Category Archives: Helplessness

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.

Germans Think Renewed Storming Of Reichstag A Bad Idea

February 24, 2017 By in Helplessness, Higher Education, History, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Disturbed about Moscow’s plans to have hordes of young Russians storm the German Reichstag, concerned politicians in Berlin wish to stress that this could led to a dangerous militarization of Russia’s youth.

Friends

“Friends just do not storm friends,” one top official said, also noting that a new attack upon the German capital would only contribute to a further deterioration of Russia’s relationship with Germany, a relationship that is growing increasingly estranged at the moment. Russian politicians could not be reached for comment as the Russian capital has been moved to a secret location due to fears of an imminent German youth attack.

“Oh, this Reichstag is in Russia somewhere?” another top official asked later, finally figuring out that this is all just a big game. “That’s pretty deplorable, too.”

The replica of Berlin’s historical Reichstag, which has housed the seat of Germany’s parliament since 1999, will be built in “Patriot Park” and be used by the Russian youth movement, called “Junarmija”  or “young army.”

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.

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?

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.”

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.”