“German wedding traditions you’ll want to adopt”

1. Men marry women (or vice versa).

Marriage

2. Then they raise a family together.

The other traditions aren’t all that interesting, I find.

In an absolutely, positively and purely political move she has perfected over the years (to take the wind out of her opponent’s sails in the coming election by suddenly doing 180 degrees and making their stand her own)… German Chancellor Angela Merkel has opened the door to a free vote in parliament on legalising same-sex marriage, after signalling a shift in her party’s position on it. Mrs Merkel surprised the German media by saying she favoured a “decision of conscience” on gay marriage. Her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) have previously opposed it – unlike the rival Social Democrats (SPD), Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens.

German politicians, like politicians everywhere, are always talking to you about their principles. This is a prime example of what they mean by that.

All The Secret Code That’s Fit To Print

Forget about the lying press. Now some German media have taken it to a new level and publish their news reports using a secret code. Everybody here knows the code, however, so it’s not much of a secret. But still.

250

Here’s an example: 250 “people” obstruct a police operation in Duisburg. The cops in Duisburg wanted to check the papers of some guy involved in a traffic violation. The situation escalated, however, ending up with a gang of 250 “people” assembling and interfering with this police action.

Let me decode that for you: Germans don’t assemble in groups like that to interfere with cops investigating some traffic violation. Ergo, other people who now live in Germany do. Not one word can be found in that article indicating that, of course, but your everyday Germans on the street have become such experienced code breakers that they know the deal as soon as they read the headline. Nobody’s lying though, see?

Etwa 250 Menschen haben der Polizei zufolge eine Verkehrskontrolle gestört.

Don’t Mind The Mind Police

You don’t have to. They’re minding you. Before you even noticed that you minded, too. But once you do start minding, remember to remind yourself that they are only minding you for your own good. So never mind.

Sexism

Progress at last, I must say. Berlin’s Left party has taken another step forward into the past by banning what they have deemed to be sexist advertising with of half-naked women on city billboards. I couldn’t agree more. I want them all naked. Completely naked. Now.

That image above would also fall under that sexism category, by the way. Like I said, never mind.

“You don’t have to hide your pugs.”

Brother Of Safia S. Now Islamist Criminal, Too

And his name is Brother S.

Safia

Sorry, I mean Saleh S. And don’t even think of telling me that you don’t know who Safia S. is cause I know you do. But now her brother, Saleh S., has been given seven years of Jugendstrafe (youth custody) for carrying out an Islamist-motivated arson attack. In Germany, people. That means he could literally spend months in prison.

Mother S. and Father S. could not be reached for comment. Nor could Cousin S. (no relation to Cousin Itt). Nor could the Dog S. of the Great Aunt S. of the Neighbor Across The Street S. Okay, S. reicht (that’s enough) already!

Das Landgericht der Stadt hat Saleh S. nun wegen versuchten Mordes in sieben Fällen schuldig gesprochen. Dem Gericht zufolge hat der junge Mann gestanden, am 5. Februar 2016 aus islamistischen Motiven zwei Molotow-Cocktails in den Haupteingang eines Einkaufszentrums in Hannover geworfen zu haben.

PS: Talk about your Fahrenheit 351 (I know, it’s actually Fahrenheit 451). There are currently 351 Islamists with warrants out for their arrests being searched for by police in Germany. It is unclear, however, how many of them are members of the S. family.

Paris?

Germany can’t even reach the climate targets it has set for itself (see objective media coverage below).

Earth

A thirty-three page report has just confirmed what most German global climate saviors already knew: There is no way in hell that the more than ambitious climate target set by the federal government some ten years back will ever be reached. Emissions were to drop 40 percent the year 2020. They haven’t quite dropped 28 percent yet. The main problem – now get this – being German cars. Like, duh. Ever hear of Volkswagen & Co.?

Ein wesentliches Problem: Der Verkehrsbereich hat seine Emissionen kaum reduziert. So notwendig ein allgemeines Umsteuern beim Autoverkehr ist, so unpopulär sind die Maßnahmen im Einzelnen.

“We in Germany, in Europe and the world will band together to take more decisive action than ever to confront and successfully surmount major challenges to humanity such as climate change.”

Condescension 2.0

None of this started with Donald Trump, you know. Just in case you were wondering.

Germany

Meet the new German problem. Same as the old German problem.

Why, then, do confident Germans increasingly dislike the United States?

It is complicated.

Since 1989, Germany has worked hard on its post-unification image as a largely pacifistic country. It is eager to teach other nations how to conduct themselves peacefully and to pursue shared global goals such as reducing global warming or opening national borders to the world’s refugees.

Implicit in Germany’s utopian message is that postmodern Germans know best what not to do — given their terrible 20th-century past, with the aggressions of imperial Germany and later the savagery and Holocaust perpetuated by Hitler’s Third Reich.

Yet being guilt-ridden does not equate to being humble (never a German strong suit)…

It’s Election Season In Germany

As was noted yesterday. So now the political parties here are openly competing with one another to see who can bash Donald Trump the best. That article below was originally entitled: “SPD overtakes Chancellor Merkel with its Criticism of Donald Trump.”

SPD

It’s kind of like the arms race. Only instead of mutually assured destruction it’s mutually assured dumb down time, with active participation by ARD and co. I mean, instead of maybe addressing the actual issue of, for example, just why it is that European countries that pledged back in 2014 (or was it a few years before that?) to invest 2 percent of their GDP in NATO defense spending are still not doing so, just attack the guy who refuses to ignore it.

Anyway, the SPD, all set to lose the coming national election resoundingly, can easily afford to take Angela Merkel’s recent campaign sloganeering about Trump America’s unreliability a notch higher and come out actively calling for open opposition against him, whatever that may mean (with the SPD one never really knows what that or anything else they say might mean). Knock yourselves out, comrades.

Angela Merkels Äußerungen zur deutsch-amerikanischen Zusammenarbeit unter Donald Trump haben für Furore gesorgt. Die SPD setzt nun noch einen drauf. Kanzlerkandidat Martin Schulz fordert, sich der Politik des US-Präsidenten entgegenzustellen.

The Lying Press?

No. But the biased press? In Germany, when it comes to Donald Trump?

Trump

I’d have to say yes to that one. After taking a look at this recent study done at Harvard, that is – Harvard, that infamous hotbed for right-wing extremism.

When it comes to reporting about Donald Trump’s fitness for office by Germany’s ARD (Channel One),  for example, 98 percent of this reporting is negative. Now that’s what I’d call objective journalism, folks. 98 percent of people in the real world can’t agree on anything, as we all well know, but things are different here in Germany (and in North Korea, too). The ARD, by the way, is one of the state-run “public” television channels that anyone who lives here is forced to subsidize, whether he or she watches it or not – whether you even own a television or not. Do any of you out there remember Der Schwarze Kanal? I didn’t think so.

98 percent? That only shows us that there is something 100 percent wrong with the ARD.

Only 3 percent of Trump’s U.S. coverage explicitly explored the issue of Trump’s fitness for office. European journalists were less restrained with the exception of BBC journalists, who are governed by impartiality rules that prohibit such reporting.[21] Journalists at ARD, Germany’s main public broadcasting outlet, are not governed by the same rules, and Trump’s suitability for the presidency was ARD’s leading topic in January, accounting for a full fifth (20 percent) of its Trump coverage. ARD stayed on the issue in its February coverage, when it consumed 18 percent of its Trump coverage. In March and April, Trump’s fitness for office got less attention from ARD, but it nonetheless accounted for about 10 percent of ARD’s coverage. Even that reduced amount exceeded the level of any of our seven U.S. outlets in any month. And ARD’s journalists were unequivocal in their judgment—98 percent of their evaluations of Trump’s fitness for office were negative, only 2 percent were positive.

But Germany Would Defend Its NATO Allies If US-Amerika Attacked

This just in: Majority of Germans wouldn’t support defending NATO allies in Russia conflict. Why doesn’t that surprise anybody?

NATO

According to the US think tank, which interviewed people in European countries, the US and Canada, “NATO’s image is improving on both sides of the Atlantic.” The Alliance enjoys high approval ratings in Poland and the Netherlands (both on 79%). Germany ranks third in the list on 67%, followed by Canada (66%), the US and United Kingdom (both 62%), France (60%) and Spain (45%)…

The results showed that Germany would support military intervention by NATO less than any other country. Only 40% of respondents would back military support for a partner in “serious military conflict” with Russia.

Auch in Deutschland stehen die meisten Befragten hinter der Allianz – bei einem Konflikt mit Russland würde jedoch nur eine Minderheit ein Partnerland verteidigen.

Germany Not To Reach Its E-Car Goal

Nope. Sadly, chancellor Angela Merkel has just announced that Germany will not be able to reach its goal of having at least 20 e-cars on German roads by the year 2020.

E-Car

This extremely ambitious goal, mocked from the start by gas-guzzling German automobile experts everywhere (some 97 percent of the German population), has now been scrapped for a more realistic goal of a nice round non-dirty dozen.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germany will likely miss the government’s target of bringing one million electric cars onto the roads by the end of the decade. The sale of electric vehicles (EVs) has remained sluggish in Germany despite discounts introduced last year and granted to buyers of green cars. In 2016, there were less than 80,000 electric cars on German roads. Experts say German consumers remain reluctant to buy EVs because of relatively high prices, limited driving range and restrictions due to the low number of charging stations.

Merkel: Ziel für E-Autos nicht zu schaffen.