Talk to the hand

“They are rejecting an idea before studying it.” What else is new, Jean-Claude? Remember Iraq? The Germans said no to that before even being asked.

Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker “launched a blistering attack” on Germany for its flat refusal to even consider his proposal to create eurozone bonds (“E-Bonds” would help weaker eurozone members raise money). He called the Germans “un-European.” Ouch. It doesn’t get much lower than that, people. Unless it’s “un-Southern European” maybe. Lower, get it?

Too bad he mixed up Merkel & Co. with somebody who gives a Scheiße. Just get used to it, Jean-Claude. And you just keep raising your hand as often as you like.

“This is very strange. This way of creating taboo areas in Europe and not dealing with others’ ideas is a very un-European way of dealing with European matters.”

Military restructuring?

Ich bin gespannt (I’m dying to know what’ll happen here).

Sure, making the German Bundeswehr more efficient and less bureaucratic sounds like a great idea, at first.

But think it through, people: There are 250,000 troops right now, of which only 10,000 (tops) can ever be deployed at once (not put into real combat situations mind you, not officially anyway, “deployed”). And I’m not joking here with the numbers, by the way.

So what happens when they drop the number of troops down to 180,000? Are we really supposed to believe that once they do the Bundeswehr will “double the number of troops that can be deployed at any one time from 7,000 to 14,000?”

Wer’s glaubt wird selig! (A likely story.)

This hurts

To read this, I mean. It hurts from laughing too. This is the most pitiful article I’ve ever read on Spiegel Online, and that’s saying a lot–and that despite the fact that the guy at least got the title right: Obama’s Lost Magic.

Take a minute and read what informed, intelligent and sophisticated European journalists have to say when writing about Obama and the United States today. I would expect sixth graders to think this way, but… Whatever.

Now they are calling Obama a “weakling.” But that’s not fair. Naturally Barack Obama reacts in a more mature, adult way than his predecessor, George W. Bush. The problem is simply that Obama is smaller than the promise he made, and tiny in comparison to the hopes an entire nation placed on him in 2008.

Bad General

No, not the one staring Harvey Keitel.

There’s apparantly a brisante (politically charged) quote in Bob Woodward’s new poltically charged book, “Obama’s Wars.” And no, it’s not about Obama.

An American general (I won’t give his real name–let’s just call him James Jones) hurt German soldier feelings really bad a while back by telling them “You’re not going to fight anyway, so we don’t need you” (in Afghanistan). The Germans refused to fight with him about it, however.

Can you imagine that? The next thing you know this Watergate Woodward guy will start digging up negative quotes about the President himself.

„Wir haben den Deutschen gesagt, ihr kämpft eh nicht, wir brauchen euch nicht.”

SPD: If we throw him out then this will solve Germany’s integration problems

This is quite a bold and particularly stupid move on the part of the SPD, but hey, somebody over there has got to do it, I guess.

Normally more than ready, willing and able to follow the slightest whims and moods of potential voters (this being one of the main reasons so many of their voters have abandoned them and put them in the unspeakably bad position they are in), the Brain Police wing of the SPD lack-of-leadership will now go ahead and expel their all too outspoken commrade Thilo Sarazzin for expressing controvsial views about Germany’s Muslim immigrant community that a large majority of the German population shares (I happen to believe that this majority is actually much larger than most Germans think or will admit to, by the way, but maybe that’s just me).

Das ist gut so (and that’s a good thing too) because the SPD was actually showing signs of life as of late and even getting cocky and picking up in the polls in recent weeks (there’s nowhere to go but up when you’re on the bottom) but now they’ve gotten tired of patting themselves on their collective back(s), so there we have it. It’s time to head back down to the Keller again and rest their collective arm(s) a bit or something.

“Wir können in der SPD nicht alles dulden.”

“Thank you for travelling with Deutsche Bahn”

And now, for the rest of you out there rolling your eyes at the conductor’s English, he’ll start speaking your lingo again. And he won’t have to sound so friendly-like all the time either.

Everyone is relieved it seems (me included) at the Bahn’s plan to reduce the number of their annoying announcements – in English. They will now only be, uh, announcing them on trains and at stations where international travellers are more likely to be (so they can better figure out together what the hell it was the announcer just said?). They won’t be talking English at folks on trains going to Kleksdorf or Entenhausen anymore, in other words.

It’s not so much that these folks don’t always speak English that well you know, it’s just that they won’t stop speaking it. Back to the future, I say – I mean past, at last.

Eingeführt hatte der bundeseigene Konzern die englischen Durchsagen – über deren Aussprache sich manch ein Passagier auch amüsierte – auf Schienen und an größeren Stationen 2006 zur Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft in Deutschland.

I like this guy

He’s so… German. You know, so provocative? I mean so Besserwisser-like (know-it-all) provocative? And in this case it’s all the more provocative because he’s provoking other Germans. You may not agree with everything this guy has to say, but it’s hard not to like someone who so clearly bends over backwards to be poltitically incorrect. And this is somebody from the SPD, mind you.

German Central Bank board member and former Berlin finance boss Thilo Sarrazin is now bringing out a book called “Germany is Abolishing Itself” in which, among other things, he warns of foreign infiltration/domination in Deutschland (wow, that’s a new one) – only this time of the Muslim kind. Yikes. The International Jewish Conspiracy is an established fact. But now the freakin’ Muslims are moving in? Like, I had no idea.

Die reine Lust an der Provokation treibe ihn zu „immer fragwürdigeren und menschenverachtenden Aussagen.“

Volunteers of America, OK

But volunteers of Germany? Good luck.

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is moving ahead with reform plans to reduce the Bundeswehr to 165,000 soldiers, effectively turning it into a volunteer army.

This is a controversial move in Germany because, well, every move in Germany is a controversial move. OK, OK. At least the ones that have to do with the military are.

But like who cares? It’s not as if this new professional German army is ever going to be used for military purposes either. Not unless everybody volunteers to, that is. And how likely is that?

Künftig sollen nur noch freiwillige Rekruten eingezogen werden: Die Planer rechnen mit 7500 Freiwilligen pro Jahr.

Abracadabra

How can you make 1000 cops disappear just like that? It’s not easy. It’s pretty simple though.

All you have to do is be the German government and spend $1 million on a UN program to train Somalian police in Ethiopia, then give them uniforms and weapons and send them back home to help keep the peace for their government (or what would like to be one) at which point they promptly desert and join opposition Islamist militia groups instead.

Currently, the transitional Somali government is struggling to suppress the militia, including Al-Qaeda sympathisers Al-Shabaab, who control as much as two-thirds of the country.