Come pick up your Lego blocks!
We’re building a big international airport. It’s going to take a while.
Category Archives: Helplessness
Germans Stingy With Their Organs Too
Even after they’re dead, I mean.
Organ donations have dropped sharply in Germany following a scandal over alleged corruption at several transplant clinics. The German Foundation for Organ Transplantation says the number of organs donated fell almost 13 percent to 3,917 last year, the lowest figure in a decade.
Which reminds me of a joke…
An elderly patient needed a heart transplant and discussed his options with his doctor.
The doctor said, “We have three possible donors; tell me which one you want to use.
One is a young, healthy athlete who died in an automobile accident.
The second is a middle-aged businessman who never drank or smoked and who died in his private plane.
The third is a hospital administrator who just died after 30 years of service at a large medical center.”
“I’ll take the administrator’s heart,” said the patient.
After a successful transplant, the doctor asked the patient why he had chosen the donor he did. “It was easy,” the patient replied. “I wanted a heart that hadn’t been used.”
Going, Going…
Not quite gone. But just give this a little more time to ripen. One thing’s for sure: Klaus Wowereit (SPD) will definitely be gone as mayor before Berlin’s international airport ever opens – now pushed back to 2014.
Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit stepped down on Monday as head of a board overseeing the building of the city’s new international airport after yet another delay in the project dealt a fresh blow to Germany’s reputation for efficiency.
But Wowereit told a news conference he would not resign as mayor, despite calls for him to step down, due to the debacle over Willy Brandt International Airport, which was originally planned to open in 2008.
How’s that saying go? Lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende. That is, it’s better to make a painful break than draw out the agony. And funny, I wouldn’t find a break like that painful at all.
“It’s over, Klaus.”
Well It’s Certainly Anti-Something
Whether the quotes below from Jakob Augstein (Der Spiegel) are anti-Semitic or not, you decide.
One thing is for sure, though: If a German is not sure about which opinion is the “correct” one he is supposed to have, he takes a quick read through the Spiegel to find out. These quotes represent mainstream thinking in Germany today.
“With backing from the US, where the president must secure the support of Jewish lobby groups, and in Germany, where coping with history, in the meantime, has a military component, the Netanyahu government keeps the world on a leash with an ever-swelling war chant.”
“Israel’s nuclear power is a danger to the already fragile peace of the world. This statement has triggered an outcry.Because it’s true. And because it was made by a German, Guenter Grass, author and Nobel Prize winner. That is the key point. One must, therefore, thank him for taking it upon himself to speak for us all.”
“Israel is threatened by Islamic fundalmentalists in its neighborhood. But the Jews also have their fundamentalists, the ultra-orthodox Hareidim. They are not a small splinter group. They make up 10% of the Israeli population. They are cut from the same cloth as their Islamic fundamentalist opponents. They follow the law of revenge.”
“The fire burns in Libya, Sudan, Yemen, in countries which are among the poorest on earth. But those who set the fires live elsewhere. Furious young people burn the American, and recently, the German flag. They, too, are victims, just like the dead at Benghazi and Sanaa. Whom does this all this violence benefit? Always the insane and unscrupulous. And this time it’s the U.S. Republicans and Israeli government.”
“Gaza is a place out of the end of times….1.7 million people live there on 360 sq. kilometers. Israel incubates its own opponents there.”
Doing Business With Communist Regimes R Us
You won’t regret it, Pyongyang! Germans have always been the one-stop experts when it comes to laying the groundwork for foreign investment in crumbling shithole communist states!
And here are just a few of the bennies your North Korean “companies” will soon be getting out of the coming deal:
We have absolutely no problem validating communism – we’ve been doing it for decades!
Our proven track record of indifference to the suffering populations under oppressive totalitarian regimes is virtually unmatched in the Western World!
Our economists and lawyers are all “can do will do” when it comes to selling expensive stuff to bullies of all varieties, no matter how bizarre, deranged or absolutely wacko they may be!
That is why you know that we support your latest master plan wholeheartedly – and we Germans KNOW a thing or two about master plans, too.
So remember Kim Jong: We are the pros when it comes to helping you help ourselves to help you help ourselves while helping you help us in the process.
“There is a master plan. They want to open up this year.”
And We Don’t Like Swabians Either
You already knew that Berlin’s Left had problems with all of those annoying, gentrifying foreign out-of-towners who won’t leave town. Now Ärger (resentment) has broken out with gentrifying German out-of-towners from Swabia (the region around Stuttgart in southwestern Germany) who won’t leave either.
More specifically, “native” Prenzlauer Berg Berliners of the poltically correct kind are pissed off these days about the confusion that reigns whenever they want to order their local breakfast buns in the morning (called Schrippen here). The upwardly mobile Swabians who now live here too prefer calling them by the name they use for them down south in their own neck of the woods: Wecken. And this is just plain wrong. Or something. And an issue. A German issue even. A classic German petty bourgeoisie issue even, even.
In fact, this German petty bourgeoisie issue has become such a German petty bourgeoisie issue that Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Thierse (SPD) himself felt compelled to note in a recent newspaper interview that “I’m annoyed whenever I go to my local baker and find out that there are no more Schrippen for sale, only Wecken. In Berlin we say Schrippen – and the Swabians ought to get used to that.”
This would be funny except that he meant it. Which makes it funny after all, come to think of it. And I’m not even making this stuff up, people.
“Ich ärgere mich, wenn ich beim Bäcker erfahre, dass es keine Schrippen gibt, sondern Wecken. In Berlin sagt man Schrippen – daran könnten sich selbst Schwaben gewöhnen.”
1.4 Will Get You 5.5
Just in case you wondering about the virtues of stringent gun control laws in a country like Germany…
It turns out that there are 1.4 million Germans who legally own weapons. There are about 5.5 million weapons in circulation, however.
This is a so-called Widerspruch (contradiction), isn’t it? No German would/should own more than one weapon, (and one bullet) would/should he/she? I, for one, feel that German lawmakers should waste no time or effort in passing even more stringent gun control legislation immediately to well, uh, clear this Widerspruch up ASAP real pronto like already.
Die Deutschen haben rund 5,5 Millionen Waffen im Privatbesitz. Legale Besitzer gibt es aber nur 1,4 Millionen.
10 Years Of College Down The Drain
I mean 10 years of hilarious German-Afghan Police Academy high jinks!
German officials have been training police in Afghanistan for a decade, but a visit to their training center in Mazar-e-Sharif creates major doubts about the effectiveness of the mission. Afghan police remain poorly prepared to tackle the mighty challenges they will face as Western forces withdraw.
“What we want to achieve with the recruits is a change in mentality,” says a German instructor. “More team spirit, a better sense of community, more loyalty. More soccer, less buzkashi*.”
*Buzkashi is the Afghan national sport and is a game in which horsemen battle over a goat carcass.
Euro Crisis Is Over Or Something
So have a Happy New Year already.
Germany’s finance minister says the worst of euro area’s debt crisis appears to be over after three years of worries over Greece and other members of the group of 17 European Union countries that use the single currency.
Meanwhile…
Berlin’s mantra about spending cuts in the eurozone is bringing unemployment and spreading hopelessness across Europe.
So take your pick, it’s both.
“I think we have the worst behind us.”
Germany Needs More Rigorous Knife Control Legislation
Merry Christmas or something. A 20-year-old was arrested on Christmas Day in the Bavarian town of Weisendorf after a family fight which ended inthe stabbing death of his 15-year-old cousin.
Observing Hermann 