That means thingamajig, doohickey or even what’s-his-name.
Anyway, Dingsda is visiting Berlin again today. For another “iconic” speech, I assume. As long as it’s his last one, von mir aus (as far as I care).
Am Abend landet er in Tegel und er bleibt bis Freitag in Berlin, was auch zu zahlreichen Straßensperrungen führen wird.
This is one of the best satires I have read in a long, long time.*
One-Hundred Years of Fear – America Has Abdicated Its Leadership of the West
For 100 years, the United States was the leader of the free world. With the election of Donald Trump, America has now abdicated that role. It is time for Europe, and Angela Merkel, to step into the void…
The leaders of the West, minus America, face monumental tasks ahead. They are tasks for German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
* This is a satire, right?
It could be worse. You could live here in Germany.
Well at least they don’t let the people vote for their presidents here. This guy, Mr. Diplomat, is now going to become Mr. President. Talk about a mediocrity, a sheep in sheep’s clothing and all that. He is the living, breathing Spiegel Gutmensch in person. Only he’s not really a real person in reality. He’s more like that Abraham Lincoln robot dude I remember seeing once at Disneyland when I was a kid, only this one can walk. And talk at the same time, sort of (forget the chewing bubble gum at the same time part, though). It’s best if you turn off the volume whenever he starts talking, however. It’s more like a whine. And I don’t mean a fine whine, either.
That’s right. In other words he’ll be the perfect president for Germany.
Steinmeier (SPD), backed by many German industry leaders, academics and cultural leaders, raised concerns among U.S. and NATO officials earlier this year when he said a series of Western military exercises in eastern Europe could be seen as “saber-rattling” against Russia.
Having years of experience when it comes to introducing ideas that nobody likes and losing votes and power because of it, the German Greens now plan to introduce a “wealth tax” to ensure that they will continue to lose votes in the upcoming 2017 election, as well.
In traditional re-distributive, Robin Hoodlum manner, they announced during their party conference in Wald Nottingheim (Nottingham Forest) that it is time to ask the “super rich,” whoever they might be, for a higher contribution to wasteful state spending and through this thus ensure that countless Mittelstand (middle class) companies in Germany will be disproportionately burdened. This will of course make them more competitive internationally. Not. As in Nottingham.
If industrialized countries, such as the US following Donald Trump’s victory, opted for a national orientation of their economy, German small- and medium-sized businesses would need their reserve funds more than ever before, Kretschmann stressed. The state should not go after these savings.
After Germany’s consulate in northern Afghanistan was attacked by a suicide car bomber, killing six and injuring more than 120 others, Bundeswehr soldiers there clearly overreacted by killing two men on a motorcycle who refused to stop when ordered to do so.
Or at least that’s what we will most likely be hearing in the German Reichstag in the coming days, weeks and months to follow.
The Bundeswehr killing people? What will they be expected to do next? Go to war?
Nach dem Anschlag auf das deutsche Generalkonsulat in Masar-i-Scharif hat die Bundeswehr in der nordafghanischen Stadt zwei Motorradfahrer erschossen. Die beiden Männer sollen sich über die Aufforderung, sofort anzuhalten, hinweggesetzt haben.
The crowd of expats who packed the Democrats Abroad election night party in Berlin to watch live election coverage by American broadcaster CNN was conspicuously young and conspicuously female. There had been much talk about apathy among so-called millennials in this campaign, but you wouldn’t have known that in the German capital…
Of course that was then and this is now.
“I’m in too much of an emotional state,” said expat Democrat X, when asked what she thought about the new President-elect. “No comment. But wait. I will say that you can bet we will bounce back from this and be just as self-righteous, priggish and self-satisfied as we ever have been. Mabe even more so. But just not right now, OK?”
No, not these kind of creepy clowns. The creepy bushy-long-beard Muslim kind of creepy clowns.
That’s at least what many young Syrian refugees in Germany think of them. The mosques in Germany give them the heebie-jeebies because many of them “are more conservative than those at home.”
Hello? Germany? That’s your cue.
Hani Salam escaped civil war in Syria and survived the journey from Egypt to Europe. But when he saw men with bushy long beards at a mosque near his current home in Cologne last November, he was worried.
The men’s a ppearance reminded him of Jaish al-Islam, the Islamist rebels who took over his hometown near Damascus, said Salam, 36, who wears a mustache but no beard. One of them told Salam that “good Muslims grow beards, not moustaches,” he recalled – a centuries-old idea that he dismisses.
“One time when I was there, a Salafist asked a young Arab man to leave because he was wearing shorts. At the Turkish mosque no one cares what you’re wearing.”
That means right-wing populist. You know, like what the German state TV channel ARD has insisted upon labeling the AfD party up until now?
This has changed, however. As the head talking head what’s in charge over there (in there?) explains: “The background behind this is the fact that given the latest state elections, the AfD has attained such a high level of recognition that the permanent classification of them through this attribute is no longer necessary in order to make an orientation possible by the viewers.” The proper orientation, I assume he means.
The Pöbel (rabble) has now finally been dutifully informed so the ARD is going to gracefully condescend to move on to the next Umerziehungsmaßnahme (re-education measure) on the list. Whatever that might be. So stay tuned. As if you had a choice.
Hintergrund dieser Vorgehensweise ist die Tatsache, dass die AfD nicht zuletzt aufgrund der zurückliegenden Landtagswahlen einen solch hohen Bekanntheitsgrad erreicht hat, dass es der permanenten Einordnung durch dieses Attribut nicht mehr Bedarf, um den Zuschauerinnen und Zuschauern eine Orientierung zu ermöglichen
Das Land der frommen Wünsche, that’s what Reinhard Veser from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung calls it. And he means by this the place were what remains of Germany’s Social Democratic Party is now living when it comes to Putin’s Russia.
That the SPD would want to go back to the old days of SPD Ostpolitik (“change through rapprochement”), a time when twice as many voters voted for them as do today, is quite understandable. There is just one slight but fundamental difference here: During that cold war (they called it The Cold War back then), the Soviet Union wanted to keep the status quo and the Federal Republic of Germany’s recognition of East Germany contributed to this, benefiting the West, as well. Putin’s Russia wants territory, however, not the status quo.
By bending over backwards with the most absurd compilation of contortions to “understand” a Russia they clearly do not understand (see Germany’s current SPD foreign minister), the SPD shows us that it already has plans to move from the Land of Wishful Thinking to the Pays of Appeasement. Or is it living there already? How unimaginative political policy can be. And how delusional.
Die sozialdemokratischen Ostpolitiker haben es schon einmal nicht bemerkt, als die Voraussetzungen für ihren Ansatz im Osten Europas weggefallen sind – das war, als Solidarność in den achtziger Jahren die kommunistische Diktatur ins Wanken brachte. Damals hat das nur ihrem Ruf in Ostmitteleuropa geschadet. Wenn ihre alten Illusionen heute wieder in die Russland-Politik einfließen, droht ein weit größerer Schaden.
In the saving the world game, I mean.
And here you thought the Germans shutting down their nuclear power plants after an accident in Japan was hardcore enough (and it was). Now they’re going to outlaw internal combustion engines (albeit not until the year 2030).
Amazing Scheiße, I find. It does make me wonder what they’re going to be outlawing next, however. I would have bet on the wheel but it’ll be pretty much taken care of as soon as the internal combustion engines go so I’m now going to put my money on fire itself. Do you have any idea how much CO2 cooking your food releases into the atmosphere? Me neither, but you can be sure that it’s way too much. At least in Germany.
Being a subscriber to Mad Magazine, when I first saw the title of this article at Gizmodo recently, I assumed I’d mixed up my bookmarks and gone to the wrong site. “German Lawmakers Vote to Ban the Internal Combustion Engine.” Oh, come on, man. That can’t be right, can it? The home of some of the higher performance engines in the history of fine cars can’t seriously be talking about this, can they? Well color me embarrassed because, with a few caveats, it turned out to be true.
