Category Archives: Home Cooking
Turkey
Beautiful German weapon sales of the week.
Because somebody has to admire them.
Just in time for the Easter march, too!
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday Turkey’s military offensive in Syria’s northern town of Afrin was unacceptable and she criticized Russia for “just watching” the continuing attacks by Syrian forces on eastern Ghouta.
Obwohl die Bundesregierung die türkische Offensive in Afrin als “inakzeptabel” bezeichnet, genehmigte sie seit deren Beginn Rüstungsexporte in Millionenhöhe an die Türkei.
German Of The Day: Entschädigung
That means compensation.
Hey, what’s in a name, right? The sex site Pornhub has published a YouTube video in which it offers the Austrian town of Fucking – along with a few other towns also having interesting names (listed below) – lifetime free access to its content.
It’s called the Premium Places Program and is meant to help soothe the mental anguish these poor townsfolk must have to go through.
“Where were you born, son?” “You got married where?” “And just where is this cemetary located?”
“In Fucking, Austria, I said. You deaf or something?”
Auch La Vagina in Italien, Orgy in Frankreich, Rectum in den Niederlanden, Bitsch in der Schweiz (Kanton Wallis) und Cumming in den USA gehören unter anderem zu den auserwählten Orten.
Maybe The Germans Mean Business After All
When it comes to deporting asylum seekers who have been turned down here.
They actually just sent a plane with rejected asylum seekers to Afghanistan, for instance. And it was full, too. Full of cops and other German authorities, I mean. Only ten (10) Afghans were actually on the plane. You have to start somewhere, I guess. At this rate the bulk of those to be deported will have left the country by the time they meet retirement age.
Ein Sprecher des Bundesinnenministeriums teilte mit, an Bord seien zehn Passagiere gewesen. Mit insgesamt elf Sammelabschiebungen seit Dezember 2016 hat Deutschland damit 198 Männer nach Afghanistan zurückbringen lassen.
You Must Have Your Papers
This is Germany, after all. You can’t just leave the country without the proper paperwork.
That is why there are some 65,000 asylum seekers in Germany at the moment (this number will climb, of course) who have been turned down but who are nevertheless geduldet (tolerated, permitted to stay), can’t be deported because they don’t have the passports or travel documents needed to to be sent back home again – often enough to countries that don’t even want them back. What a mess.
This is Germany, like I said. The same 65,000+ didn’t need any paperwork to enter the country but they sure the hell better have some on their way out. Otherwise they’re in big trouble. And the Germans will make them stay. If I made this stuff up no one would believe me.
Die Zahl abgelehnter Asylbewerber und Migranten ohne Aufenthaltsrecht, die wegen fehlender Papiere nicht abgeschoben werden können, ist einem Medienbericht zufolge im vergangenen Jahr deutlich gestiegen.
German Of The Day: Notfall
That means emergency.
And in case of emergency (whatever that might mean at this point), the German City and Municipal Association (Städte- und Gemeindebund) has recommended to its members that they should refuse to accept any more refugees. These communities are already overwehlmed as it is.
Funny how associations like the German City and Municipal Association are always the last ones to figure things out like this. It has been my impression, and the impression of everybody else I know here, that German communities have been in a state of emergency since 2015.
Der Städte- und Gemeindebund hat die ungleiche Verteilung von Flüchtlingen auf die Kommunen kritisiert. Dadurch würde die Integration der Menschen behindert.
A Life Sentence?
Nice try. A life sentence in Germany means fifteen years.
This is rather, well, lasch, don’t you think? That means feeble, listless, lame. And shameful, too.
An asylum seeker has been jailed for life for the rape and murder of a woman in Germany in a case that fuelled tensions over the influx of migrants.
Hussein Khavari, who claimed to be Afghan, admitted to attacking student Maria Ladenburger, 19, in October 2016 in the south-western city of Freiburg.
After his arrest, it emerged that he had already been convicted to 10 years in jail in Greece in 2014 for attempted murder after pushing a woman off a cliff. But he was freed in October 2015 due to overcrowded prisons.
He fled via Austria to Germany, where he arrived with no documents a month later, claiming he was 17 years old… But during the trial evidence emerged suggesting that he was in fact from Iran and could be as old as 32.
Ein Urteil, das die Gesellschaft stabilisiert.
German Of The Day: Länderfinanzausgleich
That’s a beauty, isn’t it? And it means “German Länder fiscal equalization scam.” I mean scheme.
And THAT means.. Well, think Robin Hood. The rich and therefore “bad” German states (the ones on the left in the image) must be punished for this and therefore the Robin Hoodlums in the Bundestag take some of their money and give it to the poor and therefore “good” German states (on the right side of the image). Berlin, on top, is actually on bottom, so-to-speak, being the poorest of the poor. The Robin Hoods and the Bundestag are located in Berlin, by the way. But that’s just a coincidence, of course.
The theory being, I’m assuming here, is that this kind of completely unjust robbery and redistribution will encourage the poor “good” German states to finally get their acts together already so the rich “bad” German states don’t have to pay their bills anymore. That’s just a theory, like I said, of mine. I must say, though, this redistribution initiative has certainly had a positive effect here in Berlin these past thirty, forty, fifty years. Once you ignore the fact that not a thing has changed.
Berlin Schlusslicht, Bayern Zahlmeister.
German Of The Day: Aneinander vorbeireden
That means to talk at cross purposes. In this case when German politicians use the same word in different ways – gehören (meaning both to belong to and ought to belong to).
In an interview with the German newspaper BILD Seehofer said: “Islam is not a part of Germany. Germany has been influenced by Christianity. This includes free Sundays, church holidays and rituals such as Easter, Pentecost and Christmas. However, the Muslims living in Germany obviously do belong to Germany.”
This statement conflicted with the position of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel said, even though Germany has been influenced mainly by Christianity and Judaism, there are more than four million Muslims in the country, they “belong to Germany and so does their religion.”
Hey, depending upon how you look at it, Germany does not belong to Germany. Neither does Christianity belong to Germany. Let’s not even start with Judaism. So I think Horst Seehofer is right on the money when he says that Islam does not belong to Germany, either. What’s the big deal? We’re all not in this together, folks.
Da muss man schon präzise sagen, was mit dem Ausdruck “gehört” eigentlich gemeint sein soll. Das kann man ja als schlichte Bestandsaufnahme oder Feststellung meinen: Man gehört zu einer bestimmten Familie oder einem Verein an. Man kann es aber auch so verstehen wie bei der Formulierung: Kinder gehören zeitig ins Bett. Dann bekommt die Aussage eine Sollens-Komponente und erhält eine ganz andere Bedeutung. Und drittens könnte die Frage angesprochen sein, ob der Islam die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in ähnlicher Weise geprägt hat wie das Christentum. Je nachdem, mit welchem Akzent man das Wort “gehört” verwendet, bekommt dieser Satz einen anderen Sinn. Diese Unterschiede werden in der politischen Diskussion leider nicht beachtet, und deswegen redet man munter aneinander vorbei. Das ist vorhersehbar und langweilig.
“Trump is awful but…”
“He’s right.”
Uh-oh. All bets are off now. I may have found a German economist who is willing to take an unpopular stand and defend certain aspects of the Trump administration’s policy. Unpopular? Sacrilegious is more like it, right?
“On one side there’s the EU with a trade surplus that is mostly supplied by the huge German surplus. On the other side is the USA that has been living with deficits for 30 years. Germany is the world’s largest surplus country and the USA is the world’s largest deficit country. The trade practiced between these two national economies may be free but it is not efficient. This criticism of the German undervaluation strategy – that is, the relatively weak salary increases combined with a weak euro – has been around since presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Politicians in Congress have warned about making trade deals with notorious surplus countries. Trump is just the first one to do anything about it.”
“Every country can do whatever it wants – but not when it is part of a currency union in which there are no exchange rates that could be adjusted. Germany procures an advantage in global trade not just due to the quality of its products vis-a-vis its EU partners, the USA and other countries. In the past 15 years salaries in Germany have remained far behind productivity. We gain advantages over other national economies through wage dumping.”
“Will the punitive tariffs have a real effect on the German economy? Not so quickly. They have just been little needle pricks up until now. But if the EU now pursues the loud-mouth announcements made by Commission President Jean-Claud Juncker and reacts with its own punitive tariffs it is possible that the USA’s reaction will be more massive. Yet Trump is merely following a very simple rule here that no one in Germany wants to believe: The losers in such a trade conflict will be the trade surplus countries and the winners will be the deficit countries.”
Aber wenn die EU jetzt den großmäuligen Ankündigungen des EU-Kommissionspräsidenten Jean-Claude Juncker folgt und mit eigenen Strafzöllen reagiert, kann es sein, dass die USA noch massiver reagieren. Trump folgt doch einer einfachen Regel, die in Deutschland niemand wahr haben will: Verlieren werden in einem solchen Handelskonflikt die Handelsüberschussländer und gewinnen werden die Defizitländer.
Observing Hermann 