Evil Internet Giant Now Within City Limits

October 26, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Higher Education, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Espionage, German, Germans, Germany, Godzilla, Google, Humor, Paranoia, Satire 1 Comment

Google Inc., that highly mistrusted and ruthlessly vilified corporate world dominator and spy on all things German (I got two words for you here: Street View), has just done an end-run around sleeping data privacy officers stationed at Berlin’s city gates and bought its way into Humboldt University itself by funding a new so-called Institute for Internet and Society, supposedly “based on a philosophy of openness and open access” which will “explore the impact of the digital age.”

Yeah, right. We all know what they’re really up to (or at least you do, I assume). Just don’t come crying to me later and say that I didn’t warn you. The next thing you now Googlezilla will be “approaching the power plant.”

Google Inc. has committed €4.5 million ($6.26 million) to the institute for the first three years as part of its recent push to invest in Germany, which has often been critical of the Internet giant’s practices.

Neidgesellschaft

October 25, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Helplessness, Hypocrisy Tags: 99%, Anarchism, Berlin, Chaos, Crime, Envy, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Neid, Occupy Wall Street, Satire Leave a comment

This is a German word meaning a society based on envy (Germany, in other words).

A 27-year-old Berliner told police that being unemployed and in debt led him to set 67 cars alight over three months.

Damn. This guy must have been one of those 99% out there, if you know what I’m sayin’. If you follow their thinking to his logical conclusion, I mean.

“I’ve got debts, my life stinks and others with fancy cars are better off and they deserve this.”

“Er fand, dass es vielen Menschen besser ging als ihm.”

PS: Speaking of Wall Street, sort of… What’s the real problem with Wall Street? “When you subsidize recklessness, you unsurprisingly get a lot more of it.”

Revolutionary Masses (Yearning To Be Seen)

October 23, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hysteria Tags: Banking, Berlin, Finance, Financial crisis, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Occupy Berlin, Occupy Wall Street, Satire 1 Comment

Hampered by nice weather and apathetic compatriots who actually have to work for a living, a massive crowd of some 300 (three hundred) global democrats and worldwide social revolutionaries nevertheless managed to occupy the city of Berlin over the weekend again already.

Denouncing banking and financial industry practices and other unspeakable injustices of the new century – and possibly having been inspired by something called the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in New York (the weather there is less nice at the moment I’m told) – the German revolutionary masses doing the occupying this week were notably smaller than the already rather puny ones amassed at German protests a week ago, but still.

“Derweil will die OccupyBerlin-Bewegung nach eigenen Angaben ihre täglichen Mahnwachen vor dem Bundestag fortsetzen. Seit Sonntag vergangener Woche kämen zwischen 100 und 200 Teilnehmer.”

ROSAT Soon To Become ROASTSAT

October 21, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Higher Education, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, ROSAT, Satellites, Satire, Science, Space Leave a comment

The defunct and smashingly successful 2.7-ton German ROSAT satellite will finally be making its fiery, uncontrolled and less than successful re-entry into our planet’s atmosphere sometime within the next 48 hours.

Important questions to answer here are (there is actually only one): What are the odds that a piece of ROASTSAT debris will hit someone?

Unless you are a German, the likelihood of getting injured as a result of ROASTSAT’s re-entry is extremely low. The probability of a non-German speaker somewhere on Earth getting hit is about 1 in 2,000. Those odds are for any one of the nearly 7 billion people (minus 80 million Germans) on the planet.

The odds that debris will hit you in particular — or your dog, say, unless he or she is a German Shepherd — are still just one in several trillion.

Experten warnen: Teleskop-Spiegel wird zur Bombe.

The Scam That Keeps On Giving

October 18, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Health, Heconomy, Helplessness, High Art, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Early Retirement, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Hypochondria, Retirement, Satire, Scams, Shams 6 Comments

Word has clearly gotten out now. What used to be a Geheimtipp (insiders’ tip) has now become a full-fledged and nationally recognized Volkssport (national sport): Early retirement due to mental illness.

Up some 6,000 from the previous year, more and more Germans (71,000) are now being “forced” to retire early each and every year because they suffer from things like anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, multiple generalized anxiety disorder, mega ultra super mulitple generalized really really bad anxiety disorder and other such imaginary diseases.

In fact, being mental is now the number one main excuse used to have to go into “involuntary retirement” in Germany, with the average age of these hapless victims being 48, by the way.

Fear industry profiteers, I mean experts, are happy to report that the increased number of diagnosed cases is due to a greater willingness of sufferers to openly admit their problems, although none of these experts are able or willing to explain where this sudden willingness comes from.

Über das Thema werde jetzt “offener geredet und deshalb diagnostizieren Ärzte jetzt eher psychische Ursachen von Leiden.”

Germans Mobilizing For World Financial Revolution

October 16, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Financial crisis, Financial Industry, Frankfurt, Germans, Germany, Humor, Occupy Frankfurt, Occupy Wall Street, Satire 1 Comment

Man oh man is this country ever ripe for revolution again already.

Literally a dozen or two protesters took part in the “Occupy Frankfurt” campaign a week or two ago and some reports indicate that a few of them even stayed there to continue protesting overnight. And that was just the start of it, folks. There were surely even dozens more occupying Frankfurt during protests now being held against the ECB this weekend although I’m having trouble finding news reports covering them because most Frankfurters leave Frankfurt over the weekend, it seems, as nobody here really seems to care.

One has to stop for a minute and consider the dreadful conditions under which the German people have to live in order to really understand why “casino capitalism” opponents will soon be taking down the financial world as we know it (or at least the German one). Unemployment is drastically lower here than in the US, for instance (and the unemployment rate keeps on dropping), but still. Obama is still Mr. Clean over here and always will be (so he can’t be the ineffectual disappointment that many of his compatriots are now taking to the street about). And despite the fact that “the ECB is one of the most powerful democracy-free zones in the EU and has acted in accordance with the interests of the financial industry for years,” many a thinking German financial expert can’t understand “why the ECB, of all financial institutions, should be declared the root of all evil rather than, say, Deutsche Bank or the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.”

No matter. This revolution is another in a long line of historical necessities and it is time for all of us to prepare for the coming cataclysmic change. It will not be televised, however. The ratings are simply too low.

One other important element is lacking in Germany: disappointment over Barack Obama, the man many Americans had pinned their hopes on to improve their society.

Legalistic Republic Deutschland

October 13, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Crime, Criminals, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Legalism, Satire, Spyware Leave a comment

Outraged Germans everywhere are demanding to know why the German state of Bavaria is admittedly using spyware in at least five investigations (all judicially approved) to gather evidence on suspected drug dealers, dopers, Internet criminals and fencing suspects.

“This is completely unacceptable,” one enraged civil liberties activist said. “What will this lead to next? The next thing you know they’ll be using programs like these to gather evidence on suspected rapists, child molesters, murderers and terrorists.”

Bei den Verfahren in München, Landshut, Nürnberg und Augsburg ging es um Doping, Drogen, Hehlerei und eine Bande von Internet-Betrügern, die geschätzt 80.000 bis 120.000 Menschen um eine Summe von insgesamt 10 bis 30 Millionen Euro geprellt haben soll.

Arson Attacks Disrupt Berlin’s Disrupted Rail Traffic

October 12, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Bombs, German, Germans, Germany, Hauptbahnhof, Humor, Leftist Terror, Satire, Terrorism, Weapons Exports 2 Comments

Sort of. With some 2000 trains now running late in Berlin after the discovery of seven homemade explosives along the city’s railways these past three days – and none of the passangers having noticed yet because trains are always late here – the leftist peacenik terrorist group responsible for the diabolical attacks has confirmed that it would have caused “like considerable way more damage and maybe even have managed to blow something up big time if any of the freakin’ trains to be attacked would have been on time like for once already.”

But still… “This morning we slowed down the German capital and its function as a global player in the export of armaments,” said a statement from the group released Monday on a leftist website.

Wake Me When The Revolution Is over

October 11, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech Tags: Atomic energy, Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Nuclear energy, Satire, The Greens 1 Comment

Der Spiegel itself is asking these days: Are we having a successful green energy plan yet?

Uh, let me think. Nope.

Why is it that whenever Germany’s Environment Minster “explains to foreign politicians that his highly industrialized country aims to decommission all of its nuclear power plants by 2022 and obtain at least 80 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2050, he is only rarely met with utter denial — at least not among his fellow environment ministers?”

I’ll tell you why. It is either because a) they are in denial themselves or b) they are too polite to laugh in his face.

A Bad Beginning – Broken Promises – Unanswered Questions

What’s Red And Green And All Over All Over?

October 9, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Helections, Helplessness, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, German, Germany, Greens, Humor, Satire, SPD, The Greens 3 Comments

Other than Claudia the Clown Lady down there, I mean?

I’ll tell you what’s red and green and all over all over: The Green party’s big plans for taking over the world (here in Germany) with their partners (junior partners?) over at the SPD when the next big federal elections come around.

Ever since shooting themselves in the foot during coalition negotiations after their less than stellar performance in Berlin’s local elections the other day, it seems as if those carefully prepared Green putsch plans might end up back on the back burner again after all, at least for now. Everyone is licking her wounds and has hurt feelings or something. And is irritable. And a little bit bitchy.

Hey, Fukushima certainly brought you a long, long way, but the Japanese can only do so much. And close only counts in horseshoes and dancing.

“Jetzt in Schwarz-Grün-Fantasien zu schwelgen, wäre der falsche Weg.”

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Category Archives: Helplessness