Take Eurovision, for instance. Please.
And this competition is so rigged. At least it was this year. It had to have been. Germany didn’t get last place.
Israel’s win at 529 points was followed by Eleni Foureira from Cyprus in second place (436 points). Austria (342 points) ranked third, Germany (340 points) came fourth and Italy (308 points) fifth. The other countries in the top ten, in descending order, were the Czech Republic, Sweden, Estonia, Denmark and Moldova.
Not only are mothers here reduced to cultural stereotypes whenever it is suggested that they might be interested in things like cookbooks, vacuum cleaners, sewing machines and irons, fathers in these parts are not treated any better.
The German Father’s Day stereotype (Father’s Day is today, incidentally) consists of fathers and other so-called “men” celebrating it by turning it into a drunken orgy of day-drinking debauchery in which mindless Herrenparties (gentlemen party groups) pull their ridiculously decorated Bollerwagen (handcarts) filled with booze and food but mostly booze through the countryside or greener urban landscape. It’s scandalous. To assume that all men are interested in that kind of nonsense, I mean.
I’d like to address this subject in a little more detail but I have to go help my neighbor load up our Bollerwagen. It’s getting on noon and we haven’t had a drink yet.
Lidl Germany has come under fire for suggesting people buy their mums cookbooks, vacuum cleaners, sewing machines and irons for Mother’s Day.
In Germany. That makes sense. Sort of. Well, if you’re the head of Germany’s Federal Immigration and Integration Council it does.
I mean, think about it. They are already doing such a smash-up job integrating the millions of non-Germans out there that this phase of integration will soon be over with and then what are the folks who work over at Federal Immigration and Integration Council going to do? Get integrated back into the labor market (for real jobs)? Hardly.
And I have noticed, I must say, that more and more Germans just don’t really fit in here anymore. Worse still, many of these non-integrated Germans aren’t even open to the idea of letting themselves become properly integrated and even get downright hostile whenever you suggest that they do so. Not that I ever would, of course. I believe in cultural diversity. “Andere Länder, andere Sitten,” as the Germans say. Other countries, other manners. Live and let live, that’s my motto. Although I do wish that some of these non-integrated Germans would at least try to become more integrated in Germany society now and then. This parallel society nonsense ain’t cutting it, either.
“Viele Einheimische sind mit unserem politischen System unzufrieden oder finden ihren Platz in der deutschen Gesellschaft nicht.”
It’s May Day in Berlin! And Berliners are big on tradition.
Tuesday I watched the riot . . .
Seen the cops out on the street
Watched ’em throwin’ rocks and stuff
And chokin’ in the heat
Listened to reports
About the whisky passin’ ’round
Seen the smoke and fire
And the market burnin’ down
Watched while everybody
On his street would take a turn
To stomp and smash and bash and crash
And slash and bust and burn
Berliner Polizei rechnet mit heftigen Krawallen – 5300 Beamte im Einsatz
Berlin is set to rename streets linked to atrocities Germany committed during its 1884-1919 occupation of Namibia.
Local councillors agreed on new street names for the so-called African Quarter in the north-west of the German capital on Wednesday evening.
The resaoning goes like this, I think: Historical or cultural explanations for events that took place over 100 years ago by people who have absolutely nothing to do with the culture under strict supervision by today’s ultra-moralists cannot even be brought up much less considered as this would be, well, heretical. OUR moral truth is universal and transcends space and time so we, as in you, are responsible for everything everywhere at all times that ever happened, throughout all known dimensions even, except the modern parallel universes we have created here in town and elsewhere and refuse to address much less take responsibility for. So we, as in you, should be ashamed of yourselves already.
“The African Quarter still glorifies colonialism and its crimes,” council members from the Greens, Social Democrats and Left parties say in their joint motion.
“He’s right.”
Uh-oh. All bets are off now. I may have found a German economist who is willing to take an unpopular stand and defend certain aspects of the Trump administration’s policy. Unpopular? Sacrilegious is more like it, right?
“On one side there’s the EU with a trade surplus that is mostly supplied by the huge German surplus. On the other side is the USA that has been living with deficits for 30 years. Germany is the world’s largest surplus country and the USA is the world’s largest deficit country. The trade practiced between these two national economies may be free but it is not efficient. This criticism of the German undervaluation strategy – that is, the relatively weak salary increases combined with a weak euro – has been around since presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Politicians in Congress have warned about making trade deals with notorious surplus countries. Trump is just the first one to do anything about it.”
“Every country can do whatever it wants – but not when it is part of a currency union in which there are no exchange rates that could be adjusted. Germany procures an advantage in global trade not just due to the quality of its products vis-a-vis its EU partners, the USA and other countries. In the past 15 years salaries in Germany have remained far behind productivity. We gain advantages over other national economies through wage dumping.”
“Will the punitive tariffs have a real effect on the German economy? Not so quickly. They have just been little needle pricks up until now. But if the EU now pursues the loud-mouth announcements made by Commission President Jean-Claud Juncker and reacts with its own punitive tariffs it is possible that the USA’s reaction will be more massive. Yet Trump is merely following a very simple rule here that no one in Germany wants to believe: The losers in such a trade conflict will be the trade surplus countries and the winners will be the deficit countries.”
Aber wenn die EU jetzt den großmäuligen Ankündigungen des EU-Kommissionspräsidenten Jean-Claude Juncker folgt und mit eigenen Strafzöllen reagiert, kann es sein, dass die USA noch massiver reagieren. Trump folgt doch einer einfachen Regel, die in Deutschland niemand wahr haben will: Verlieren werden in einem solchen Handelskonflikt die Handelsüberschussländer und gewinnen werden die Defizitländer.
That means loser. In feminine form.
A German federal court has rejected a customer’s demand for her bank to include the feminine form of words such as “account holder” on official forms.
The Federal Court of Justice ruled Tuesday that plaintiff Marlies Kraemer hadn’t suffered any discrimination under German law from her bank’s use of the “generic masculine” on forms, a common practice. The German language adds a suffix to turn nouns into feminine form. In the case of account holder, “Kontoinhaber” becomes “Kontoinhaberin.”
Kundin bleibt Kunde: Klägerin unterliegt im Formularstreit.
No, not the Frank Zappa record. If you’ve ever wondered why folks on the left freak out the way they do you really out to read this.
And if you happen to do German, pick this up sometime.
He and his colleagues Brian Nosek and Jesse Graham sought to discover how well conservative and what Haidt terms ‘liberal’ (ie: progressive) students understood one another by having them answer moral questions as they thought their political opponents would answer them. “The results were clear and consistent,” remarks Haidt. “In all analyses, conservatives were more accurate than liberals.” Asked to think the way a liberal thinks, conservatives answered moral questions just as the liberal would answer them, but liberal students were unable to do the reverse. Rather, they seemed to put moral ideas into the mouths of conservatives that they don’t hold. To put it bluntly, Haidt and his colleagues found that progressives don’t understand conservatives the way conservatives understand progressives.
But not even Mutti wants to remove Vaterland (fatherland) from the German national anthem. And if Mutti don’t want it, ain’t nothing going to happen. “Equality czar” or not.
Equality czar? What is that? Why don’t they introduce a common sense czar instead? They could call him the sense czar. And he could get rid of all this nonsensical sense-czar-ship going around here these days.
Germany’s equality czar wants to remove words like“fatherland” and “brotherly” from the country’s national anthem, following Canada and Austria in adopting gender neutral phrases.
Kristin Rose-Moehring, equality commissioner since 2001, made the proposal to strike male-specific references from the anthem in a letter to staff at Germany’s family ministry ahead of International Women’s Day, German media reported on Sunday.
Ahead of Women’s Day? How you figure? Every day is Women’s Day over here.
Die Kanzlerin sehe “keinen Bedarf einer Änderung.”
PS: I’m going to ask this woman to look into “mother nature” while she’s at it. It irks the hell out of me every time I hear somebody use that term. The nerve. Person nature will do just fine, thank you.
Which is also a bunch of crap. But maybe that’s just me.
Let the Berlinale begin again or something. That way it will be over quicker. And please note: With special safe space area this year!
The organizers said they had created a special counseling center at the festival where both audience and participants of the festival could go if they experience or witness discrimination, harassment or abuse.
I’m wacko for Wacko-puffs! Wacko for Wacko-puffs!
Berlinale-Chef Kosslick verspricht “politisch korrektes Entertainment.”
Observing Hermann 