischen den Bahnhöfen Zoologischer Garten und Friedrichstraße lahm.
Germany’s Federal Minister for the Environment, Peter Altmaier, will now be shutting down 14 German climate protection programs due to cost conerns, not that anyone here who can do any arithmetic will take much notice or much less care.
Funding for something called Elektromobilität (electromobility) will be cut first, soon to be followed by funding cuts for Stromspeichern (energy storage technology) with the other cuts soon to follow. Billions of a vital natural resource are missing, it seems (they call them “euros” here), this because European CO2 emmission rights certificate trading just ain’t bringing in the cash it’s supposed to do.
Do I detect pattern here? Why is it that the so-called real world is always getting in the way of those way cool dream world plans that so many folks out there want to make come true so really, really, really bad? Who is behind this, anyway? It just has to be a conspiracy (again).
Demnach sollten die Projekte ursprünglich aus dem Energie- und Klimafonds der Bundesregierung finanziert werden. Dort klaffe jedoch eine Milliardenlücke, weil der europäische CO2-Zertifikatehandel nicht genug Geld in die Kasse spüle.
Observing Hermann 