Tag Archives: Satire

Dean vs. Reagan?

December 22, 2010 By in History, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

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!

December 21, 2010 By in Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

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?

December 21, 2010 By in Heconomy, History, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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”

December 20, 2010 By in Habitudes, High Art Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

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

December 19, 2010 By in Habitudes, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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

December 17, 2010 By in Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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.

Green Voters Damaging Environment Again

December 16, 2010 By in Hard Facts, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

And the latest survey (Umweltbewusstsein in Deutschland 2010) says:

62 percent of Germans asked want more goverment involvement with regards to environmental protection.
80 percent want more legislation promoting energy efficient homes and electrical appliances.
90 percent believe that industry needs to become more environmentally friendly.


 
Strangely, however, the study also found out that the demographic group most concerned about environmental protection (Green voters) was also the demographic group leaving the biggest so-called carbon footprint.

It appears that environmentally engaged Greenists often enjoy a relatively high income and consume accordingly, often taking “climate-damaging” vacation flights, for instance.

Poorer regular folk types, on the other hand (these are the folks who start working with fourteen or sixteen to help finance the Green voters’ often quite lengthly college educations in German egalitarian society), can’t afford to go on such vacations quite as often, drive less, stay at home more and even purchase more regional products, thus making their ecological footprints smaller.

A spokesman for the survey regrets this discrepancy between „Bewusstsein und Sein” (consciousness and action or practice) but appears to be a realist (or Realo, as they sometimes say here) and is placing his hopes and bets on the next generation of digital natives to do more for the environment by implementing more of something he calls technologische Innovationen (technical innovation).

“Dabei seien es jedoch gerade die Bevölkerungsschichten mit dem größten Umweltbewusstsein, die den größten ökologischen Fußabdruck hinterließen.”

You’ll do it my way

December 16, 2010 By in Heconomy, Helplessness Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Or it’s the highway. Does that summit up enough for you, Freunde?

Let us sing.

And now, the end is here
And so I face the final curtain

No, wait. This verse is better.

Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again, too few to mention

No, maybe this one instead.

Yes, there were times, I’m sure you know
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way

“The defiant stand came as Moody’s issued a downgrade warning on Spain owing to “high refinancing needs in 2011″ and the risk of further bank bail-outs.”

Germans Outraged at Glamorous Baroness

December 14, 2010 By in Hate, Hotness, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments

German opposition politicians everywhere are seething at what they see as the latest successful Selbstinszenierung (self-staging) by Germany’s popular blue-blooded defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and his way too good-looking, photogenic and charasmatic well-born wife Stephanie during a visit to German troops in Afghanistan the other day, which, come to think of it, it was.

“Afghanistan is the last country on earth that lends itself to show business and entertainment,” one fuming politician said. “Our troops there have proven that long ago.”

“A shameless act of self-promotion,” another opposing opposition politician said, asking to remain anonymous. “Damn I wish I could pull that off that well too.”

“Some people might find the visit by the baroness, a von Bismarck by birth, to the military camp in her trendy boots and anorak a tad extroverted. But the sympathies conveyed by the minister’s wife, on behalf of millions of German citizens, has a value that transcends any criticism of the show business element of this coup.”