Healing The Wounds Of German Colonialism

In a country Germans never set foot in, much less colonized?

Seems like there’s just never enough guilt to go around these days. But hey, if it makes you feel good, I mean virtuous, run with any guilt you can find (or steal, or make up).

But you know, personally, I think sending Nigeria 20 Greens instead of 20 Bronzes would have been a much nicer gesture.

Germany had hoped that by returning 20 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria last year it was “healing the wounds” of colonialism and righting a historic wrong.

But when it emerged that ownership of the repatriated objects will pass to the king of Benin rather than the Nigerian state, Berlin found itself facing a PR nightmare.

“The government has recklessly consigned African world heritage to oblivion. The pieces will vanish into the private possession of a Nigerian king.”

“This should be a wake-up call to end the hyper-moralism in the whole restitution debate.”

“Shames The West”

That’s right. The “correct,” woke German take. Not “shames the individual responsible,” Joe Biden.

The “West” may be clinically dead, but it’s reassuring to know that the reflex of our collective, knee-jerk obsession with guilt still works.

Afghan turmoil ‘shames’ the West, says German president – Images of throngs trying to flee Kabul are shameful for Western nations, Germany’s president said on Tuesday, as desperate people clamoured at the airport after the Taliban takeover.

“We are experiencing a human tragedy for which we share responsibility.”

Time To Start The Next Berlin Airlift

Only this time it will be migrants flown directly to Berlin – where they could be evenly distrubuted among needy, migrant-free German families all accross the country. It’s just a plan of mine, I admint, but still.

Guilt

More going it alone (again) is the way to go, Germany. We get it. You can’t help it. And it’s not like anyone else in Europe is interested in your guilt neurosis. My plan would solve everybody’s problems. Whoever wants to come to Europe gets a free ride to Germany for a free lunch German life later and the German guilt obsession would be cured for good. Not.

Thousands of people demonstrated Sunday in Berlin and other German cities, urging the European Union to take in migrants left without shelter after a fire destroyed their biggest camp in Greece. The EU is set to unveil proposals this week on how to help the 12,000 people left without shelter.

“We have space.”

Let’s Pretend It’s Not

Let’s pretend it’s not what everyone else immediately knows it is. Until we’re forced to admit what it is a few days later, officially. It’s some bizarre new game of hide and seek government officials are playing all across Europe these days.

Terror

Similar to the way French officials behaved after last week’s knifing “incident” in Paris, German officials too now bend over backwards seeking any explanation they can find to explain Monday’s truck “incident” in Limburg – other than the most obvious one. Why is it so hard to admit that you have just witnessed yet another terror attack from someone Angela Merkel inexplicably invited to the country in 2015? Could it be that these authorities have a guilty conscience? Better late than never, I guess.

German authorities are investigating a man who drove a stolen lorry into a line of cars in Limburg in the western state of Hesse, injuring eight people.

The 32-year-old had pulled the driver of the vehicle from his cabin at a red light before using the lorry to plough into eight cars waiting at a light near the town’s central railway station at about 5.20pm (1620 BST) on Monday.

The man, a Syrian national named as Omar AI by the national broadcaster ARD, was arrested at the scene.

“My thoughts are with the injured victims of the accident and their families.”

The Next German Folk Hero Is Born

For fifteen minutes or so, at least.

Folk Hero

Carola Rackete has been lauded as a heroine and decried as a criminal for helping asylum-seekers stranded in the Mediterranean Sea. What drives the 31-year-old German captain of the Sea-Watch rescue boat?

That’s easy. It’s the drug she’s taking: Guilt. Guilt gets people high. At least here in Germany it does. Guilt-induced moral intoxication turns its users from nobodies minding their own business into moral supermen saving the world. Those they claim to help are of secondary importance.

“I have decided to enter the port of Lampedusa. I know what I’m risking, but the 42 rescued people are exhausted. I’m taking them to safety now.”

German-Greek Tensions Ease After First WWII Reparations Payment Rolls In

European politicians everywhere breathed a collective sigh of relief as a mentally challenged German couple holidaying in Greece made the first ever private WWII reparations payment of $935 to Greece to make up for their government’s bad and nasty attitude.

Übermacht

Spokesmen for Brussels and Berlin were quick to point out that this shows how private people with good intentions can also “burn up money like nobody’s business” and how “like you shouldn’t always point your finger just at us when we squander away our dough. Your dough, that is. You’re pretty good at this, too.”

“They made their calculations and said each German owed 875 euros for what Greece had to pay during World War II.”

Germans Wrestling With Unresolvable Guilt After Annihilating Brazil

After a devastating 7-1 victory over Brazil, and with World Cup domination possibly just one small step around the corner, Germans everywhere have instinctively begun flagellating themselves with guilt and remorse in a futile attempt to come to grips with the responsibility they feel for the soccer atrocities committed in their name last night.

Soccer

“4-0 would have been enough,” a spokesman for the shamed German people said.

“This victory is too high,” another disturbed German tweeted. “Shame. Compassion for humiliated opponent. Quickly to bed.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel caught the mood with typical understatement. “I think it almost deserves the name ‘historic,” she said.

What Do You Mean BEFORE World War II?

“Given the horror of the Second World War where the guilt of course strongly lies with Germany and we take responsibility for the terror of National Socialism, we haven’t in Germany had the First World War so much in mind.”

WWI

One indication of Germans’ interest has been the success of the best-seller “The Sleepwalkers” by Australian Christopher Clark…

Experts and critics put the German success of the nearly 900-page title down to the book’s premise that Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire didn’t play any greater role than other countries in starting the war.

“People are delighted,” Historian Gerd Krumeich of Duesseldorf University said, sarcastically. “Among German intellectuals there was the conviction that everything led us to Hitler. Clark liberates us from all that by saying to us ‘you’re not more aggressive than the others’,” he said.

McDonald’s Wastes 600000 Liters Of Water With Every Happy Meal Served

Give or take a 0 or two, of course. And this is shocking. And bad.

Fast

The use of this water – used primarily for the cultivation of potatoes and grain, the feeding of livestock and the manufacture of beverages for McDonald’s customers – needs to be stopped immediately.

It could be used much more efficiently, or so the current WWF reports imply, if it were used for the cultivation of potatoes and grain, the feeding of livestock and the manufacture of beverages instead.

So stop eating fast food already and thus provide the rest of the world with this otherwise wasted water (“Over 60000000000000000000000000… liters served!”). What an epiphany. Why hadn’t anyone figured out this simple, simple truth long, long ago?

Burger, Pommes frites und ein Softdrink: Schon die Produktion eines einzigen Fast-Food-Menüs verbraucht nach WWF-Berechnungen 6000 Liter Wasser.

Guilty Until Your Boyfriend Is Proven Guilty

Sports builds character or something. Guilty by association in Germany (or in this case London)? How ya figure?

Although she has never been associated with any far-right statements or actions, German Olympic rower Nadja Drygalla has a boyfriend who has. This is not vorgesehen (provided for) in Germany, however, and therefore she must now be made a public outcast.

If her boyfriend had been an open supporter of say, the Red Army Faction, no one in Germany would have cared. But hey, I don’t make the rules here. So deal with it, lady. It’s show (trial) time.

“It is the right impulse to be very cautious when it comes to extremism in Germany. But that also caused a number of overreactions in the past and the case of Ms. Drygalla is one of it.”