Our Holy Hymnal Election Video, Amen

March 16, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helections, Hi-tech, High Art, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Big Money, German, Germans, Germany, Hollywood, Humor, Media, Obama, Power, Presidential Election, Propaganda, Satire, The President 1 Comment

Wow. If anyone appreciates good propaganda, it’s these guys. The Der Spiegel clearly, if not accidently, got this one right: Obama, Amerikas Supermann.

“Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim directed it, Oscar winner Tom Hanks narrated it: Barack Obama’s election strategists have released a 17 minute promotional film. It stylizes the US President as a lonely hero who has single-handedly led his country out of crisis.”

Coming soon to a living room near you.

“Dieses Video ist für die Fans, und ihr wisst, wer sich angesprochen fühlen sollte.”

German Computer Clouds Don’t Stink

March 11, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, CeBIT, Cloud Computing, Data Protection, Data Security, Fear Mongering, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Marketing, Nationality, Paranoia, Satire, Technology 2 Comments

I mean float. At least not across the German border, they don’t.

Germans being pathalogically hypersensitive whenever it comes to data protection issues, whether they be actual issues or not, Deutsche Telekom has cleverly exploited these wildly popular fears during this year’s CeBIT technology fair by suggesting to “the 3.6 million prosperous German small and medium sized firms who have not yet taken the leap to storing their data using cloud computing” that their “German cloud” can offer them the safety and security that those leaky and toxic foreign clouds could never offer them – even if those foreign clouds wanted to offer them safety and security in the first place which, of course, they don’t.

Telekom’s cloud – some 30 datacenters spread across Germany – is, well, spread across Germany, so nothing can ever possibly go wrong, one Telekom spokesman tells us. “And we are not playing on peoples’ fears, either” another spokesman added. “It’s just that when servers are situated outside of Germany there is a risk that companies will use your data for commercial purposes or, worse, they will be spied on by the secret services.”

Let’s all sing together: Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re always afraid. You step out of line, the man come and take you away…

This will be “a cloud computer model for the German market and in the German language.” Made for Germans. By Germans. In Germany.

Being A Pirate Sucks

March 4, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Health, Helections, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Counter-Culture, Counterculture, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Pirates, Politics, Protest, Satire, The Pirate Party 2 Comments

I got your “aye me buckos” for you right here. Even the best-run running joke gets old after a while (or in this case the worst-run).

It turns out that too much transparancy leads to too much transparancy after all. That is: Finally being able to see that if you want to accomplish something in life (or even in politics, yuk), you’re going to have to work really, really, really hard for it.

Top pirate wench Marina Weisband quit first due to “health reasons” (she was clearly sick and tired of all this adolescent nonsense). Swashbuckling chairman of the Berlin pirate pack himself Gerhard Anger quit not long after that due to “the immense pressure” of having to actually get up every morning to go to work.

Like, life in the Internet was never like this. You can stick this reality bite crap back up to where the sun don’t shine, dude. A party “in tune with the Berlin vibe” is still a party. And every party has to come to an end sometime.

„Ich ertrage diese emotionale Belastung nicht.”

Airbus (Some Call It Airbias) Needs More Germans

March 2, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Airbus, Berlin, Business, EADS, France, German, Germans, Germany, Government, Humor, Paris, Satire Leave a comment

At least that’s what the Germans will tell you if you ask them, which of course nobody is.

OK, we’re actually talking about EADS here. “The German government is deeply concerned by the concentration and centralisation of research and development competencies in the headquarters in Toulouse, which have to a large degree led to the current imbalance,” a pissed off big-time German politician has lamented.

So much for Franco-German understanding (yet again). And if it were up to the Germans, they would even see to it that EADS ensure “equal numbers of French and German nationals occupy positions in the top five leadership levels,” although how you would equally distribute five people is unclear to me (government can do this kind of stuff, you know).

But none of this will lead to anything, folks. I can tell you that right now. The Airbus Chief Executive and designated EADS boss isn’t about to let any pigheaded German government official tell him what to do. His name is Thomas Enders and he’s a pigheaded German himself.

EADS was formed in 2000 from French, German and Spanish assets as a counterweight to U.S. aerospace and defense giants.

Germans Still Scared Of The Internetz

February 28, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: Angst, Berlin, Data Privacy, Fear, German, German Angst, Germans, Germany, Humor, Technology, The Internet, The Web Leave a comment

Actually, it’s only the older, digital immigrant kind of Germans who are still scared of the Veb. You know, around 85 to 90 percent of the population?

And these are the folks who want politicians to introduce ever more stringent anti-Internet legislation (more is more here) and get all hysterical about data privacy for data that nobody’s interested in and ran Google Street View out of town and would never think of ever putting their faces (or anything else) on Facebook, provided they could even find the dad dern thing, and think that flash mobs are real mobsters with machine guns and stuff like that and on and on and on. And, oh yeah, these are also the folks who vote here. So there we have it. Old dogs, nix tricks. Tricks are for kids.

Sogenannte Digital Outsiders hält die Angst, die Kontrolle über ihre persönliche Daten zu verlieren, davon ab, überhaupt online zu gehen. Sie fürchten zudem, mit einem versehentlichen falschen Tastendruck das Internet zu löschen.

Cut The Loses And Run

February 22, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Higher Education Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Renewable energy, Solar energy, Solar Power, Subsidies, Technology 1 Comment

The German government is about to cut solar subsidies by 30%.

Despite the massive investment, solar power accounts for only about 0.3% of Germany’s total energy. This is one of the key reasons why Germans now pay the second-highest price for electricity in the developed world (exceeded only by Denmark, which aims to be the “world wind-energy champion”).

According to Der Spiegel, even members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s staff are now describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rösler, Germany’s Minister of Economics and Technology, has called the spiralling solar subsidies a “threat to the economy.”

“We don’t like your profligate spending,”

February 20, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hi-tech, Hypocrisy Tags: Arms, Arms exports, Berlin, Financial crisis, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Military, Weapons Leave a comment

Germans are always lecturing the Greeks. “Except when it comes to buying our ridiculously expensive weapons systems,” they maybe ought to add.

Over much of the past decade, Greece – which has a population of 11 million – has been one of the top five arms importers in the world.

Most of the vastly expensive weapons, including submarines, tanks and combat aircraft, were made in Germany, France and the United States.

The arms purchases were beyond Greece’s capacity to absorb, even before the financial crisis struck in 2009. Several hundred Leopard battle tanks were bought from Germany, but there was no money to pay for ammunition for their guns. Even in 2010, when the extent of the financial disaster was apparent, Greece bought 223 howitzers and a submarine from Germany at a cost of €403 million.

Unterdeckungen

February 16, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hysteria Tags: Atomic energy, Atomic power, Berlin, Fukushima, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Nuclear power, Renewable energy, Satire, The Green Shirts, The Greens 4 Comments

That’s German for deficient coverage. And German readers might be reading that word a lot in the weeks to come, at least when it comes to the electricity supply in Germany.

„We have been observing for weeks now that something with the system just doesn’t seem to be right,” one market expert said.

And in a letter from Germany’s Federal Network Agency to the power traders it deals with, it makes clear its concern about the rather volitile situation going on at the moment and has even warned of the collapse of the German power network. It almost happened on Febuary 6, already, they wrote, as “substantial undercoverage continuing over several hours” nearly brought the system to its knees.

Hmmm. Last year at this time, during one of the coldest winters ever, there wasn’t any problem with the German electricity supply at all. What on earth could have possibly happened since then and now to have caused this disturbing situation?

Nach dem Reuters vorliegenden Schreiben stand das Stromnetz in den vergangenen Tagen mehrfach vor dem Kollaps.

Not One, Not Two…

February 15, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Atomic power, Berlin, Berlin Film Festival#, Berlinale, Film, Fukushima, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Movies, Nuclear power, Political Agendas, Satire, The Greens 2 Comments

But three films about Fukushima are being shown this year at the Berlinale.

That was to be expected, I guess. Especially now since Fukushima hysteria has all but disappeared from the Bildfläche (screen), even here in Germany.

It’s hard to keep people scared for months on end, now matter how important you think your agenda is. They just get tired and want to move on with their lives. The latest media stunt I just barely heard about had a lot of potential, for a few minutes, but then it rolled over and died, too.

I am looking forward to the big one-year anniversary media terror show bombardment to be held here in Germany next month, of course. But what are they going to be able to scare us with then? The German nation threatening to shut down all it’s nuclear power plants? Been there, done that. It makes you wonder sometimes why they even take the trouble to keep on agitating at us like they do. Now that the war is over and all, I mean. There’s just no place else to agitate at the moment, I guess (thanks for nothing, “Occupy Movement”). It must be hard being progressive sometimes. Much less all the time.

The 11-day film festival, which prides itself on its generally edgier and more politically-overt line-up over other film showcases, was perhaps a fitting backdrop for the documentaries.

Electricity Scarce In Germany These Days For Some Reason

February 9, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: Atomic energy, Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Nuclear energy, Power Plants, Renewable energy, Satire, The Green Shirts 1 Comment

Germany’s power operators have requested that reserve generators at a power plant in southern Germany and two plants in Austria be activated because, well, the lights are fixin’ to go out here (it’s c-c-cold).

But don’t think for a moment that this has anything at all to do with eight of Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors having been switched off because of an earthquake in Japan last year because it doesn’t. You got that?

“We do not have a problem of supply, of quantity, it’s principally a question of stabilizing the network.”

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

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