German Outrage Industry At Full Production

When it comes to Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service having forwarded massive amounts of data to the NSA – legally, I mean.

Sicherheit

Take the good old SPD, for instance. They’re hollering the loudest at the moment. And this despite the fact that this particularly evil cooperation with US-Amerika is nothing new at all to them. So not new, in fact (an agreement made in the year 2002), that the SPD’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier was the guy wearing the responsibility hat when this agreement was made – the current governing coalition was not even in power.

But hey, you know how it is when a political party is out of power (in more ways than one) and crawling and scratching to get back into the game. In an outrage and all. In a panic, I mean.

“In my view, the opposition has only itself to blame. Pretending to be the firefighter just to be caught as the arsonist – you can’t play both of these roles with any credibility.”

Meat Me At The Barbeque

How smart was the Green Party’s election pledge to introduce a weekly vegetarian day? Oh, I dunno. But more than 85 percent of Germans eat meat daily or almost daily. So you do the math.

Meat

Massive web surveillance by the US? German voters seem to have lost interest. The euro crisis? Boring. Comprehensive minimum wage? Zzzzzz. It has been a somnolent election season thus far. At least until this week. Suddenly, the German electorate is up in arms, furious with a proposal made by the Green Party which, many fear, could violate one of their most cherished rights: that of eating sausage whenever they want.

 

Veggie Day Will Just Be The Start

If the Greens get their way, I mean.

Green

Although most German works canteens (the place where most working Germans take in their main meal of the day) offer one vegetarian day per week voluntarily already, this is clearly not enough for certain of the more nervous elements pacing the floors at Green Shirt Campaign Headquarters. A federal election is coming up people, so it’s time for a little agitprop sommertime theater already (agitprop Sommerloch theater?).

Once in absolute control – uh, I mean after the coming election in September – the Greens apparantly plan to introduce legislation indroducing “Veggie Day” for the good of all of us, animals included, whether we like our veggies or not (most animals hate them). Like how Organic Bourgeois of them is that?

You see, it’s not like the Greens are into Bevormundung or anything (paternalism, condescension, tutelage, bureaucratic PC dictatorship, etc.). It’s just that they’re into Bevormundung.

One guy from the FDP put it well: “What’s next? Jute Shopping Bag Day? Bike Day? Green Shirt Day?”

“Man muss nicht jeden Tag zwei Burger essen.”

A Pissed Off Germany Will Now Close This Here Listening Station

Teufelsberg

Among others. So there, Amerika.

Who cares that these things have either already been closed down for years or no longer serve any practical purpose anymore? The German government is now going to demonstratively cancel a Cold War-era surveillance pact with the United States and Britain following concerns about their alleged electronic eavesdropping in Germany.

And who cares that this is clearly a symbolic gesture and therefore has no practical consequences for intelligence cooperation between these countries? It’s election time.

“This is a necessary and proper consequence of the recent debate about protecting personal privacy.”

The details of Anglo-American snooping on German citizens remain unclear and confusing, but many Germans have already bought the “utterly senseless narrative”, as Hans-Peter Friedrich, Germany’s interior minister, lamented this week, that “thousands of Americans are sitting down reading our e-mails and listening to our phone calls”.

German Of The Day: Baden Gehen

Yes, baden gehen can mean to go swimming. But it can also mean to go belly-up or to flop horribly.

Baden

And that’s precisely what the German Greens’ top candidate Jürgen Trittin just did while taking part in an election “paddle outing” on the river Werra.

Me? Schadenfroh? Hell yeah. But hey, the federal election here is just 53 days away and you know how it is. Politicians just can’t avoid doing dopey stuff like this at times like this. So give him a break or something. And besides, this guy was all wet to begin with anyway.

The real question here is whether or not this is a portent of things to come. You know, for the Greens? We certainly wouldn’t want them to erleiden (suffer) a Schiffbruch (shipwreck) in the coming election, now would we? Or you wouldn’t, I’m sure.

Trittin, der in Göttingen für den Bundestag kandidiert, war mit Parteifreunden vom nordhessischen Witzenhausen bis ins südniedersächsische Hedemünden auf der Werra gepaddelt, um damit für einen Stopp sämtlicher Salzeinleitungen in den Fluss einzutreten.

Germany’s Eight Unplugged CO2-Free Atomic Reactors Have Increased Air Pollution For A Second Year In A Row

No, wait. It’s the German coal-fired power revival doing that.

Green

Green shift? Sounds more like a green shaft to me.

Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel and is blamed by scientists for contributing to global warming. Merkel opted to shut nuclear power plants after an earthquake in Japan two years ago resulted in meltdowns at reactors owned by Tokyo Electric Power Co.

“Climate protection is a key target of the government and greenhouse gases should fall, not climb.”

Nobody Wants To Work In The World’s Most Popular Country

Why aren’t there zillions of highly qualified foreigners standing in line to come to live and work in Germany (but not like forever or anything if you don’t want to) as expected when the German blue card was introduced a year ago?

Blue Card

This blue card holder above (the person on the right) is only about one of only about 2500 who have expressed an interest in doing so since the card was introduced – and 70 percent of those 2500 were already living in Germany under a different status at the time of the card’s introduction.

I don’t get it. I thought Germany was so well-loved in the world and all that (there are at least 100 reasons for this I am told). There seems to be some kind of a disconnect here. Why are so many foreigners still insisting to prefer going to such yucky places like US-Amerika instead? Don’t they ever read the papers or anything? Hey, if you’re that uninformed pal, Germany probably doesn’t want you in the first place. So there.

Die meisten Blue-Card-Besitzer kamen aus Indien (1971) – gefolgt von China (775) und Russland (597). Das Bürgerkriegsland Syrien ist mit 389 Akademikern ebenfalls stark vertreten.

He’s Back

I’m really starting to like this guy. Günter Grass has now become so predictably “bad” that he’s good.

Grass

This week provided yet more proof that the 85-year-old has jumped the shark. In a Wednesday appearance with this year’s SPD candidate for chancellor, Peer Steinbrück, Grass took it upon himself to blast Chancellor Angela Merkel and, in a verbal assault not without irony, to criticize her past as a member of the East German youth organization FDJ, the Communist Party’s version of the Boy and Girl Scouts.

In condemning Merkel for “tarnishing our relations with our neighbors in an extremely short amount of time” by virtue of the course she has pursued in the euro crisis, Grass said that her approach is a product of her political upbringing. “During her time in the FDJ, she learned conformity and opportunism. Under (former Chancellor Helmut) Kohl, she learned how to wield power.”

“Günter Grass, of all people, a man who kept his own membership in the SS silent for decades, is now criticizing Angela Merkel’s past in East Germany? That is nothing but an embarrassment.”

PS: Speaking of German heros, Edward Snowden is becoming more heroic here in Germany with every passing day.

„Das ist schon heldenhaft, sich gegen solche Organisationen aufzulehnen.”

Our CO2 Doesn’t Stink

Or maybe it’s green or something. At any rate, Germany just managed to block the adoption of new emissions limits for cars produced in the European Union. This was necessary because, well, this legislation would have handicaped Germany’s automobile industry, focused as it is on the luxury car sector.

Cars

Germany has long seen itself as a leader when it comes to efforts to reduce CO2 emissions and combat climate change. Indeed, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government remains committed to radically expanding its reliance on renewable energies in the coming decades.

But when it comes to reducing the amount of greenhouse gases German-made automobiles produce, Berlin is far less ambitious.

“It is a scandal.”

Obama’s Popularity Rating Plummets To 82 Percent In Germany

Prism

Germans are still enamored of Obama: a poll last week showed 82 percent view him favorably.

It used to be 92 percent so this must have something to do with the time he recently spent in Prism.

Just kidding. The real reason is because there are “gute Amis, böse Amis” (good Yankees and bad Yankees) and the Pres clearly belongs to the good ones, NO MATTER WHAT. I mean, this guy could rape a turtle live on “Wetten, dass..?” and nobody would find anything wrong with it (except the turtle). He’ll be back up to 92 percent here again in no time, in other words.

The bad Yankees are the awful scumbag Republican NSA types who actually did the snooping, by the way.

Damn. Speaking of snooping… He and his crew sure are cool, you’ve got to hand it to them. Even when he’s having them monitor you for your own good (and that whether you’re a tea partier or not). I think I’m going to call them the Cyber Snoop Dogg Pack from here on out. Rat Pack had already been taken.

Germans accuse U.S. of Stasi tactics before Obama visit