What a surprise!

Not.

Everybody knows what’s going on. Just like everybody knows nothing will be done to stop it.

Germany: Violent crime reaches 15-year high — report. Germany recorded more than 214,000 criminal acts of violence last year, according to official police statistics. Overall crime also rose, according to data seen by the German paper Welt am Sonntag.

The number of suspects arrested rose by 7.3% to 2.246 million and 41.3% of them did not have a German passport.

Among the people without German nationality who were charged, 402,514 were described as refugees, asylum seekers and those who entered the country illegally.

In 2023, the offense of unauthorized entry rose 40% over the previous year, to 93,158 cases, while the offense of unauthorized stay increased by nearly 29% to 187,059 cases.

A third of crimes (1.971 million) were theft offenses, which rose 10.7% last year.

Having a “war-capable” army?

What will these crazy Germans dream up next?

Germany’s defense minister overhauls the military command as he seeks ‘war-capable’ armed forces – Germany’s defense minister has announced a plan to streamline and reorganize the country’s military command as part of efforts to make the armed forces of NATO’s most populous European member “war-capable.”

Berlin Airlift 2.0

Only now it’s time for some really heavy airlifting.

Botswana offers 20,000 elephants to Germany in diplomatic spat over trophy hunting – Botswana’s president challenged Berlin to take on 20,000 elephants – saying “it’s not a joke” – while opposing Germany’s proposed restrictions on the import of hunting trophies.

President Mokgweetsi Masisi suggested in an interview with German newspaper Bild that Berlin should try living with elephants to experience the challenges the endangered species bring to the community.

Mr Masisi was responding to Germany’s environment ministry suggesting earlier this year that there should be tougher rules against importing hunting trophies.

Botswana’s president said Germans should “live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to”.

Is 666 still allowed?

It’s numbers like these that rune the sport.

Adidas bans fans from adding ‘44’ to German team football shirt – Kit’s resemblance to infamous SS rune of Nazi paramilitary wing unintentional, company says.

Adidas has banned football fans from customising the German national shirt with the number 44 due to its perceived resemblance to the symbol used by Nazi SS units during the second world war.

Germany now greener than Green

I guess you could call this the high-water mark of Greenness.

Germany becomes the biggest EU country to legalise recreational cannabis – Germany on Monday became the biggest EU country to legalise recreational cannabis, despite fierce objections from opposition politicians and medical associations.

“From our point of view, the law as it is written is a disaster,” Katja Seidel, a therapist at a cannabis addiction centre for young people in Berlin, told AFP.

German of the day: “Planetary Health Menüs”

That means, well, I’m not really sure what that means.

I think it means Planet Earth has to go on a diet. Is that how they’re saving it now?

‘People mustn’t feel meat is being taken away’: German hospitals serve planetary health diet.

That’s right. People mustn’t think meat is being taken away just because we’ve taken away the meat. Our meals still meat the minimum daily requirements of… what? Of what we require our patients not to eat.

German of the day: Die Schnauze voll haben

Having the snout full means to be fed up with it, to be sick to death of it.

And the German Greens are filling up everybody’s snouts these days.

Germans Fed Up With Greens as Founding Member Resigns – The aggressive policies of the German Greens have alienated not only many voters in Germany but also their own supporters, including one of the founders of the party who has accused them of pursuing a warmongering foreign policy…

Annalena Baerbock, the young, inexperienced minister of foreign affairs, has promised to introduce a ‘feminist foreign policy,’ but she seems helpless in the face of the momentous challenges posed by the Russian-Ukraine war. The Greens have converted from a ‘pacifist’ party into the most belligerent party of all.

Fallen behind?

Germany? In happiness?

I don’t understand. Isn’t falling behind in happiness the whole point of being German? So falling behind in the annual World Happiness ranking this year should make everybody here happy, right? I just don’t get it. Germans are einfach kompliziert (simply complicated).

Why Germany has fallen behind on happiness – Like the US, Germany has fallen behind in the annual World Happiness ranking. Especially young people don’t appear to be doing as well as they did before.

While Finland again tops the ranking in the annual “World Happiness Report, “Germany has fallen behind.

In Germany, people are not unhappier than in previous years, but people elsewhere have surpassed them. That puts Germany at 24th — and only 47th among people under the age of 30. A similar trend is seen in the United States, which overall ranks 23rd. That’s the first time the US has fallen out of the top 20 due to significant unhappiness among younger people.

Nobody else’s pension system works

Why should Germany’s?

They are all brilliant systems and they all work the same way: You pay into it your entire working life while your government pumps in ever more money to prop it up and thus burden future generations with massive growing debt (interest rates rock). This Ponzi scheme only works if parents have way more children (at least three on average). It stopped working a long, long time ago, in other words.

Germany struggles to fix its pension system – German society is aging fast and the working-age population is shrinking. There are new plans to make the pension system fit for the future, but critics have said they won’t work.

Intangible

Intangible sense. Or the intangible lack of sense, I should say.

Let’s approach this differently: What isn’t on the UNESCO cultural heritage list? It would certainly make for a shorter list that would be much easier to handle.

Berlin techno added to UNESCO cultural heritage list – UNESCO has just added six new entries to the list of intangible cultural heritage in Germany, including Berlin’s techno scene. The intangible cultural heritage designation is meant to preserve cultural traditions.