Germans Not Corrupt

Just kind of sleazy.

Corruption

Corruption across the European Union’s 28 countries costs about 120 billion euros ($162 billion) per year — a “breathtaking” sum equal to the EU’s entire annual budget, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem said Monday.

But Germany gets top marks from the commission: “When it comes to fighting corruption, Germany is amongst the best countries of the EU.” But the country could benefit from introducing “strict penalties” on corrupt elected officials and “develop a policy” to limit the ability of government officials to go work for companies they previously were in a position to help.

Saudi A. (Yet Again)

Beautiful German weapon sale of the week.

Saudi A.

Because somebody has to admire them.

Despite it’s often pacifist positions on global security issues, Germany is also in the seemingly contradictory position of being one of the world’s largest arms exporters.

PS: At least none of those creepy postcards are involved here.

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

Ein Frührentner (an early retiree). Please laugh, but please also be assured that I personally know a German teenager who actually answered this question this way and was NOT joking.

Retirees

And this really shouldn’t come as a surprise in a country where, according to the latest poll, 53 percent of the employed don’t plan to work past the age of 63 and barely one third of them expect to work until the “official” reitrement age of 65. Or is it 67 now? Wait, or is it 63 doch (after all)?

At any rate, whatever the official German retirement age may be, rest assured that it will not be the age at which the majority of Germans will be retiring.

Ein knappes Drittel will dagegen bis zum regulären Renteneintrittsalter weiterarbeiten.

SPD Not Sozial Enough

Boy, that didn’t take long. Did you read that part about “social” yesterday?

Sozial

Hardly in the new coalition government with the CDU/CSU, leading SPD politicians are now already preparing the way for their move to form a new “100% social” one with the Left Party.

These things take time, though. And it’s all about psychology. And timing. OK, the SPD has never been all that good with the timing part but they’re numero uno when it comes to subtle psychological manipulation. OK, not so subtle psychological manipulation. And publishing a paper calling for a “progressive left-leaning reform alliance with an aim to take over in 2017” with the Left Party is just the right ticket. For the start, I mean. Did I mention the timing part?

Für ein “progressiv-linkes Reformbündnis mit einer Machtperspektive 2017” müsse man “die bestehenden inhaltlichen und strategischen Differenzen zwischen allen Parteien links der Union” beseitigen.

Where’s The Money?

All of a sudden. For all of that five-year-plan-renewable-energy-turnaround-ideology-project-like-stuff in Germany, I mean. She is gone, señor.

Gabriel

Or at least more and more German citizens are finally waking up and simply just aren’t prepared to keep on paying ever more for less and less of whatever it was that this so-called energy turnaround of theirs was supposed to be delivering.

That is why Superminister Gabriel (didn’t he used to sing with Supertramp?) is now urging (ordering) German parliamentary lawmakers to start cutting state subsidies for renewable energies – for German industry – because they are rich and capitalistic or something and are therefore evil (he’s an SPD Superminister) and haven’t really been milked properly for this one yet. And the po folks just aren’t willing to keep paying more and more, like I said [By the way, the S in SPD stands for “social” and everything with “social” in it means “free lunch.” Read Margaret Thatcher’s quote down there on the right if you want to learn more.].

Of course why the energy turnaround has to keep on turning around the way it does like this in the first place is the really interesting question here, I find, but certainly not one that anyone here in Germany appears to be willing to ask. At least not quite yet anyway.

Yup, renewable turnaround money has sure gotten tight around here these days. Not even a Swabian housewife can help out anymore.

“We need to break the dynamics of ever-rising electricity bills, while ensuring a stable supply of energy for all.”

A 13.2 Pound Baby?

Born in Königs Wusterhausen near Berlin? Yeah, I’d say that’s a Wunder, too.

Wunder

It’s a Wunder that the mother survived.

Der Chefarzt der Gynäkologie und Geburtshilfe, Rüdiger Müller, sprach von einem “medizinischen Wunder”, weil die weibliche Anatomie nicht auf ein solches Gewicht eingestellt sei.

US Government Officials Want To Kill Me

A whining Edward Snowden has told German television in an exclusive interview.

Snowden

US citizen just wants him to finally shut up and to PLEASE go away already for crying out loud, says a thoroughly disgusted me.

“These people, and they are government officials, have said they would love to put a bullet in my head or poison me when I come out of the supermarket, and then watch as I die in the shower.”