That means when the money’s gone.
And when the money’s gone, the money’s gone.
Sweden and Germany slash aid budgets to focus on Ukraine and defence spending – Echoing the dismantling of USAID, other countries are changing funding priorities and health and hunger programmes in Africa will lose out.
What an original idea.
They should start doing that in US-Amerika too.
Germany updates: Berlin to end migrant rescue NGO funding – The German Foreign Ministry said it would no longer fund NGOs rescuing migrants in distress at sea. Meanwhile, police launched a nationwide operation targeting people suspected of inciting hate online.
And funded by a government under the control of the opposing party?
This somehow sounds vaguely familiar.
Germany’s conservatives scrutinize state support for NGOs – Germany’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc is questioning the political neutrality of some NGOs. That could weigh on relations with its potential Social Democrat coalition partners…
In its inquiry, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group refers to an article in the conservative-leaning German daily Welt in which several experts on constitutional law expressed very critical views about the demonstrations.
“Associations that helped organize ‘firewall’ demonstrations did not act on a charitable basis,” argued Volker Boehme-Nessler from Oldenburg University. “The demonstrations were one-sidedly political. They were directed concretely against one party, the CDU.”
Which is bad. Every dolt knows that German universities only do research for things having to do with goodness and niceness so these absent-minded professors clearly must have been tricked or something.
Word is that 22 German universities and research institutions have received more than $10 million from the US Defense Department’s budget since 2000. And this just has to be a bad thing. Doesn’t it?
Maybe the UN or Star Fleet Command could pass a resolution ensuring that science only be used for goodness and niceness in the future, the world over, just like it is here in Germany. Except sometimes when folks get tricked.
Yet once something is researched and published, it is available to anyone for any use. This gives rise to what researchers call a dual-use dilemma. Rockets that transport satellites into space, for example, could also be used to carry nuclear weapons. Knowledge about pathogens can be used to develop new medicines or biological weapons. Nuclear technology can harvest energy or build atomic bombs.
We were just kidding.
No, seriously. Something called the Montreal Protocol just saved the world as we know it from most certain destruction, bringing about a “healing of the ozone layer” and thus reducing our exposure to harmful UV rays from the sun which was being caused by, well, refrigerators and aerosol spray cans. Just like that. Almost as if by magic or something.
A German research institute has even confirmed this wonderful news, so you can bet that it’s for real (Germans are very thorough, you know). And said German research institute, like all those other research institutes out there, is being completely objective here and has in no way profited from the research funds given it to research said ozone hole phenomena and only böse Zungen (malicious tongues) would suggest otherwise.
The underlying message here: To rid the world of all manner of unpleasantness and harmful gas, both hot and cold, all we need are more protocols (like Montreal or Kyoto, say), and not less. Or fewer, I mean. And more funding, of course.
“The results are encouraging. The fact that the ozone layer in the regions researched has become thicker is a result of the successful Montreal Protocol.”
Observing Hermann 