“Sanctions Against North Korea Apparently Ineffective”

February 5, 2018 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Intelligence, North Korea, Sanctions, Technology, UN 1 Comment

Like, duh. How could they be effective if countries like Germany, and a number of other “cooperative States,” keep letting the North Koreans get around them?

North Korea procured equipment and technology for its ballistics missiles program using its embassy in Berlin, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has said.

“We determined that procurement activities were taking place there, from our perspective with an eye on the missile program, as well as the nuclear program to some extent,” BfV head Hans-Georg Maassen told public broadcaster NDR in an interview.

Falsche Ladepapiere, ungewöhnliche Schifffahrtsrouten, das Verladen von Öl auf hoher See: Nordkorea umgeht offenbar systematisch alle bestehenden internationalen Sanktionen. Ein brisanter UN-Bericht bringt nun eine Reihe kooperierender Staaten in Bedrängnis.

Can Somebody Pick Up The German Army In Mali?

February 4, 2018 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: Armies, Bundeswehr, Defense, German, Germans, Germany, Mali, NATO, Soldiers, Spending Leave a comment

I mean, if it’s on your way and not too much of an inconvenience? They want to come home now but their airplane is broken.

The Bundeswehr, one of NATO’s largest militaries, is now a steady source of news about planes that can’t fly, tanks that break down and troops that admire the Nazis. So what exactly has gone wrong in Germany’s army?

Quite simple, really. These are soldiers who are not allowed to be soldiers in an army that is not allowed to be an army – other than to serve as an excuse for being able to export lots of way cool and expensive military equipment that works fine everywhere else but here. There’s a lack of culture in Germany regarding its military and its responsibility as a partner, in other words.

Insgesamt 89 in Mali eingesetzte deutsche Soldaten warten seit Tagen auf eine Rückflugmöglichkeit aus dem westafrikanischen Krisenstaat in den Heimaturlaub.

Germany

February 2, 2018 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: Asylum Seekers, Crime, German, Germans, Germany, Guns, Migrants, Refugees, Self-Defense, Weapons, Weapons Sales 1 Comment

Beautiful German weapon sales of the week.

Because somebody has to admire them.

The number of Germans who have acquired weapons permits has risen considerably over the past two years. Having the requisite documentation allows people in the country to carry things like non-lethal gas pistols in public. In January 2016, just under 301,000 people had such a permit; in December 2017 there were over 557,000.

Jeepers. What makes the Germans so uptight these days?

Somalia Now Finally At Peace

February 1, 2018 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Bundeswehr, German, Germans, Germany, Military, Somalia 2 Comments

So it’s time for the German Bundeswehr troops stationed there to leave. All five (5) of them.

They couldn’t have done it without you five guy, guys. Whatever it was they done did with you. I’d skip the parade, though, if I were you.

Derzeit sind in einem schwer gesicherten Camp am Flughafen von Mogadischu fünf deutsche Soldaten im Einsatz. Mit ihrer Mission will die EU den Aufbau einer regulären Armee für Somalia fördern. Kampfeinsätze oder die Begleitung von somalischen Einheiten im Land waren stets ausgeschlossen.

German Of The Day: Freeloader

January 31, 2018 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: Defense, Defense Spending, German, Germans, Germany, Language, NATO Leave a comment

That means freeloader. Actually, the German word for that is Schmarotzer but this is so-called Neudeutsch or New German (English) so relax about it already.

Anyway… Germany must increase its military spending and take a more active role in conflicts to avoid being seen as one of the world’s biggest freeloaders, an influential diplomat said on Wednesday.

Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference and Germany’s former envoy to Washington, urged the country’s would-be government coalition partners to reverse their restrictive stance on arms exports and formally back commitments to NATO.

Damn. And this is a diplomat talking here so you can imagine the words less diplomatic folks like you and me would use.

“We should not develop the reputation of being one of the world’s best freeloaders.”

German Of The Day: Dorftrottel

January 30, 2018 By Hermann Observer in Helplessness, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: Brandenburg, German, Germans, Germany, Language, Villages Leave a comment

That means village idiot. Dorf = village. Trottel = idiot, get it?

Well, some guy who purchased a village in Brandenburg now wants his money back after having taken a closer look at the damned thing. That’s right, a village. In Brandenburg, for crying out loud. With like people living in it and the whole bit. But in Brandenburg, like I said. Brandenburg is a place you leave in Germany, not a place you move to.

Talk about being a Dorftrottel. He wants out of the deal now because he claims that he is not legally competent. How could he be? Village idiots never are. Except in being village idiots, maybe.

The mayor said he met the buyer in December in Alwine. According to local media, the buyer was a little surprised by the crumbling condition of the town, which has now worsened after a recent storm.

More Redistribution Needed

January 29, 2018 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Economy, German, Germans, Germany, Money, Politicians, Redistribution, Wealth Leave a comment

Or that’s what this article seems to suggest.

And this in a country that has already been redistributing the wealth for decades and decades or longer.

When it comes to the superrich, however, there are relatively reliable estimates in the form of lists of the world’s wealthiest people, with the one compiled by the US business magazine Forbes leading the way. A similar list is compiled in Germany by manager magazin. A team of tax experts led by Stefan Bach of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) has examined the wealth statistics compiled by the ECB and augmented them with lists identifying the ultrarich. And the team did so for three countries: Germany, France and Spain.

The result: The 45 richest households in Germany own as much wealth as the bottom half of the population. Each group possessed a total of 214 billion euros in assets in 2014.

Bad superrich! Bad!

Why would more redistribution be necessary in a country like Germany? Maybe because it doesn’t work. It can’t work, in fact. It is not, nor has it ever been, a zero sum game, this wealth business. Here or anywhere else. But it’s a great way for redistributing politicians to get elected. Again and again and again. To no avail.

“Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”

Germans Can’t Live Without Facebook

January 26, 2018 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: Data Privacy, Data Protection, Facebook, German, Germans, Germany, Government Regulation, Personal Data, Regulation, Social Media Leave a comment

Or at least that’s the impression I get. Otherwise, if they were so terribly worried about what Facebook does with their data, they would simply stop using it. It’s still a “free” service, right? But, of course, nothing is ever for free.

Facebook is open about collecting a broad variety of personal information, from facial recognition data to, yes, “likes” on other sites. Privacy-minded people can easily find out what Facebook knows about them and even download the data. So it’s not as if users were deceptively kept in the dark about Facebook’s harvesting of “21st century raw materials.” That, however, is not the Federal Cartel Office’s main concern; it’s that Facebook, as a company dominant in its market, forces users to agree to these harvesting practices: They don’t really have any place else to go for their digital social needs if they feel uncomfortable about how their data are used. If it’s a choice “between accepting ‘the whole Facebook package,’ including an extensive disclosure of personal data, or not using Facebook at all,” as the regulator put it in a December document, and if Facebook is a dominant company, it’s illegal in Germany.

The regulatory attack on personal data harvesting is based on the unproven assumption that the data are valuable.

German Of The Day: Flüchtlingsverteilung

January 25, 2018 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: Europe, German, Germans, Germany, Language, Refugees 2 Comments

That means refugee distribution. A very German word.

And now Angela Merkel’s government (non-government?), slow learners that they are, has finally figured out that the rest of Europe is absolutely, positively not interested in this German word.

After years of trying to get its neighbors to take in quotas of the refugees Angela Merkel invited to Germany it has finally seen the light – that it ain’t never gonna happen – and has decided to abandon the plan “for now.”

Die Bundesregierung ist bereit, die Diskussion über eine gleichmäßigere Verteilung von Flüchtlingen in Europa vorerst auszusetzen.

“Not Deployable For Collective Defense”

January 24, 2018 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: Armies, Bundeswehr, Defense, Exports, German, Germans, Germany, Industry, Military, NATO, Profit, Readiness, Responsibility, Weapons Exports 1 Comment

Three years ago, Germany’s military made headlines when it used broomsticks instead of machine guns during a NATO exercise because of a shortage of equipment. The lack of real weapons in the European Union’s most populous nation was seen as symptomatic of how underfunded its military has long been.

One Russian annexation later, if anything, the state of affairs has only gotten worse, according to the parliamentary commissioner for the country’s armed forces.

He has now reached the conclusion that the German military is virtually “not deployable for collective defense,” at the moment. Independent commissioner Hans-Peter Bartels also indicated in a recent interview that Germany was unprepared for the possibility of a larger conflict even though smaller operations abroad may still be possible.

Meanwhile… Rising exports, Turkish tanks fuel German arms sales debate.

Again: Germany’s army is an alibi army that will never be used for anything other than to make Germans feel better (less worse?) about being 1) pacifists while being at the same time 2) the world’s third largest weapons exporter. Remember this when the next demand for them to spend 2 percent GDP on their defense comes up and they start to fidget – and get away with not spending it again.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Tag Archives: Germans