Germany Idealistic, Naive And Leftist?

How ya figure?

Maassen

“I’m seen in Germany as a critic of idealistic, naive and leftist foreign and security policy,” the fired head of German domestic intelligence said on his way out. He just got put out to pasture. Early. Thought criminals pay heed.

Dismissed when he questioned the authenticity of videos showing far-right extremists chasing immigrants in the eastern city of Chemnitz, Maassen became the lightening rod of German self-righteous rage.

This time Maassen, whose agency monitors extremist threats to Germany’s constitutional order, compared the videos to Russian propaganda and presented himself as the victim of a witch-hunt by “radical-left forces” in the Social Democratic Party (SPD), junior partner in Merkel’s coalition.

“I can imagine a life outside public service, for example in politics or business.”

“Trump Still Clicks”

CNN title: Trump’s been president for two years. Germans still can’t look away. Nor will they look away. Because they can’t.

Trump

Why should this surprise anyone? This a perfectly normal everady pathological German obsession, no different than their irrational infatuation with Obama before Trump and their Verteufelung (demonization) of Bush before him (and on and on it goes). Germans are hysterical in these matters. It’s a collective psychological issue, an obsession with US-Amerika in the end. What is more, this collective hysteria is very profitable for the brain police in German media who milk it daily.

I’ve always liked this guy’s take on it (a Spiegel man himself): “German schadenfreude knows no bounds, particularly when it comes to the United States. The country loves to feel superior to a superpower like America. Yet Germany also harbors a childish infatuation with Obama — one which has little political grounding. The reasons are psychological. …The criticism of America has always been a bit infantile. One is familiar with the theory from psychoanalysis, when people talk about transference, or when suppressed feelings or emotions are overcome by projecting them onto others. It may work for a while, improving one’s feeling of self-worth by devaluing an imagined adversary. But it always falls short. Which is why the ritual must be constantly carried out anew.” – Jan Fleischhauer

Over two floors of Der Spiegel’s glasshouse building, walls bearing seven decades of the magazine’s covers serve as a colorful chronology of modern history. On one wall are cartoons of an angry yellow-haired man that are so provocative they’re impossible to miss.

“Trump still clicks, people are interested in those stories — and the same applies to our magazine stories and covers.”

European Data Security Just Got More Secure

So secure that not even your mailman, friends or family will be able to find you anymore.

Datenschutz

Europeans want secure data. So you can imagine how thrilled everybody is about this latest development.

The city of Vienna has determined that name tags in apartment houses are a violation of the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). After a renter complained about the lack of proper data security, some 220,000 renters will lose the name tags next to their doorbells.

In Wien verlieren etwa 220.000 Mieterinnen und Mieter die Namensschilder an ihren Türklingeln, weil ein Bewohner sich über mangelnden Datenschutz beklagt hatte.

This Wine Did Not Age Well

Old photos of an AfD representative posing on a bar with “Hitler wine” in the background have surfaced and the AfD is outraged.

Wine

The thing that disgusts them the most is that her photos were found on Myspace. There will be consequences.

Vor Jahren hat sich Jessica Bießmann in einer Küche fotografieren lassen. Im Hintergrund zu sehen: Ein Regal voller Weinflaschen mit verbotenen Motiven. Es sind Etiketten mit Bildern von Adolf Hitler, darunter steht “Sieg Heil” und “Führerwein”. Auch am Dienstag finden sich die umstrittenen Fotos noch auf der privaten Myspace-Seite der Politikerin. Die Berliner AfD erwägt nun Konsequenzen.

„Ich bedaure, dass es diese Fotos gibt.”

Irresistible Filth?

I guess that’s one thing you could call it.

Filth

As previously reported, the Germans are having big problems meeting their ambitious CO2 emissions targets these days. One of the reasons for this dirty little secret – after having turned off most of their nuclear power plants due to a tsunami in Japan (don’t ask) – is their burning need to burn dirty, filthy, dreckig brown coal, aka lignite.

It is mined in vast, open pits that devour landscapes and villages, leaving Martian vistas of desolation roamed by gigantic excavators straight out of “Mad Max”.

Brown coal made up about 23% of the country’s energy supply last year, and black coal another 14%, according to the Economy Ministry. Renewable energy sources made up 33%—up from 6% in 2000.

Hey, whatever gets you through the dark as black coal night.

“The image of Germany as a country leading on the renewable energy transition is very, very wrong,”

Reality Can Be Like That

Germany’s green dreams run into climate change reality – Berlin’s commitment to stay nuclear free complicates Europe’s push to lower emissions.

Green

The contradictions in Germany’s energy policy are coming home to roost.

It’s struggling to balance efforts to combat climate change while at the same time shutting down its nuclear power plants.

Don’t sweat it, Germany. If you need any advice on how to improve things in the CO2 department just contact the folks in Washington.

“The rushed and improvised exit from nuclear power that some support is not our policy. Recent events prove that pretending otherwise is a pure illusion.”

Der Spiegel Analyzes The “Kavanaugh Disaster”

As only Der Spiegel can. And oddly, they almost got it right.

Kavanaugh

For one thing, they were honest enough to admit that it was a disaster – for them, of course – because “the President and the Republicans achieved a great victory.” And then they continue  on with their five-point explanation of why this is such an awful, terrible and unspeakably bad thing.

1. Trumpism reigns. They got that right, too.

2. The Kavanaugh nomination was a farce. They almost got that right. The nomination itself wasn’t a farce, of course, but the freak show that accompanied it most certainly was.

3. Consensus culture is a foreign word. Absolutely correct. Take Germany, for instance, where they call it Konsenskultur. Every German knows that there is no consensus when it comes to Angela Merkel’s migrant madness meltdown, for example, but the difference between Germany and US-Amerika here is that the Germans behave as if there is. Germans normally being the all too direct ones, it is the Americans this time who make no qualms about how divided they are in Trump America.

4. There are no clear rules for dealing with accusations. Not true. Making false accusations, like the ones made against Kavanaugh here, is against the law. American laws allow those falsely accused of a crime to pursue a course of action in court, generally based on defamation of character. And this, I believe, needs to be done here.

5. The Supreme Court is now in a real mess. Well, they got the mess part right, I guess. But the Supreme Court mess is now in the process of being cleaned up, although there is certainly still quite a bit of work yet to do.

All in all, a solid job, Spiegel journalists. I’ll give you a seven for your five points this time. Keep the change.

Mit der Wahl von Donald Trumps Kandidaten Brett Kavanaugh zum Richter auf Lebenszeit am Supreme Court haben der US-Präsident und die Republikaner einen großen Erfolg errungen.

There Is A Certain Logic To It

Jews joining the AfD? Well…

Jews

It is the only political party in Germany that declares “Jew-hatred” as “inseparable” from Islam, and says out-loud that Islamic religious dogma is “incompatible with the German constitution”.

That is Dimitri Schulz’s view of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). A Jew who was born in the Soviet Union and came to Germany with his parents as a small child, Mr Schulz is one of a small band of Jewish AfD supporters who see the party as a bulwark against the Islamic threat to Europe.

Warum sollten Juden politisch reifer sein?

Germans Are Green-Minded?

Yeah, I guess. Unless it has to do with their cars.

Because when it comes to the numerous environmental and other crimes committed by VW, BMW, Mercedes & Co. (Dieselgate is just the tip of the iceberg), German car owners just don’t care. These companies could march into to Poland and nobody would say anything.

BMW

Germans are fastidious about separating trash into different recycling bins and have spent untold billions on the so-called Energiewende, the transition from nuclear and fossil-burning fuels for electricity generation to renewable sources.

Just don’t mess with their cars. It may be a cliché that Germans are obsessed with their four-wheeled companions, but that doesn’t make any less true. While all other major sources of greenhouse gas emissions, from households to industry, have seen declines since 1990, transport emissions, which account for 20 percent of the total, have increased.

Die Europäische Kommission lässt bei ihren Kartell-Ermittlungen gegen BMW, Daimler und Volkswagen nicht locker. Die Behörde werde in einer förmlichen Prüfung untersuchen‚ ob die Konzerne unerlaubte Absprachen bei Abgas-Systemen für Diesel- und Benzinmotoren getroffen haben.

Alien Crop Circle Discovered In Prackenbach

That’s in Germany.

AfD

Actually, it’s in Bavaria. But still.

And it’s not really an alien crop circle, either. It’s more like an alien cross. It’s a strange geometrical figure and ancient religious icon most likely stemming from the cultures of Eurasia where it remains a symbol of divinity and spirituality in Indian and East Asian religions, to be exact.

So I guess this crop circle didn’t come from outer space after all. It’s also made of manure. That, too, is pretty weird and strange. And the letters “AfD” are also clearly visible next to it. Nope, no alien would write those letters. Not even an illegal alien from outer space would do that, I suppose. This was the work of human beings. Human being artist types who use manure for their shitty works of art. This, too, is weird and strange. And eerie.

Aufregung in der kleinen niederbayerischen Gemeinde Prackenbach (knapp 3000 Einwohner)!