Category Archives: Home Cooking

Germany Celebrates 60th Year In NATO

June 29, 2015 By in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, History, Home Cooking, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

By maybe-possibly-perhaps increasing its current expenditure of 1.2 percent of German GDP on its military. Maybe, like I said. Hard to say for sure. They don’t want to overdo it or anything, just yet. Being newbies and all, I mean. And it’s not like Germany has ever gotten all that much out of being a NATO member or anything…

NATO

“I am speaking to all the allies. But as the biggest economy, Germany weighs more heavily than others. The USA spends four percent of GDP on defense, in Europe we’re closer to one percent. “That isn’t a fair distribution of the burden.”

“The problem with socialism…”

June 28, 2015 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humility, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Socialism

Already on Saturday pictures of anxious savers queuing outside banks to withdraw money were circulating. A slow-motion bank run that had already drained €35 billion ($39 billion) of household and corporate deposits out of the Greek banking system between November 2014 and May 2015 threatens to get out of control. Greek banks have been able to cope with the haemorrhage of deposits only thanks to massive borrowing from the Bank of Greece, permitted by the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt. The ECB is now likely to call time on this and to prevent further increases in this “emergency liquidity assistance” (ELA). That will in turn force limits on cash withdrawals along with capital controls to prevent money leaving the country… Even if the ECB stays its hand this weekend, it will be forced to act early next week. Without a deal this weekend, the cash-strapped Greek government will be unable to repay the IMF €1.5 billion that is due at the end of this month.

The climax to 10 days of fraught bargaining in Brussels and Luxembourg was the decision by Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, to call a plebiscite on the terms of Greece’s bailout, stunning the other eurozone governments. “I am very negatively surprised,” said Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch chair of the committee of eurozone finance ministers. “The situation [in Greece] will deteriorate very rapidly … How the Greek government will survive, I do not know.”

More Negativity

June 25, 2015 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

But it ain’t nothing new, folks.

Flag

More than half of Germans (53 percent) said they did not believe the United States government respects the personal freedoms of its people, according to a Pew Research Center report published on Tuesday.

“The U.S. receives largely positive reviews among many of its key NATO allies. About two-in-three Canadians have a favorable opinion, as do large majorities in Italy, Poland, France, the UK and Spain. The outlier is Germany.”

Little Oskar Banging His Tin Drum Again

June 23, 2015 By in Habitudes, Hideology, History, Home Cooking, Humor, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

And still refusing to grow up. This is, after all, the failed SPD chancellor candidate who then somehow managed to go even further left and join the Left Party to fail big time there, too.

Fuck

He has these fits every now and then, folks. Ain’t no big deal. This time it looks like somebody opened a Facebook account for him (I bet it was his current wife, Rosa Luxemburg) and now that US-Amerika‘s latest defense minister Ashton Kutcher, I mean Carter, has come to the American sector itself he’s going hog wild in a big way (Oskar not Ashton). And speaking of which, how many freakin’ defense ministers have we had these past six or seven years anyways?

Carter having been sent to Germany by Warlord President of Naked Aggression George W. Bush himself, Oskar is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore and has lambasted this affront by calling to “fuck the US imperialism,” although it isn’t at all clear who he wants to have do this for him. And speaking of which, I meant the World President of Peace Obama HIMSELF himself, of course.

“The US war minister calls Europeans to stand up against Russian ‘aggression’ whereas the Europeans have all the more reason to stand up against US aggression.”

Attention for those of you who wear glasses: That loud drum-pounding of his can certainly be annoying and all but what you really have to watch out for are his glass-breaking screams.

Der US-Kriegsminister ruft die Europäer dazu auf, sich der russischen ‘Aggression’ entgegenzustellen. Dabei hätten die Europäer allen Grund, sich der Aggression der USA entgegenzustellen.”

Forget The Ploughshares

June 19, 2015 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, History, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

We’re going to turn our old Cold War military bases into wildlife preserves.

Peace

The German government has announced plans to convert 62 disused military bases just west of the Iron Curtain into nature reserves for eagles, woodpeckers, bats, and beetles (personally, I wouldn’t trust a woodpecker as far as I could throw one).

Jeepers. It’s not like Germany has a need for a military presence anymore or anything.

“We are fortunate that we can now give these places back to nature,” says German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks. Whatever that is. Nature, I mean.

Welcome To The Hotel Kalimera

June 18, 2015 By in Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

You can checkout any time you like. But you can never leave.

Tourists

Are German tourists still welcome in crisis-battered Greece? “Definitely!” insists the travel board of Europe’s top economy, which nevertheless issued a few words of caution Thursday.

Protracted talks on Greece’s debt crisis may have driven up tensions with Europe’s paymaster Germany but visitors can still count on a warm reception, the German Travel Association (DRV) said.

But what if Greece should default on its loans, exit the eurozone and reintroduce the drachma? Fear not, the DRV said. “There would only be a limited impact on holidaymakers, particularly those on package tours. Flights, hotel stays and bus transfers are bought and covered by contracts.”

Practice Your German Tonight

June 17, 2015 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, History, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

And your Cold War attitudes from the 80s, while you’re at it. Looks like we might be needing them again.

Deutschland 83

“Deutschland 83” premieres 11 p.m. Wednesday on SundanceTV.

SundanceTV’s “Deutschland 83” is the first German-language series ever broadcast on a U.S. network. The eight-part fictional spy thriller is set in 1983, when the then-split Germany was the hot spot for escalating nuclear tensions between NATO and the Soviet Union.

Vladimir Putin: “More than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles able to overcome even the most technically advanced anti-missile defense systems will be added to the make-up of the nuclear arsenal this year.”

Gimme A G! Gimme An R!

June 16, 2015 By in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

As time ticks down for a deal, Athens and the lenders remain at odds over how far Greece is willing to bend to meet demands for austerity in exchange for funds desperately needed to avoid a default. The dispute is likely to come to a head by a European summit on June 25, or possibly earlier, at which either Mr. Tsipras or German Chancellor Angela Merkel may have to back down.

GREXIT

In a speech to Syriza party lawmakers, Mr. Tsipras said that Greece cannot accept deeper austerity demands from its international creditors—other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund, accusing them of trying to humiliate the country and the IMF of having “criminal responsibility” for the country’s current economic woes.