Tag Archives: Media

They’re Only 25 Percent Of The Electorate

September 2, 2019 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hostility, Humility, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

And growing. So we’ll just keep shunning them and they’ll eventually go away.

AfD

That seems to be what Germany’s established political parties are telling themselves when it comes to the far-right AfD – a party that owes it’s increasing popularity solely to Angela Merkel’s bat shit crazy migration “policy.” None of these parties are willing to even consider working together with the AfD. Even after yesterday’s results in Saxony and Brandenburg.

This is because the AfD politicians are all “Nazis” (everybody I don’t like – or offers “my” voters an alternative – is a Nazi, right?). So a quarter of the voters who voted in these two federal state elections yesterday are all Nazis, too? Uh, I don’t think so. This is German democracy in action? Here’s a little tip: Once they reach 51 percent you won’t have the opportunity to take the wind out of their sails because they won’t need you anymore.

Far-right AfD bids to encircle Berlin as resentment and division grow.

Advertisements

Who Makes This Stuff Up?

June 21, 2019 By in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hype, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Oh, Al Jazeera makes this stuff up. Then it makes sense.

Germany

Germany welcomed refugees. Now it’s reaping the economic benefits – German companies need more skilled workers. Refugees are helping to fill the gap.

This is not the German reality. When Angela Merkel opened the floodgates in 2015, talk was soon everywhere (where talk like this was expected to be – see state television) that precisely this would happen; highly skilled engineers, doctors and other specialists from Syria would “fill the gap” in a booming German economy short on workers. This simply did not happen. The small number of specialists who did make it here were generally stymied by German bureaucracy or simply do not have the skills German companies expected them to have. Who did come? Armies of unskilled workers who are now a big burden on the German social system.

It’s not the Syrians’ fault that Germany does everything bass ackwards here, though. The Germans needed skilled workers so they let the unskilled in. They don’t even bother to introduce a comprehensive immigration law so they can decide who enters their country or not – haven’t gotten around to it to this very day. And on and on it goes. Al Jazeera’s fantasy Germany makes for good stories, I guess, but it has nothing to do with the real Germany. Not that anybody is interested. Just sayin’.

Illustrious? At Risk?

June 18, 2019 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hype, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

What Germany are these journalists writing about?

Merkel

Merkel’s illustrious reign is at risk of being tarnished. Huh?

That nobody really much cares about or follows what is going on in Germany is one thing but to start churning out science fiction about a parallel German universe is simply irresponsible.

There is nothing “illustrious” about Angela Merkel’s “reign” and there is absolutely, positively no risk that it could become tarnished. It already is tarnished. It can’t get more tarnished than it already is, in fact. Ask any German on the street and he/she will tell you. The journalists at CNBC ought to consider giving that a try.

Sakrileg, the German word for sacrilege: the violation or misuse of what is regarded as sacred. I’m about to go there. Has German Chancellor Angela Merkel been a disaster for Europe, and is her prolonged tenure at the Federal Chancellery extending the region’s problems rather than holding them back?

The Natives Are Getting Restless

May 27, 2019 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Nice spin, though: Europeans showed belief in the EU project, experts claimed Monday, despite long-dominant centrist parties losing ground to euroskeptic and nationalist opponents in the EU elections.

So, by voting for euroskeptic and nationalist parties you are actually voting for the EU? Uh, OK.

Are we having fake news yet?

“I think the voter turnout shows that people really still care about the EU and what the European Union is doing. It shows a trend that, rather than weakening, it’s going to strengthen.”

More State Control Of Media In Germany?

May 26, 2019 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Like, than they already have? What could possibly go wrong?

Control

OK, it didn’t quite work out as planned back in the 1930s (or did it?), but today’s enlightened media experts are much more, you know, enlightened and stuff. And it is social media they’re talking about here, after all. So take a chill pill already. They’re from the government and they’re here to help.

A Lesson From 1930s Germany: Beware State Control of Social Media – Regulators should think carefully about the fallout from well-intentioned new rules and avoid the mistakes of the past.

The history of radio, and in particular how it was regulated in interwar Germany, is more relevant than ever: Five years ago, the question was whether we would regulate social media. Now the questions are how and when we will regulate them. As politicians and regulators in places as disparate as Berlin, Singapore, and Washington—even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg—consider how best to do so, we should think carefully about the fallout from well-intentioned new rules and avoid the mistakes of the past.

“Our way of taking power and using it would have been inconceivable without the radio and the airplane.”

I Want Whatever The New York Times Just Had

May 2, 2019 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

While the New York times asks itself “Why Is Socialism Coming Back in Germany?” a young, supposedly up-and-coming SPD politician has just made himself a national laughing stock by suggesting the “collectivization” of BMW.

Kühnert

Not even Germany’s ex-communist partially Stalinist now socialist (or whatever they call themselves this week) Left party comes up with bat shit crazy ideas like that. Everyone is asking themselves what this guy has been smoking.

No, New York Times. Socialism might be alive in well down in Venezuela these days but it will continue to have a tough stand in Germany, flirtatious as the Germans may seem at times.

Die Empörung über die Sozialismus-Thesen des Juso-Vorsitzenden ist groß. Die SPD-Spitze spielt die Aussagen herunter.

This Survey Is Clearly Incomplete

February 26, 2019 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Hideology, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

They trust North Korea more, too.

Trump

Germans trust China more than US two years into Trump’s presidency, survey finds – More Germans view China as a better partner with their country than the United States, according to a recently released poll showing souring relations since Donald Trump took office two years ago.

Germans hold an increasingly negative view of the relationship between the US and their country, with just 23.1 per cent saying they think the US is a better partner than China. Meanwhile, 42 per cent of Germans surveyed said that China is a more reliable partner than America.

Fast 60 Prozent sprechen sich für eine stärkere Distanzierung Deutschlands gegenüber den USA aus.

German Of The Day: Umerziehen

February 19, 2019 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hostility, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

That means re-educate.

Umerziehen

And that’s what the “framing” expert at Germany state TV “Channel One” (ARD) has advised its employees to do. Viewers are in dire need of re-education.

Her secret “framing manual” indicates that the ARD is at war with its critics and private television channels alike, disruptive elements who refer to the ARD as “state TV,” criticize “compulsory fees” (they’re not compulsory, they’re a show of solidarity!) and “question the ARD’s relevance.” Gee, I guess she means me, too.

These disruptive elements don’t understand that the ARD is “guided by moral principles” and its own “moral necessity for social interaction” and not, like them, motivated by profit. The ARD doesn’t have to be motivated by profit, people. All Germans get taxed for this state supported media bias whether they’re viewers or not.

Isn’t that a nice smirk? Big Sister is watching. She wants you all to keep on watching, that is.

Die Arbeit der ARD, so heißt es, sei „von moralischen Prinzipien getragen“, überzeugt von der eigenen „moralischen Notwendigkeit für das gesellschaftliche Miteinander“ – während die „medienkapitalistischen Heuschrecken“ des Privat-TV nur dem Profit dienen würden.

The Money Was Real, Though

December 24, 2018 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hard Facts, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Fake news reporters may fake their news like there’s no tomorrow but they rarely want anything to do with fake money.

Fake

Der Spiegel said Sunday it would file a criminal complaint against a disgraced reporter after it emerged he may have embezzled donations intended for Syrian street children.

Claas Relotius, 33, resigned this month after admitting to making up stories and inventing protagonists in more than a dozen articles in the magazine’s print and online editions.

Spiegel said it now had information that Relotius allegedly launched a campaign for readers to give money to help subjects of an article he wrote but that the bank details he gave directed the funds to his own account.

Spiegel said concerned readers had in recent days reported Relotius’ call for donations purportedly for orphaned Syrian children living on the streets of Turkey.

“Der Spiegel will give all the information it collects to public prosecutors as part of a criminal complaint.”

PS: And on that happy note, Merry Christmas!

Santa

Institutional Bias?

December 23, 2018 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

At Der Spiegel? At CNN? And systematically practiced by practically everybody else out there working in the media’s “mediation” machine?

CNN

No way. Or… Way? Wow. Who would have thought that possible?

The US government has waded into the scandal of the German journalist for Der Spiegel magazine who faked stories on a grand scale over years, calling it proof of “institutional bias” in the media against America.

In a scathing letter to the magazine’s editors, Richard Grenell, US ambassador to Germany, claims the journalism of Claas Relotius, who resigned from the German news magazine last week, was symptomatic of anti-American bias across the mainstream media. “It is clear that we were the victims of a campaign of institutional bias,” Grenell wrote to Der Spiegel, in a letter also seen by the daily newspaper Bild. He said he was aghast at the way “anti-American coverage” had been facilitated by the magazine.

“We are aware that the Relotius case makes the fight against fake news that much more difficult. For everyone. For for other media outlets that are on our side and for citizens and politicians who are interested in an accurate portrayal of reality.”