I remember the old Soviet controlled zone here in Germany.
But now they want to introduce a Shariah controlled one?
In what government officials say is a blatant challenge to the rule of law and the democratic order in Germany, groups of young bearded Islamists — some wearing orange traffic safety vests emblazoned with the words “Sharia Police” — have declared parts of downtown Wuppertal to be a “Sharia Controlled Zone.”
“Sharia Police: Coming Soon to Your City.”
Damn. That’s getting dangerously close to the Austrian (28%), Spanish (29%), French (37%) and Greek (69%) levels.
The highest level of anti-Semitism was found in the Palestinian territories of West Bank and Gaza at 93 per cent.
“Our findings are sobering but sadly not surprising.”
It sure hurts to read some of this stuff, anyway.
Dear Mr. President, you have called for an economic community from Lisbon to Vladivostok for almost four years. It would be the economic basis for the“common European home”. Ukraine could make a perfect bridge for future cooperation between your intended Eurasian Union and the European Union, not least in cultural terms. We are persuaded that the purpose of the massive influence of the USA is to prevent the Ukraine from becoming such a bridge. The forces which have prevailed in the European Commission are supporting the policy of the United States against Russia.
“The aggression against Russia always comes from the West, Germany should exercise restraint.”
A highly influential lobbyist for Russia’s steamrolling natural gas colossus Gazprom (and former chancellor of Germany) has taken time off from his busy disinformation timetable to explain how the European Union’s policy toward Ukraine caused this whole unfortunate Russian-Ukraine-Crimea mess in the first place.
The loggyist explained how when the EU offered Ukraine an association agreement based on what he called “either/or” terms (either the EU or Russia), this confused practically everyone involved because, as we all know, offering people a free choice “over there” can only lead to the wrong choice being made, thus giving Russia the legal right to intervene, more or less.
“In the 1930s, Nazi Germany occupied part of neighbouring Czechoslovakia under the pretext of protecting ethnic Germans.”
Right? In Germany it does. Or it’s supposed to, at least. But it doesn’t work here either, of course.
Take old Nazi films apparently easily available on YouTube, for instance. “Experts” are now shocked to find that it is possible to view them on the Internet, even though such films were placed “on the index” in Germany long ago. Reminds us of the Mein Kampf–Krampf (convulsion), doesn’t it?
Let’s face it, if we really want to forbid something it ought to be stupidity. Before that works, forbidding films is a questionable undertaking at best. I think the Libertarians sum that up nicely: “If there is no good reason to forbid something (a good reason being that it violates the rights of others), it should be allowed.”
Or do these films, as sad and stupid as they are, violate your rights?
Müssen Filme überhaupt verboten werden?
No one here seems particularly interested that a fifty-year-old man shot his wife and daughter in Essen yesterday. His daughter died. His wife might yet. Didn’t anybody ever bother to tell this creep that Germany has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world?
Nor is anyone all that concerned about the fact that the UPS cargo aircraft that crashed in Alabama yesterday was an Airbus A300 freighter (thanks, Murph). I’m not so sure that would be the case if the aircraft had been manufactured by Boeing.
There are just more imporant things out there to report about these days, I guess.
“It would be inappropriate for Airbus to enter into any form of speculation into the cause of the accident.”
PS: Catastrophic climate change 3,200 years ago? But where did they get all their CO2 from?
As in being at the mercy of.
Everbody agrees that big American hi-tech companies are fundamentally evil, right? Well they do here in Germany. In Germany’s state-run media, I should say (they actually call these channels “public-service broadcasters” here because that sounds better).
Anyways, the latest greatest twist to the anti-Google/Facebook/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon agitpop over at the ARD is breaking new ground (or maybe it isn’t) by unabashedly inventing witnesses and working/living conditions in one of Amazon’s German plants in a scarry documentary about that horrible company called Ausgeliefert – and all of this while using the generous funding provided by the compulsory charge every German household has to pay to support objective “public-service broadcasters” like these, of course.
Germans have to pay this charge now whether they even own a television or not, by the way. Hmmm. The ARD called their documentary Ausgeliefert (as in being at the mercy of Amazon), and that’s something every German knows about personally already. Being at the mercy of the ARD like they are, I mean.
Dort, gezeigt wurde das in einer angeblichen E-Mail, würden Menschen “abgefüttert wie die Schweine”, hieß es. Eine Behauptung, der CoCo von Anfang an widersprochen hat und nun vor Gericht zunächst Recht bekam. Der besagte Speiseraum existiere gar nicht, so das Unternehmen: “Das ist schlicht eine Erfindung der ARD-Journalisten, gegen die wir auch juristisch vorgehen.”
Der HR hat bereits vor der Gerichtsentscheidung bestätigt und eingestanden, dass der strittige Screenshot der E-Mail “fingiert” gewesen sei. Zudem musste der Hessische Rundfunk über seine Rechtsabteilung zugeben, dass auch eine im Film porträtierte polnische Leiharbeiterin namens Agnieszka Lewandowska “niemals als Leiharbeiterin bei Amazon beschäftigt war.”
Bam, bam, bam! The Spiegel just had to knock off three of these puppies in a row, that’s how excited they must have been about the tenth anniversary of the US-lead invasion of Iraq.
I didn’t actually read these, of course. Why should I? I already knew what was in them.
10 Lessons from America’s ‘Dumb War’
This article reminds us once again how invading Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a really dumb thing to do and how smart and farsighted and enlightened Germans were for having said no before anyone ever even had the chance to ask them.
Iraq War Seen as ‘Strategic Failure by Many’
This explains why the invasion made everything so awful “down there” and how it has turned that entire region of the world into the terrible, dreadful and hopeless place it is today.
This is all about how much nicer it was living in Iraq before that dumb old strategic failure of an invasion took place.
Where bombs once fell, residents now buy groceries. Where militias patrolled, campaign posters now hang. Yet peace is still a long way off.
But you are paralyzed. And it’s all the Republicans’ fault, too.
I mean it’s not like it could ever be President Obama HIMSELF who refuses to budge when it comes to matters of the “fiscal cliff” kind. Could it?
What we’ve got here people, the Spiegel tells us, is not just a failure to communicate (and guess who’s Strother Martin here):
We are, in short, witnessing a superpower losing its way in a maze of details, propelled forward by grandstanding politicians (who aren’t the President) hewing slavishly to ideology.
Clearly disappointed in last night’s debate for some inexplicable reason, one leading German mind policeman has hurried to remind his countrymen that the United States is still, after all, a “global power in decline” which now appears to be “stuck in the Bush worldview,” whatever that is.
A buddy of his at the same German news organ also rushed to explain that President Obama, being a man of peace or something, did not want to have to fight and get all rude during the debates like he did but that the “unexpectedly close race” forced him to. I tell ya, life just ain’t fair sometimes.
With his centrist policies, Barack Obama tried to be a president for all Americans. But few in Washington were enthusiastic about his attempts to reach bipartisan compromise.
Observing Hermann 