It Still Can’t Happen Here

May 22, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Hate, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Islamic Terror, Islamists, Religious Fundamentalists, Salafists, Terror, Terrorists, Threats, Videos 2 Comments

Can it?

Germany could be a target of an Islamist attack similar to those carried out by a gunman in France two months ago, the head of the country’s intelligence service said on Tuesday.

German intelligence chief Heinz Fromm’s comments, quoted in an interview with the top-selling Bild daily, follow a series of clashes in several German cities and towns between police and ultra-conservative Salafist Muslims.

“The danger for Germany has unfortunately not decreased. And it is not by any means abstract. An attack like in France in March… is also conceivable here.”

Next Bestseller Guaranteed

May 20, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hate, Heconomy, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Best Sellers, Books, Günther Jauch, Immigration, Integration, Islam, Political Incorrectness, Politics, Talk Shows, The Euro, The Euro Zone, Tilo Sarrazin, TV 2 Comments

It’s a popular Sunday night ritual here in Germany: After Tatort is over, most folks stay tuned in to watch Günther Jauch’s talk show.

And another popular ritual here is to make sure to be empört (outraged, highly indignant) whenever you hear the name Tilo Sarrazin. The reason? This guy has the gall to 1) revel in being politically incorrect by saying out loud what roughtly 80 to 90 percent of the rest of the German population really (if not secretly) thinks and to 2) openly and shamelessly captialize on this by writing lucrative bestsellers about these horrid and despicable views.

His first Tabubruch (taboo breaking): “Germany Is Doing Away With Itself,” a book advocating a more restrictive immigration policy and the reduction of state welfare benefits.

His next big bestseller (to be plugged tonight): “Europe Does Not Need The Euro,” a book, well, the title says it all, doesn’t it?

Needless to say, the politically correct political caste is up in arms about tonight’s show already and is calling for a boycott and whatever else they call for in a situation like this and, well, let’s face it. Once you mix popular rituals like these together, live and in color, as the Germans like to say, I am convinced we’ll be getting Fernsehen vom Feinsten (TV at its best) tonight. All for all the wrong reasons, of course, but still.

“Mit Sarrazin sollte sich niemand mehr in eine Talkshow setzen.”

The Great European Divide

May 18, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Finance, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, The Debt Crisis, The Euro, The Euro Crisis, The Euro Zone 1 Comment

There’s Germany, it seems. And then there’s (practically) everybody else in Europe.

The Economist notes: The hope is that Germany, which produces over a quarter of euro-zone output, can pull along the rest. But the worry is that the latest bout of euro sickness may sap confidence even in Germany, aborting a broader recovery.

With unemployment at 6% compared with a 15-year high of 11% across the euro zone and over 20% in Spain and Greece, Germans feel less pressure to save in case they lose their jobs. And a more confident Germany helps everyone by spending more on imports. German inflation at 2.2% is now below average.

German resilience reflects several strengths. Although growth in the first quarter was helped by exports, the usual mainstay, it has increasingly been backed by domestic demand, which accounted for three-quarters of GDP growth in 2011. This reorientation has happened because Germany avoided the debt excesses (? hmmm, relatively speaking perhaps, but I’ve seen some other numbers here), both private and public, that inhibit growth elsewhere. With relatively low debt, German households and firms can borrow more. What is more, they can do it at rock-bottom rates. Paradoxically, Germany is benefiting from the euro crisis, as investors seek a haven. Yields on ten-year German government bonds have fallen below 1.5%.

Paradoxically, Germany is benefiting from the euro crisis, as investors seek a haven. Yields on ten-year German government bonds have fallen below 1.5%.

And yet, after having read all these impressive figures up there, there’s another German paradox I keep running into here all the time: Germans on the street aren’t nearly as confident as this article wants to imply, at least not when it comes to the euro and the euro-zone. How else do you explain the fact that nearly every second German now thinks that the introduction of the euro was a big honking mistake in the first place?

Die Euro-Einführung war ein Fehler, glauben knapp die Hälfte der Deutschen.

A Blaze Of Glory

May 16, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Hate, Helplessness, High Art, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Football, Fortuna Düsseldorf, German, Germans, Germany, Herthat BSC, Humor, Satire, Soccer, Sports Leave a comment

Looks like you’re toast now, Hertha BSC.

Your relegation playoff defeat at Fortuna Düsseldorf took you out of the big league, yet again.

Although the match go so ugly at times…

That Hertha is now appealing against the result and is requesting a replay, which may or may not be granted.

But if they do get the replay, at least they’ll get the chance to lose fair and square on their own, without any of that pesky soccer fan interference stuff.

“It is written in the rules: if there is an outside influence, which has nothing to do with the game, then the match must be replayed.”

Germans Now Lecturing Americans About Religion

May 11, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hate, Health, Heconomy, Helections, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: America, Berlin, Der Spiegel, German, Germans, Germany, Healthcare, Humor, Mandatory Healthcare, Medicine, Obama, Obamacare, Satire, Socialized Medicine, USA 11 Comments

Or at least I think that’s what they’re doing here. Or maybe they’re just lecturing us about mandatory healthcare insurance, which clearly seems to have some religious significance in Germany.

I mean, we all know how Germans are famous for being so religious and all, but I had no idea that they had begun spreading their evangelical zeal to Obamacare, of all things. But spread they have and we should take their prosthelising in earnest (they certainly do).

Why just take a look at some of the deeper observations to be found within this religious tract, I mean Spiegel article:

In Germany, people are baffled by how hostile a country as religious as the United States can be to the principle of mandatory healthcare insurance.

The US comes across to not only Germans, but to many Europeans, as a religious country. Don’t religious Americans love their neighbors?

“For me the US is a very religious country. It doesn’t matter which religion I look at — love thy neighbor is a very, very important point in religion.”

For her, the apparent deep religiousness of many Americans doesn’t jibe with their unwillingness to be part of a healthcare community.

Well there we have it. Sin and transgression everywhere you look. The devil has entered our US-Amerikan house and will divide and fall it. All because, well, I’m not really sure why. But I think it might be because we as Americans don’t worship mandatory healthcare insurance like other folks do. Amen.

Thanks, Germany. We’ll come to see the light yet. You just wait and see.

Germans Can’t Fathom US Aversion to Obama’s Healthcare Reform

German Ecological Energy Turnaround Working!

May 10, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, High Art, Home Cooking, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, CO2, Coal Power, Ecology, Fukushima, German, Germans, Germany, Global warming, Humor, Nuclear power, Satire, The Environment, The Green Shirts, The Greens 1 Comment

As long as power plants that burn fossil fuels remain in operation, that is.

The Federal Network Agency warns that if ecologically questionable coal-fired power stations do not stay in operation, the German power grid will crash. Especially in Southern German “assured capacities” are missing.

Power stations old as dirt (and at least as dirty), ready to be shut down due to the high environmental pollution they cause, will have to remain in operation.

Details, details. The main thing is that Germany’s ideologically-fired power elite stay in power long enough to keep that visionary progress of theirs a comin’.

Die ökologische Energiewende in Deutschland scheint ohne umweltschädliche fossile Kraftwerke nicht zu funktionieren.

The Next Dumb Allusion To The Berlin Wall

May 9, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, High Art, History, Hustle (Hoax), Hysteria Tags: Art, Artists, Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Satire, The Berlin Wall, The Biennale, The Cold War 2 Comments

Something called the Peace Wall, being part of Berlin’s Biennale, which will focus on political art this year (isn’t all art political?), has been constructed just down the road from Checkpoint Charlie by a Macedonian artist to “underline the gap between the upper Friedrichstrasse – characterized by fancy shops and expensive flats – and the poor southern part of the road which heads to the multi-ethnic Kreuzberg district.”

You know, it’s all about the gentrification “issue” and that terrible gap between rich and poor so prevalent in, uh, Germany.

“A wall is a symbol of division,” the artist says. “And is in itself capable of highlighting invisible gaps.”

True, I guess. But this lady clearly doesn’t know what the real Berlin Wall was about (the fewest out there who make comparisons like these do) or she would have chosen another object to work with. There were no invisible gaps about the Berlin Wall at all. It was for way real, concrete in the truest sense of the word, and had nothing at all to do with any of these fairy tale divisions artists living in free societies today have to struggle with all the time like they do, or seem to want to.

Hey, this is art. And art doesn’t have to have anything to do with reality, does it? Whether you call it political or not.

„Sie erreichen mit dieser Mauer, dass Sie diese Ecke erst recht sterben lassen.“