Category Archives: Hypocrisy

We’re not nearly as upset about Task Force 373 as we were last week

August 3, 2010 By in Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

All the Germans who read Der Spiegel (and that’s all the Germans that there are) were selfrighteously outraged upon reading about American Task Force 373 after this latest WikiLeaks revelation thingy last week.

Now it turns out that the German government has been providing names to the hit list used by the unit. Oh boy, oh boy. The outrage that will now follow suit will be even more, well, not all that outrageous really, come to think of it. But still.

It has becomes clear that, even though German elite units such as Task Force 47 were not deployed to deliberately target people, their counterpart, the American special forces unit Task Force 373, which has since been renamed Task Force 3-10, takes on the dirty work and processes the hit lists — in the territory controlled by the Bundeswehr and on the basis of German information, no less.

Minority Report

July 14, 2010 By in Habitudes, Helections, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Toleration?

Here’s how you form coalition governments if you’re the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia (they’ve done this before): First of all, don’t win the election. Then, form a minority government with the Greens which is “tolerated” by the Left Party.


 
And here’s how the toleration part works: The Left Party quietly qets a whole lot more of what it wants than what it deserves by discretely making agreements with the coaltion partners behind the scenes while boldly threatening to stop its toleration and thus them (the coalition partners) dead in their tracks. Then, in one or two or however many years it takes, the voters get grossed out about the policies they didn’t really support or vote for in the first place, hold the coaltion partners accountable for the mess, vote them out, and the Left Party comes strolling out of the mess and into the opposition smelling like a rose. You know, as in “We weren’t in the government!”

Run with it, Hannelore.

Ministerpräsidentin mit Makel

From one hell hole to the next

July 7, 2010 By in Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , 3 Comments

Wow. This is going to help Obama a lot.

After long, real long, way long deliberation, Germany has finally decided to magnanoumously accept two (2) infamous inmates from the infamous US-American Guantanamo Bay detention camp. They’re going to get locked up here in the infamous German hell hole of Rhineland-Palatinate, however. But still.

Or at least one of them is going to get locked up there, I should say. The other guy gets to go to Hamburg – for a hell hole of a good time.

Luckily for the inamates, they don’t speak any German and have no idea what or where they’re headed to – not just yet.

“It took so long because we had to conduct our investigation responsibly.”

This is Germany

May 31, 2010 By in Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Huh?

Germany’s President Horst Koehler has thrown in the towel for getting heat about having said this:

“In my view, however, I think our society is on the right path to fully understanding that a country of our size, export-oriented as it is, and therefore dependent upon foreign trade… In a country like ours we must also know that in doubt, in an emergency, military intervention will also be necessary to protect our interests. To keep free trade routes open, for instance, to prevent regional instability, for example, these are things that would otherwise have a definite negative effect upon our trade, our jobs and our income. Everything should be open for discussion here, and I believe that we are making good progress to that end.”

My, how scandalous. How could the pacifist citizens of the world’s third largest weapons exporting nation possibly take such shocking and unsavoury presidential provocations like this sitting down? They couldn’t take it sitting down, of course, so Horst had to step down.

This is just too ridiculous for me. Somebody please tell me what I missed here.

Our debt doesn’t stink

May 17, 2010 By in Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Chart this. Bloomberg’s Chart of the Day (click on the graphic part) doesn’t put German households in a very good light – when compared to Greek ones.

The Greeks may kick butt when it comes to having the highest level of government debt as a percentage of gross domestic product, but its household debt is considerably less than that of Germany’s.

Thank goodness information like this gets published around here every once in a while is all I can say. I’m sure this’ll calm tempers back down again.

“Germany cannot become Europe’s paymaster.”

Bad comparison

May 14, 2010 By in Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Or should I say, eeevil? In the wake of loud criticism to Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles has denounced comparisons of the 48th state to Nazi Germany.

Nazi Germany was actually much worse, they say.

Glad we got that one straightened up quick. Nevada could have been next. Although, come to think of it…

“When people are asked to show their papers, it brings back memories of Nazi Germany,” she said.

Standards schmandards

May 12, 2010 By in Heconomy, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

For all the talk about the profligacy of the Southern European nations, Germany itself falls short of euro area standards, calling for budget deficits of less than 3% and government debt below 60% of gross domestic product. The latest figures from Germany are 3.3% and 73%, according to Eurostat.

“If Germany weren’t in the euro area today, it wouldn’t be able to get in, because it violates both the debt and the deficit criteria,” Buiter said.

Let’s get this straight right from the start

May 3, 2010 By in Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

In case you were wondering, and of course you weren’t, let Der Spiegel clear things up for you: “The Oil Catastrophe Will Be BP’s Katrina, Not Obama’s.”

At stake is not only President Barack Obama’s energy strategy, which only recently called for increased oil drilling on America’s East Coast and in the Gulf. The president’s entire climate plan could be at risk as well. 

Oh. My. Google.

April 23, 2010 By in Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

They’re at it again. This time Google’s StreetView car (they actually have several) has come under fire in Germany again for, gulp, collecting data on private Wi-Fi networks.

That this has been done for years already by many location-based service companies like Skyhook say, and applications like Twitter and even “good” browsers like Firefox makes no difference at all here, folks. Aufregung muss her (you just have to get hot and bothered).

Do no evil? Google kann do no good.

Datenschützer kritisieren die angebliche Speicherung von privaten Daten über WLAN-Netze durch Google Street View. Andere Anbieter bleiben von der Kritik ausgenommen, dabei gehen sie genauso vor.