“Spying Among Friends Is Never Acceptable”

Go ask Angela Merkel, she’ll tell you.

Austria

Certain countries are above all that. Being located on the moral high ground like they are, you know.

Vienna has demanded an explanation from Berlin over reports that Germany’s BND agency spied on nearly 2,000 targets in Austria between 1999 and 2006. Austrian media said embassies were among the targets.

Top Austrian officials have called on Germany to clarify reports that its BND spy agency snooped on high-profile targets including embassies, international organizations, Austrian ministers and banks based in the Austrian capital…

Following revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, German Chancellor Angela Merkel slammed the US for its extensive spying on targets in Germany. “Spying among friends is not at all acceptable,” she famously said in the wake of the scandal.

Crisis? What Crisis?

It’s not like the migrant crisis I singlehandedly caused is a crisis or anything. They just call it that.

Ricin

Or that this so-called migrant crisis I unleashed also caused the surge in populism that is currently surging in Germany. Or that any of these so-called migrants are endangering the German public. They’re not. It’s those yuicky terrorists that came into the country illegally with them. When they came into the country illegally, I mean. What, me worry?

Not Angela Merkel. She’s the Blob. Changes form at will. And nobody can lift her up out of that chair. Right?

Not even 100 days after she negotiated her way to a fourth term as German leader, Angela Merkel is mired in a political crisis that underscores Europe’s divisions over immigration amid a surge in populism.

Das in Köln sichergestellte Rizin hätte für Hunderte toxische Dosen gereicht. Verfassungsschutzpräsident Maaßen nimmt an, dass mit dem Gift ein Anschlag geplant war.

That’s Not Fair

Why couldn’t German tanks take part in the competition?

Oh, I forgot. They’re all broken.

The idea of green U.S. Army M1 Abrams tanks with big white stars on their sides, huge American flags flying on top, and art on the hull depicting a turtle wearing a World War II-era tanker uniform, running over a pile of cars sounds like something straight out of a 1980s arcade game. But its actually a real scene from the annual Strong Europe Tank Challenge at the service’s 7th Army Training Command’s Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany.

A Little Bit Of Ricin Isn’t Going To Hurt Anybody

Not after an even smaller bit of ricin already killed everybody off first.

Ricin

The next Syrian refugee (this time a Tunisian Syrian refugee from Tunisia) has been caught misbehaving again. German police are questioning the 29-year-old after having stormed his apartment in Cologne and finding this interesting substance, should these reports be of substance.

Daily newspaper Express and local daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported that police had found ricin, a substance that can be highly toxic in small amounts. Authorities have not confirmed the reports…

Elite SEK police commandos and specialized chemical units from the police and fire departments were at the scene of the 18-story apartment block in Cologne’s northern Chorweiler district late on Tuesday. A mobile laboratory was set up in the entrance area of the apartment to analyze any dangerous substance.

German public broadcaster, WDR, quoted the attorney general as saying that there were indications that the person arrested may have planned an attack with the substances.

EXPRESS und „Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger“ erfuhren aus Ermittlerkreisen, um was für eine Substanz es sich handeln soll, die bei dem SEK-Großeinsatz am Dienstagabend in der Wohnung des Tatverdächtigen aufgefunden wurde: Rizin ist der drittgiftigste Stoff der Welt – 25.000-mal tödlicher als Strychnin.

PS: Just in case you were wondering (see yesterday’s post), North Korea won!

German State TV Has Questions

When it comes to today’s Trump-Kim event. And the answers are already written between the lines – by the fact that these particular questions were even asked in the first place.

Trump

Was the Trump-Kim meeting successful?

Is the closing statement really such a breakthrough?

Who benefits from the agreement?

Why wasn’t denuclearization made contractual?

Are there also losers?

Damn right there are losers. Anybody who voluntarily watches German state TV, for instance.

“Großartig“ und “historisch”. Doch die kamen vor allem vom US-Präsidenten selbst. Ein wichtiges Ziel des Gipfels wurde nicht konkret vereinbart.

German Of The Day: Geschröpft

That means fleeced. Or clobbered, if you prefer.

Trump

As in… We protect Europe (which is good) at great financial loss, and then get unfairly clobbered on trade.

„Deutschland zahlt ein Prozent des Bruttoinlandsproduktes (langsam) in Richtung Nato, während wir vier Prozent von einer weit größeren Bruttoinlandsprodukt zahlen. Glaubt irgendjemand, dass das Sinn macht?“

German Of The Day: Weltfremd

That means “not of this world,” as in alien to it, unrealistic, naively innocent, quixotic.

Weltfremd

And now we’re making progress, folks. How progressive indeed. Now, even the leftest of the leftist left in Germany are announcing that committing to open borders is about as weltfremd as it gets.

The Left party’s Rosa Luxumburg clone herself, Sahra Wagenknecht, fighting to dominate those opponents within the party who are for open borders, has just taken a stance that anybody over at the right populist AfD would openly support: “It’s weltfremd to think that anyone can come to Germany and have a claim to the social benefits here.”

Wagenknecht sagte, es sei „weltfremd“, dass jeder nach Deutschland kommen und Anspruch auf die hier üblichen Sozialleistungen haben könne.

Remember This Guy?

Martin Schmidt? Or was it Meier? Müller? … Schlitz?

Schulz

Anyway, he’s back again or something. For a few seconds. Now that his fifteen minutes are up, I mean.

He and his comrades over at the SPD are mad as hell at US-Amerika‘s new Ambassador, Richard Grenell, because of, well, “perceived breaches of diplomatic etiquette” (how diplomatic).

He said in a recent Breitbart interview, for instance (Breitbart is a German news service, Breitbart meaning “wide beard” in our language), that he wanted to empower conservative forces throughout Europe. I know, right? And then he did this and then he said that and yada, yada, yada and now everyone on the left (and that’s a whole lot over here) is completely outraged because, well, it’s a slow news day/week/month so it’s time to call for somebody to fire his red, white and blue ass. If it wasn’t for outrage they wouldn’t have no rage at all.

“I think there is a groundswell of conservative policies that are taking hold because of the failed policies of the left.”

“Ich hoffe, dass der Kurz-Besuch zu einem Kurz-Aufenthalt von Herrn Grenell in seiner Funktion als Botschafter in Deutschland führt.”

German Of The Day: Vogelschiss

That means bird shit. You know, like “Hitler and the National Socialists are just bird shit in 1,000 years of successful German history” kind of bird shit?

Vogelschiss

Personally, I think that was quite a lot of bird shit, 1,000 years or not, but maybe that’s just me.

The German government condemned on Monday an apparent attempt by the co-leader of the anti-immigrant AfD party to play down the significance of the Nazis in Germany’s history, and it stressed the unique nature of the Holocaust.

On Sunday politicians rebuked Alexander Gauland, one of the leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), after he told a party gathering: “Hitler and the National Socialists are just bird shit in 1,000 years of successful German history.”

“For me, ‘bird shit’ is and remains the lowest piece of filth – animal excrement that I compared National Socialism with.”

Times Change

Not. Not when it comes to government creating problems by having good intentions and then creating even greater problems by trying to solve the self-inflicted problems it just created. On and on this process goes. Politician generation to generation. Just like the families who now live around Berlin’s Sonnenallee in Neukölln (Little Beirut) will experience, being welfare recipients for many generations to come – instead of working  for a living like the Arab refugees who came before them, albeit “in an orderly manner.”

Neukölln

Of the nearly 695,000 migrants who applied for asylum in Germany in 2016, more than 62 percent received refugee status or humanitarian protection, which enabled them to work and receive welfare benefits, according to data from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (the same scandal-ridden authority we’ve been reading about these days). Among applicants from Syria, the figure was higher, at around 97 percent.

In contrast, 10 years earlier less than seven percent of asylum applicants in Germany received refugee status. A 2016 study by Bielefeld University found more than half of established migrants in Germany believe the newcomers should settle for less.

“When I saw what they received, I wished I was a refugee.”