Tag Archives: Humor

Volunteers of America, OK

August 13, 2010 By in Helplessness, History Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

But volunteers of Germany? Good luck.

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is moving ahead with reform plans to reduce the Bundeswehr to 165,000 soldiers, effectively turning it into a volunteer army.

This is a controversial move in Germany because, well, every move in Germany is a controversial move. OK, OK. At least the ones that have to do with the military are.

But like who cares? It’s not as if this new professional German army is ever going to be used for military purposes either. Not unless everybody volunteers to, that is. And how likely is that?

Künftig sollen nur noch freiwillige Rekruten eingezogen werden: Die Planer rechnen mit 7500 Freiwilligen pro Jahr.

Too ostentatious

August 12, 2010 By in Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Charity schmarity. German super-rich types aren’t fooled a minute by any of this “giving pledge” nonsense put forward by Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Co.

Any billionaire can agree to give away half of his/her money to charity. But that’s beside the point, the German super-rich say. It’s all about the principle of the matter, you see (and who should know more about principles than the filthy rich, right?).

German upper crusties think that giving so-called donations shouldn’t replace duties that would be better carried out by the German state. That said state takes in comparatively little from said crusties is another matter altogether, but still. We’re talking about principles here.

“For most people that is too ostentations.”

Street View II

August 11, 2010 By in Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Or 2.0? The saga continues. Pack your canned goods and potable water, Germany. Street View is coming doch (after all).

But this time you don’t have to worry about lack of privacy and criminal abuse and all that stuff. This time it’s going to be a German kinda Street View thang.

Not only will the faces of individuals and license plates and street addresses be blurred out, German Street View is going to blurr out the houses and the streets, entire neighborhoods, cities, mountains, lakes and streams and other prominent geographical landmarks including some of our planet’s smaller oceans too – but they were kind of blurry to begin with anyway, so there.

People can also ask to have images of their homes removed from the database starting next week – a move aimed at dispelling privacy fears.

German rapid response team closes down 9/11 mosque

August 9, 2010 By in Habitudes, History Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Well that’s a relatively rapid response by German standards if you ask me, OK?

That’s right, this is the same mosque which was frequented by the the suicide hijackers from the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. And now, some ten years later, after what appears to have been some very, very thorough deliberation indeed, Hamburg authorities have determined that the guys running this place might pose a threat to society – and have shut their puppy down.

Germans are known for their thoroughness, get it?

“Recent events have again shown that instructional courses, sermons and seminars held by the organization and texts published on its website are not only aimed against constitutional regularity, but also seek to radicalize their listeners and readers,” the town statement said.

We’re not nearly as upset about Task Force 373 as we were last week

August 3, 2010 By in Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

All the Germans who read Der Spiegel (and that’s all the Germans that there are) were selfrighteously outraged upon reading about American Task Force 373 after this latest WikiLeaks revelation thingy last week.

Now it turns out that the German government has been providing names to the hit list used by the unit. Oh boy, oh boy. The outrage that will now follow suit will be even more, well, not all that outrageous really, come to think of it. But still.

It has becomes clear that, even though German elite units such as Task Force 47 were not deployed to deliberately target people, their counterpart, the American special forces unit Task Force 373, which has since been renamed Task Force 3-10, takes on the dirty work and processes the hit lists — in the territory controlled by the Bundeswehr and on the basis of German information, no less.

The weatherman’s out!

August 2, 2010 By in Habeas Corpus, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

And he’s guilty until proven guilty. Lock your doors already.

They’re going at him big time too, although everything you read about the ex-girfriend’s allegations of rape sounds pretty, uh, flaky at best. And I hate weathermen too. Man oh man, this one’s going to go on forever.

“Wir nehmen gerade die Hauptverhandlung vorweg.”

Abracadabra

July 30, 2010 By in Helplessness Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

How can you make 1000 cops disappear just like that? It’s not easy. It’s pretty simple though.

All you have to do is be the German government and spend $1 million on a UN program to train Somalian police in Ethiopia, then give them uniforms and weapons and send them back home to help keep the peace for their government (or what would like to be one) at which point they promptly desert and join opposition Islamist militia groups instead.

Currently, the transitional Somali government is struggling to suppress the militia, including Al-Qaeda sympathisers Al-Shabaab, who control as much as two-thirds of the country.

The only good genetically modified potato…

July 29, 2010 By in Habeas Corpus, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Is a dead genetically modified potato!

“After two decades of research efforts, BASF’s biotechnologists using genetic engineering succeeded in creating a potato, named Amflora, where the gene responsible for the synthesis of amylose has been turned off and thus the potato is unable to synthesize the undesirable substance, amylose.”

This means that, uh, hell if I know. But neither do the pissed off environmentalist anti-Amflora types in northern Germany who just raided that potato field up there. That didn’t stop them from getting in a rage and ripping those perilous plants out by their rapacious roots. Not until they got busted by the Plant Police, I mean.

“Gendreck weg!”

Help me man I’m sick

July 28, 2010 By in Hard Facts, Health, Helplessness, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Or more sick than I was ten or twenty years ago, I mean.

That Germans are stark raving psycho schizophrenic wacko types is understood and all well and good, but now they’re getting all these psychological and emotional stress related mental health disorders too. Or at least a whole lot more than they used to get. For crying out loud.

Or at least that’s what this latest hospital report link thingy up there says. Four out of five of the most commonly practiced hospital therapies in Germany have to do with mental disorders these days. Nobody knows why this is, of course, although some suspect it might have to do with the fact that being depressed (or talking about being depressed) isn’t taboo anymore. Like how depressing is that?

“Während 1990 nur etwa jeder zwölfte Behandlungstag unter der Hauptdiagnose von psychischen Störungen erfasst wurde, waren es 2009 gut ein Sechstel aller Behandlungstage.”