Togetherness

August 28, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hideology, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Irak, ISIS, Kurds, Saddam Hussein, Social Democrats, Socialism, SPD, Stress, Terror, Terrorism, Terrorists, Thomas Oppermann 1 Comment

SPD party whip Thomas Oppermann has found it necessary to interrupt his clearly less than busy summer vacation to explain to Germans who already know that it is the United States ITSELF that is directly responsible for the rise of the ISIS terrorist group and their atrocities in Iraq.

The American intervention and overthrow of Saddam Hussein ten years ago, so the reasoning goes, ruined the “togetherness” that had predominated under the peoples and religions down there up until then. While their fearless leader was still around to take care of things like togetherness and stuff like that, I mean. Whatever.

But not to worry, folks. Six (that’s the number between five and seven) German soldiers have now been sent to the area to calm things down and clean things up.

Personally, I think that this guy needs to extend his vacation another month. He’s obviously stressed out and can’t see very clearly at the moment. Not only do Germans get terribly stressed out just watching TV (while on vacation or otherwise), a new study also indicates that the enormous stress Germans are generally under can lead to vision impairment, too.

Die US-Intervention habe das Miteinander der Völker und Religionen im Irak zerstört.

I Thought He’d Never Leave

August 26, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Helections, Helplessness, History, Home Cooking, Hypocrisy Tags: Airports, BER Berlin Brandenburg, Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Klaus Wowereit, Politicians, Social Democracy, Socialism, SPD Leave a comment

Berlin’s mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD) will finally step down on 11 December, after thirteen years in power. Damn. That’s longer than the Third Reich lasted.

And talk about chuzpe. This guy took it to a whole new level (just like he took building airports to a whole new level). He’s leaving now of his “own free will.” Before his cronies get around to tossing him out first, in other words. Even the Berlin SPD crowd has finally figured out that Berlin doesn’t “work” because of Wowereit, it works despite him.

Hey, lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende. The Party Klaus is finally over.

Sein drittes Problem: die Stadt. „Arm, aber sexy“, wie der Bürgermeister sie eins beschrieb, das reicht in Wahrheit keinem Berliner mehr. Ihre Stadt, so stellten sie fest, funktioniert nicht wegen Wowereit, sondern trotz Wowereit.

SPD Not Sozial Enough

January 31, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Coalition Governments, Communism, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Political Parties, Satire, Socialism, SPD, The Left Party Leave a comment

Boy, that didn’t take long. Did you read that part about “social” yesterday?

Hardly in the new coalition government with the CDU/CSU, leading SPD politicians are now already preparing the way for their move to form a new “100% social” one with the Left Party.

These things take time, though. And it’s all about psychology. And timing. OK, the SPD has never been all that good with the timing part but they’re numero uno when it comes to subtle psychological manipulation. OK, not so subtle psychological manipulation. And publishing a paper calling for a “progressive left-leaning reform alliance with an aim to take over in 2017” with the Left Party is just the right ticket. For the start, I mean. Did I mention the timing part?

Für ein “progressiv-linkes Reformbündnis mit einer Machtperspektive 2017” müsse man “die bestehenden inhaltlichen und strategischen Differenzen zwischen allen Parteien links der Union” beseitigen.

What’s All The Excitement About?

December 4, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, History, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Communism, German, Germans, Germany, Gesine Lötzsch, Ostalgie, Political Parties, Socialism, Stasi, The Berlin Wall, The Cold War, The Left Party Leave a comment

I’ve never made any secret about being an unrepenting communist.

This is another one of those “only in Germany” kind of things. Well, to be fair, it’s more like an “only in Berlin” kind of thing.

It goes like this: The Left Party – a “democratic socialist” party stemming directly from the PDS (some of us referred to it as the Partei der Stasi) which in turn was a creature that had stemmed directly from the black lagoon of GDR SED East German Communism, never stops going through the motions of pretending that it isn’t communist in nature (if not in deed) while everyone here knows of course that it is. It’s just some kind of weird parlour game that Germans play.

The Left Party is the refuge for all of those hundreds of thousands of incorrigible die-hard Ostalgie dinosaurs who cannot except the fact that their worldview is in fact irretrievably gone (I feel for some of them in a way, it is unrealistic of us to think that the older ones can except it). Check out this election map of Berlin from two months ago if you don’t believe me.

Occasionally this game gets a little out of hand, however, and folks have to speak up to have them tone it down again for awhile so the game can continue in a more civilized and orderly fashion. That just happened once again with the Left Party attempt to have their ex-party boss Gesine Lötzsch herself (hardliner is the nice word for her) placed at the head of the Bundestag‘s Budget Committee.

Now everyone is suddenly surprized and concerned, it seems – to include the “regular” green kind of left-wing dream-world crowd, albeit from the West – that she is not prepared “to distance herself” from her communist past. This is unfair irgendwie (somehow). I understand completely why she has no business being there in the Bundestag and all. But how can you be expected to distance yourself from a past that is still your present?

Abgeordnete von Union und Grünen wollen die Linke Gesine Lötzsch als Vorsitzende des Haushaltsausschusses los werden. Der Grund dafür ist ihr unkritischer Umgang mit der DDR-Vergangenheit.

With A Little Help From My Friends

October 13, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, History, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Bribery, Cold War, Communism, Espionage, GDR, German, Germans, Germany, Political Parties, Socialism, SPD, Stasi, Willy Brandt Leave a comment

To keep Willy Brandt as Chancellor, the GDR was prepared to bribe members of German Parliament. Brandt’s intimate friend Egon Bahr (both SPD) negotiated with a GDR mediator in 1972 about payoffs for CDU and CSU parliamentarians. This has emerged in Stasi documents available to Der Spiegel. Brandt should thereby be kept in office. Bahr was State Secretary of the Chancellery at that time.

And this is completely unrelated, of course, but for you history buffs out there: There was a very controversial Misstrauensvotum (vote of no confidence) in German Parliament back in 1972 which Willy Brandt won – with two decisive votes mysteriously missing for the conservative opposition that had proposed it.

“Das muss absolut verschwiegen bleiben.”

At Least It Wasn’t The NSA

October 4, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Coalition Governments, Communism, DDR, Elections, Espionage, GDR, Gregor Gysi, Humor, Ruth Kampa, Satire, Socialism, Stasi, The Left Party Leave a comment

The Unification Day celebrations are now officially over. Red-Red-Green coalition talks anyone?

Well what do you know? It turns out that the chief executive secretary of the Left Party in the Bundestag was a “top agent” of the Stasi. Sachen gibt’s die gibt’s gar nicht (what will they think up next?).

Left Party boss Gregor Gysi is absolutely shocked, of course, and just cannot understand how a person like that could infiltrate a political party like his.

But at least Left Party members are able to take solace in the fact that said agent was clearly not an insidious agent of North American imperialism (excluding Canada) and a rotten capitalistic scumbag opertive working for that reactionary bourgeois NSA spy system so in the news and up in our faces these days but rather an easy-going and progressive comrade type who was not at all forced to work for a quaint totalitarian state once located in the immediate vicinity but then inexplicably disappeared and was only trying to make the world a more, you know, social place to live

Schwerer Schlag für die Linke: Die Geschäftsführerin der Fraktion im Bundestag, Ruth Kampa, war offenbar eine Top-Agentin der Stasi. Fraktionschef Gysi will davon nichts gewusst haben.

He’s Back

June 28, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Angela Merkel, Edward Snowden, FDJ, Günter Grass, GDR, Peer Steinbrück, Social Democrats, Socialism, SPD Leave a comment

I’m really starting to like this guy. Günter Grass has now become so predictably “bad” that he’s good.

This week provided yet more proof that the 85-year-old has jumped the shark. In a Wednesday appearance with this year’s SPD candidate for chancellor, Peer Steinbrück, Grass took it upon himself to blast Chancellor Angela Merkel and, in a verbal assault not without irony, to criticize her past as a member of the East German youth organization FDJ, the Communist Party’s version of the Boy and Girl Scouts.

In condemning Merkel for “tarnishing our relations with our neighbors in an extremely short amount of time” by virtue of the course she has pursued in the euro crisis, Grass said that her approach is a product of her political upbringing. “During her time in the FDJ, she learned conformity and opportunism. Under (former Chancellor Helmut) Kohl, she learned how to wield power.”

“Günter Grass, of all people, a man who kept his own membership in the SS silent for decades, is now criticizing Angela Merkel’s past in East Germany? That is nothing but an embarrassment.”

PS: Speaking of German heros, Edward Snowden is becoming more heroic here in Germany with every passing day.

„Das ist schon heldenhaft, sich gegen solche Organisationen aufzulehnen.”

Tugendterror

June 9, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Big Brother, Fast Food, Free Choice, German, Germans, Germany, Greens, Living, Paternalism, Political correctness, Political Parties, Socialism, SPD, Taxation, Tutelage Leave a comment

Or “virtue/politically correct terror,” if you prefer. Even some Germans now (in this case Thea Dorn for Die Zeit – “Deutsche Sitten” – no link yet) have come to realize that those who might still prefer to have the right to choose for themselves are losing Lebensraum (their habitat) fast.

A German Opera house decides to cancel a production from their repertoire because several spectators needed medical attention (they were traumatized) after the premiere. A leading SPD politician openly discusses the possibility of limiting the speed limit to 120 kmh on German autobahns. The Greens specify in their party program to do away with the reduced value added tax rate currently granted for fast-food and to forbid the use of wild animals in circuses.

The German (or European) citizen who still expects to be able to decide for him- or herself on matters of this nature (whether to attend the opera performance or not, drive the speed he/she wishes on certain stretches of the autobahn, eat fast-food, etc.) is frowned upon ever more these days because, well, there are others out/up there more enlightened than him/her to make these decisions for them. This is the essence of socialist and/or Green thinking. This makes everything safe. And predictable. And correct sowieso (at the very least).

Autonomy means being able to assess what I can expect of myself and of my environment to put up with. Living means not letting myself be knocked down by injuries or setbacks. But how can I learn either of these things if our society becomes an omnipresent governess keenly taking care that her wards never get carried away?

How indeed. They don’t want you to get carried away. Or get away at all, for that matter, ever. That’s the point. Just curb your enthusiasm already and keep on voting for more tutelage.

Man kann sein Leben zu Tode verschwenden, andere zu Tode schinden. Wir sind dabei, uns zu Tode zu schonen.

150 Years Old And They Still Haven’t Figured It Out

May 23, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, History, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Anniversaries, Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Political Parties, Satire, Social Democracy, Socialism, SPD 5 Comments

Socialism, of course, has never worked. Not once. Not in any form.

And German social democracy (like social democracy and their even cheaper imitations everywhere else around the world), although doing its best not to ever actually use the word socialism itself, is of course nothing other than the democratic attempt to reach that very goal. Which has never worked (once “reached”), like I said. But still.

So today the German SPD gets to celebrate its bittersweet 150th birthday — trailing badly in polls ahead of September elections and hearing praise for its efforts to reform Europe’s biggest economy from French President Francois Hollande, a recent left-wing winner who has also lost his luster.

Hey, whatever. More power to them and Happy Birthday and all that because, well, I kind of admire them in a way. But only kind of. They’re like a bunch of nutty professors who simply refuse to believe that their never-ending pursuit of the perpetual motion machine is maybe sort of not such a great idea – and a big waste of time after all. You know, searching for a machine that produces “motion that continues indefinitely without any external source of energy; impossible in practice because of friction?”

There’s always friction out there, you see. It’s called reality. Or self-interest, if you prefer. Or the desire of individuals to live their lives without interference from others who aren’t interested or able to live their own?

Or maybe just money, in the end. Like Margaret Thatcher once said: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Strange, isn’t it? But that’s the SPD’s problem, too. Happy Birthday anyway! Now just shut up and cut the cake already.

“No other party has been able to last so long, because its core demands have constantly remained relevant in new ways: freedom, social justice and political participation.”

Nothing New And Nothing Improved

September 26, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Banking, Banks, Berlin, Debt Crisis, Elections, Euro Crisis, Financial crisis, German, Germans, Germany, Political Parties, Regulation, Socialism, SPD, Steinbrück, The Three Stooges Leave a comment

That tired old SPD.

With three tired old SPD guys trying to decide which one of them will have to be the one tired old SPD guy who will have to be the contender in next year’s election against the ridiculously popular Angela Merkel.

So like one of them, former Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück, threw his hat into the ring yesterday, sort of.

His angle? Eat the banks. Split their investment and retail units and have them create their own rescue fund and make them be good and nice again like they used to be in the past (I guess) als die Welt noch in Ordnung war (when the world was still in order).

Been there, done that. Yawn already. Bring out the next stooge and let’s get him over with, too.

“Banks are service providers and not betting shops.”

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Tag Archives: Socialism