Latest Cultural Exchange Takes Place

This time at Berlin’s Carneval of Cultures. Like, duh. Where else?

Culture

Police have detained three suspects after two teens were groped and robbed by a group of young men during Berlin’s “Karneval der Kulturen” festival. The assault was reminiscent of the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne.

Germans everywhere immediately began apologizing for not having first properly explained to these young men how sexual harassment, rape and robbery are not generally viewed as being socially acceptable in their country and then immediately sought to make amends for their shameful oversight by referring them to the German government’s latest $136,000 porn site specially designed for sex-starved refugees like themselves who are desperately trying to integrate with German women or anything else out there that moves.

Sex

Hmmm. They could have at least explained to that guy (I’m assuming here he’s the asylum-seeker) that the two of them are going to have to take the rest of their clothes off first.

The site is adorned with cartoon illustrations of various sex acts that are equally graphic and clinical. (Imagine the stick-figure man and woman on a public restroom sign pictured in virtually every conceivable sexual position.)

States Getting Safer All The Time

At least as far as Germany is concerned. Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia just got a whole lot safer than they were yesterday, for example.

Safe

How did this happen, you ask? It’s kind of like magic, I guess, but “safe countries of origin,” you see, are countries where asylum-seekers seeking asylum in Germany can be sent back to safely, in a safe manner. And this safes, I mean saves, Germany the trouble of having to deal with them.

The problem here being (and don’t tell anybody I told you this – it’s top secret or something) that most of the asylum seekers coming to Germany from these countries aren’t in need of asylum at all.

“A large number of people from the Maghreb states come to Germany for reasons that are not connected to asylum. The stay of such people must be ended quickly.”

We Are Also The Two-Thirds Percent

OK, two-thirds isn’t a percent per se, but still.

Merkel

Germans don’t want Angela Merkel to run for a fourth term, it seems. They just want her to run.

A poll published on Tuesday shows that just under two-thirds of Germans do not want Chancellor Angela Merkel to run for office again in elections next year.

The poll conducted by INSA for Cicero magazine asked people if they thought Merkel should run for a fourth term and 64 percent responded that she should not.

Other polling figures show that if an election were held now, Germany’s two main political parties would barely scrape together 50 percent of the vote between them.

“Wenn die Flüchtlingsthematik in die aus Merkels Sicht richtigen Bahnen gelenkt und aus der öffentlichen Aufmerksamkeit verschwunden ist, wäre ihre letzte große Aufgabe erfüllt.”

Germans Outraged Again Sort Of

In a way. Stunned at Austria’s latest plan to put up another yucky border (the Italian one this time) to keep refugees from entering Austria (and thus Germany), German Chancellor Angela Merkel has decried the awful plan, calling it “mistaken” and “anachronistic.”

Merkel

And you can hardly even tell that she is secretly thrilled to death about the Austrians saving her political behind once again, thus allowing her preach from the moral high ground way up north in Berlin another day.

The narrow Brenner Pass has become a point of contention between Italy and Austria, as Rome has long complained that parts of northern Europe were allowing southern European nations to bear the brunt of sheltering and taking care of asylum-seekers.

Apartheid Introduced In Germany

Or a form of it has begun creeping in, I should say. Which is creepy enough.

Apartheid

Only this type of apartheid is different. It is the kind practiced in the Muslim world.

Germans, famously open to the influx of strange, new cultural practices and the introduction of bizarre and foreign social customs in their country, have decided to take the initiative and beat their ever-growing Muslim population to the draw, so-to-speak, by establishing the system of gender segregation so popular in the Muslim world today (and soon to be introduced in your country, too).

This move is due, in part, to the fear German women now have of the countless Muslim male refugees who have entered their country in a thoroughly chaotic and uncontrolled manner although of course no one here is actually allowed to say that, you see (I’m not from here).

And how has the ice been broken? Private German rail operator MRB has introduced the country’s first women-only compartments on its service between Leipzig and Chemnitz. This may be a small step for segregation, but it is a giant leap for Islamkind.

In doing so, by the way, MRB and others have gone out of their way to stress that this is “not a response to Cologne attacks.” But what else are they going to say? If you tell folks the real reason you might hurt somebody’s feelings. And that would be cruel. And very unusual.

“We can’t put these ladies in a separate box and expect the bigger problem to vanish.”

It’s Magic

Wow. The refugees have suddenly stopped coming to Germany. Just like that.

Refugees

All it took, the German government (and government media) tell us today, was Angela Merkel’s strong leadership and the EU’s agreement with Turkey to return migrants who cross the Aegean Sea to Europe illegally. Well…

Most experts, however, say the deal with Turkey, the main plank of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s plan to reduce refugee flows to Europe, had nothing to do with the fall in numbers since it has only been implemented for a few days. Rather, they say the decrease is mainly due to the closure of national borders by countries on the migrants’ Balkan route, a policy Ms. Merkel has vehemently opposed.

That’s right. This is the same German government (and government media) that said that putting stringent border controls in place wouldn’t and couldn’t solve the problem. So I guess, well, uh… Go ahead. You do the math.

Once again: Thanks, Austria. Sometimes – even in ze Europe – just making things happen is the best way to go.

Flüchtlinge: Zahlen sinken drastisch

The Best Of Both Worlds

It’s a win-win situation for Germany again.

Austria

Austria solves the Germans’ refugee problem but they can still bitch and moan about how awful Austria is for having put up the mean and nasty border fence that did the solving. Once you’ve climbed the moral high ground you never come down, I guess.

Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia have all brought in no-nonsense measures over the last few months which have sealed up the Balkans route and dissuaded tens of thousands of migrants from making the journey north from Greece.

Astonishingly, beleaguered Mrs Merkel has persistently railed against the reintroduction of border controls, even though they may end up saving her career as Germany’s leader.

Die Alleingänge müssen enden.

Drop In Number Of Refugees Due To Merkel’s Asylum Policy?

I think not. Try Austria’s asylum policy of enforcing real border controls.

Tempelhof

The Berlin government is going ahead with plans to expand the big refugee center at Tempelhof airport, even though its population has dropped. According to Berlin’s latest official figures, only around 50 refugees are arriving in Berlin every day – a long way below the 1,000 that sometimes arrived daily last fall…

While Merkel officially has stuck to her line, thereby isolating herself in Europe, Austria has made a drastic about-face within a matter of weeks. In September 2015, Faymann criticized Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban’s policy of deterrence, and now, Austria is following suit.

Austria has imposed a cap on the number refugees it will allow into the country and the authorities will now only accept 80 asylum applications per day. A four kilometer long fence has been erected near the town of Spielfeld at the Slovenian border. When Hungary built a fence along its border with Serbia in the autumn, Faymann fiercely attacked the activities. Now, even the armed forces are deployed at the Austrian border.

German Of The Day: Heile Welt

Heile Welt

To grasp this trauma (the refugee crisis) it helps to understand the German zeitgeist that developed (mainly in the former West Germany) in the post-war years, and lingered in the reunited country. Germans call it Heile Welt. The term means something like “wholesome world”, and describes an orderly, idyllic state. It may connote the nurturing environment parents create for their children to protect them from life’s ugliness, or a private oasis of peace amid public chaos. It was a state of mind that Germans clung to after the second world war…

Foreigners were allowed into this Heile Welt, but not entirely accepted. To man its assembly lines, Germany invited workers from southern Europe and especially Turkey. The millionth arrived in 1964 and got a motorcycle as a gift. By the time the programme ended in 1973, 4m foreigners lived in West Germany. But they were called “guest workers” rather than immigrants, on the premise that they would ultimately leave again. Unsurprisingly, most stayed. Yet mainstream Germany continued to see itself as ethnically homogenous—a Heile Welt in a tribal sense…

Gnomic wisdom: Some Germans react by fleeing into ever tinier Heile Welten. “We are becoming ever more like our garden gnomes.”

German Of The Day: Durchwinken

That means to wave through.

Merkel

And Angela Merkel HERSELF has just learned, like just today, an entire new German sentence with the word Durchwinken in it: Die Politik des Durchwinkens muß beendet werden. That means: The policy of just waving refugees through from one country to the next must now be stopped.

Like I said, she just learned it. It is quite a mouthful, isn’t it? So it’s certainly easy to understand why it took her this long to learn it.

“A refugee does not have the right to say ‘I want to be granted asylum in a particular country’ in the European Union.”

“Es gibt eben nicht ein Recht, dass ein Flüchtling sagen kann, ich will in einem bestimmten Land der Europäischen Union Asyl bekommen.”