“If you misbehave and act really awful, like a real bastard, and nobody takes offense, then you’re integrated.”
Taken from Entweder Broder – Die Deutschland-Safari! 1/2 (Folge 1/5):
“Was bedeutet eigentlich Integration?”
Tag Archives: Humor
Germans Prepare For Next Hi-Tech Threat That Isn’t Quite There Yet But Threatens On The Horizon Already Anyway So-To-Speak
Or threatens in front of your bedroom window, or could. Potentially, I mean.
The ghastly Google Street View Scare hardly verdaut (digested), Germans everywhere are now about to be threatened by the threat of threatening private “mini me” drones which will soon be everywhere, omnipresent and ubiquitous, all at the same time, and will threaten German privacy in ways that haven’t even been imagined yet–but just be patient, they’re working on it.
Consumer Minister Ilse Aigner, along with the good folks over at the Left Party (of all people), are concerned that these new-fangled devices will soon be able to break privacy laws that, well, haven’t even been written yet either. But they’re working on that too.
Interestingly, the firm producing these things is located in a place called Kreuztal, in Germany (well I thought it was interesting). These babies are Made in Germany, in other words. So why all the excitement? Germans would never threaten German privacy like American Internet companies would, would they? I don’t know, maybe it’s more like “Be the first Spitzel (informer) on your block to have one!” kind of thing or something.
“Schon mit den kleinen helikopterähnlichen Hobby-Modellen kann man rechtlich schnell an Grenzen stoßen.”
All together now!
And to all a good night already. Merry Christmas!
“Aloof, elitist and indecisive”
Damn. And that’s coming from a German journalist dude too. And who knows more about being aloof, elitist and indecisive than they do?
“Barack Obama was the biggest loser of 2010.” Looks like once the going gets tough enough (for Obama), the German intelligentsia get going (as in abandoning ship).
Now, just days before Christmas, Congress has ratified the New START disarmament treaty with Russia. … Will Obama build on this victory? The opposite is much more probable.
Dean vs. Reagan?
No, not Dean Reed, James Dean.
Although Red Elvis would probably have more supporters here in Berlin’s Senat today if it came to such a bout–and might yet get a street named after him here one day too, which is more than you can say for Ronald Reagan.
What the hell am I trying to get at here, you ask? I don’t know anymore. I seem to have forgotten. Oh, yes. Now I remember.
Germany’s defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has just called to name a street or a square in Berlin after Ronald Reagan on the 100th anniversary of his birth coming up on February 6.
No big deal, right? Only you must keep in mind that this is red-red Berlin (SPD and the Left Party) and that we are still in the here and now and folks like these don’t even want to commemorate Mr. Tear-down-this-wall-Mr.-Gorbachev’s birthday, much less name a street after him. They only name streets after romantic revolutionary figures like Rudi Dutschke.
Or as zu Guttenberg put it so well: “It would be a welcome event to name a street after this great honorary citizen and provide evidence that red-red gratitude doesn’t have to end with Rudi Dutschke.”
FDP Berlin representative Martin Lindner hastened to add “You are being blind to history and presumptuous not to properly acknowledge this great and steadfast friend of Germany.” Lindner had proposed renaming Berlin’s Central Station’s Washington-Platz in Reagan’s honor back in 2004.
Quite provocative from Guttenberg & Co., I find. They know perfectly well that there’s no way in hell Wowereit and his Linke friends (link can also mean deceitful in German, by the way) would ever allow themselves to stoop to honoring such an über-Feindbild (longstanding mega-enemy stereotype) like that.
Politiker von CDU und FDP unterstützten die Forderung Guttenbergs und äußerten Unverständnis dafür, dass der Berliner Senat keine Gedenkfeier für Reagan plane.
Get Yer Ya-Ya’s and Your Canned Goods Out!
Oh, my, God. The Scheechaos (snow chaos) has now reached Berlin! You know, like the Red Army once did?
What’s even more shocking is that it’s reached the taz too (the newspaper for all the lefty-anarcho-chaos experts living here). And even more shockingerer still is that Berlin’s environmental minister (yup, cities like Berlin have one of those) Katrin Lompscher (Left Party not Green–can’t you be both?) has called for a freakin’ Krisengipfel (crisis summit). You know, just like the one they had recently somewheres but I can’t remember where, about something, but I forget. Only this Krisengipfel will be worse, or better, or whatever.
We’re all going to die or something!
Remember when it was European Germany?
Now it’s German Europe.
Huh? Where did this come from all of a sudden? Out of the blue like that?*
It was another “good day for Europe” when, as usual, nothing was actually resolved during the latest EU summit the other day, other than the fact that that nothing had a big Made in Germany stamp on it. The times they are a changed. The country that used to moan about being the paymaster for so long (and still does, of course, don’t get me wrong) is now “the taskmaster of the entire community” and doesn’t even have the decency to make a secret about it anymore.
But don’t complain about it, my (as in Germany’s) fellow Europeans. This is only what the “fathers of Europe” had envisioned right from the start. Think of what Jean Monnet had to say about the plan, for instance:
He wanted to guide European countries into a super-state “without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose.”
I admit that this wasn’t quite the purpose he had envisioned but, well, now you “have the salad,” as the Germans like to say (the fat is in the fire). It doesn’t really matter that Berlin has a lack of vision when it comes to dealing with the current euro crisis, Germany calls the shots now and doesn’t need a vision if it doesn’t want one. So get used to it already.
“This is all about Germany, and it’s all about the end of the German appetite for writing checks to the periphery of Europe.”
*Have any of you ever read Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle? Germany and Japan win World War II. This is kind of like that.
“Good European pieties and delirious anti-American phantasms”
It’s all here. Ya gottcha European Film Academy Awards, your European Director, your European Screenwriter, your European Actor, your European Composer, your European Production Designer and even your European Oscar, all right here in Europe. Financed primarily by Germany, of course (where all the shots get called these days), but still. Germany is part of Europe too, you know.
Now all you need is your appropriate inappropriate European Film with your suitably anti-American fantasy exposing that country for the “fundamentalist totalitarian state” it is (as put so diplomatically by European Film Academy Presidente por Life Wim Wenders–he’s a European too, by the way) and the recipe is complete.
So this year’s wiener (or is it weiner or even whiner?) is: Roman Polanski for “Ghost Writer.” It’s the heart-warming story of an Iraq War-related assasination of a CIA-controlled US-Amerikan imperialist Tony Blair robot or puppet dude, take your pick he’s both (I knew I always liked that guy for some reason).
Gee, I wonder who got the Best Foreign Language Film Language European Oscar Award this year? I’m going to go way out on a limb on this one and say German.
German-funded “European” film prize goes to German-funded anti-American film.
Thanks for the link, Joe.
German Technophobia Reaches North Pole
In yet another shocking new disclosure that may or may not have come from WikiLeaks although it’s hard to say for sure, it has been revealed that neither the German Santa Claus, St. Nikolaus, nor his many thousands of merry German post office helpers reply to children’s wish lists sent in the so-called “e-mail” format, insisting instead that “they learn how to do it properly.”
“Obviously we, as the postal service, want children to write letters,” said St. Nikolaus spokesman Freddie von Scrooge. “And besides, once you give in and start letting stuff like “e-mail” through, the next thing you know they’ll be Street Viewing the freakin’ North Pole.”
Santa Doesn’t Do Digital
Solidarity Time
Predictably, as necessitated by the somewhat psychologically deformed German perception of what constitutes crime, several German media have banded together to protest what they call “the criminalization of WikiLeaks.”
They did accidently make one or two good points here, though. In their joint declaration they wrote: Those who publish in the Internet should be treated no differently than classic journalists. I couldn’t agree more.
They also wrote: The state is no end in itself and must be able to withstand a confrontation with its own secrets. Again, I agree here. But maybe what they really meant to write was WikiLeaks is no end in itself and must be able to withstand a confrontation with its own secrets.
By the way, have you heard the latest?!? Julian Assange begged the judges on privacy grounds not to reveal his new mansion arrest address. It’s Ellingham Hall, an elegant ten-bedroom retreat in 600 secluded acres of Norfolk countryside, just in case you were wondering.
Oh, and get this. Apparantly the guy’s also really talented at writing creepy, lovesick emails. Check them out here!
Opps. Didn’t mean to leak that or anything. But it’s too late now. This doesn’t constitute a crime or anything, does it?
WikiLeaks ist kein Selbstzweck und muss eine Konfrontation mit den eigenen Geheimnissen aushalten.
Observing Hermann 