And roads. And they train the police and only do the things that other bad soldiers won’t do because they reek of goodness and niceness.
And of course they also select insurgents to be placed on “kill lists” when nobody else is looking (so the bad soldiers can kill them later). But still.
A so-called “Target Support Cell” was based at the German headquarters of Mazar-e-Sharif. The group’s mission was, according to the report, “to collect information for the nomination of individual targets.”
Mr. Mauch and his team developed a weapon that works using radio-frequency identification – the same technology employed in anti-theft tags on clothes in department stores. To fire its gun, you use an accompanying watch. When that watch is activated with a code and sitting on your wrist – or anywhere less than 25 centimetres away from the gun – the gun will fire. Otherwise, it’s a “just a piece of composite,” says Mr. Mauch, and useless as a weapon…
A former long-time colleague of Mr. Mauch’s in the United States, who asked not to be named, called him a “first-rate” weapons designer but said he didn’t appreciate the American context. “The thing that worries me and millions like me is that the anti-gunners in our [government] … ONLY want this technology so they can restrict the rights of law-abiding gun owners,” the colleague wrote in an e-mail. “Would you want to bet your life on your smart phone or laptop? Me neither.”
“Amazon is being striked – and nobody is noticing it.”
Amazon employees (in Germany) have already been on strike for an entire week. The union Verdi is looking to disrupt the delivery of Christmas packages but our user survey (Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung) indicates that it isn’t having any luck.
This survey indicates that 86% of Amazon packages have come on time – the other mail-order companies only managed 73% of the time.
Von dem Streik bekommen die weitaus meisten Kunden nichts mit. Laut Umfrage ist Amazon sogar jetzt noch pünktlicher als die anderen Versandhändler. 86 Prozent der Amazon-Pakete aus unserer Umfrage sind pünktlich angekommen, von den anderen Versandhändlern waren es nur 73 Prozent.
Jeepers. That didn’t take very long.
This is not just any mall, mind you, but the hubristically named Mall of Berlin—the largest Germany’s capital has ever seen, including not only shops but (as yet unfinished) apartments and a hotel. And guess what? While it’s only been open since the autumn, the whole project is already bombing…
It’s not that Berlin’s government and developers don’t have the guts to take on major projects to transform the city. They just really suck at them.
Everybody who is anybody who is politically correct in Germany is all hot and bothered about the marches being staged by PEGIDA or the “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West” in Dresden these days. They have to be. It’s their job or something.
I say take a chill pill already and don’t take these folks so seriously, you other folks. It’s just diffuse bitching and moaning pur (pure). All this is is the biggest Stammtisch party we’ve seen yet. It’s Oddity 384 all over again (shameless ebook plug), in other words.
Oddity 384. A real German is always being “verarscht” or taken for a ride by somebody “da oben” or up there. All Germans belong to a symbolic “Stammtisch” or regular’s table, whether they actually belong to a real local regular’s table or not. This is the place where the unappreciated man on the street regularly complains about the abuse he is receiving from his employers, the rich or the ruling political caste and how they are all personally out to get him. Strangely, at least with regard to this ruling political caste, these same men on the street regularly reelect said politicians with large majorities or enable them to remain in power by not going to vote at all.
Die „Pegida“-Bewegung habe einen Nerv getroffen. Bisher sei Deutschland nicht für Populismus dieser Art anfällig gewesen.
Why do Germans always have to pick out these fancy-dad-gum-new-fangled German words of the year like Lichtgrenze (light border or boundary) when they’ve already got a perfectly wunderbar selection of traditional German words of the year or at least I think they ought to be for crying out loud?
Weltschmerz (world pain), for instance, has to be one of my all time favorites because, well, it’s just about as moany, whiney, lamenty and Germany as you can possibly get.
Now available in the U. S. of Amerika for a limited time only! I hope.
Disillusioned? Has your initial idealism been ground into cynicism? Dismayed by discovering how things really work? There’s a term for what you’re suffering: Weltschmerz.
I think you may have overshot the mark here, Christian Science Monitor. But nice try.
The reality here is still another one.
Far-right arsonists are believed to have caused fires which damaged three buildings earmarked for asylum seekers near Nuremberg in southern Germany.
“Es spricht einiges dafür, dass es sich um Brandstiftung handelt.”
PS: Oddity 325. Germans really do tend to equate nationality with ethnicity.
No, not the movie. That’s the number (12) of German “troops” currently active in Northern Iraq training Kurdish peshmerga fighters.
Just sending weapons all the time was starting to get a little peinlich (embarrassing) for everybody – even here in Berlin – so this bold military move needed to be undertaken to prove to the rest of the world that, well, I don’t know what this was supposed to prove.
And now get this: Word is out that Angela Merkel’s government may now even want to surge big time and send more than 100 trainers more.
But don’t worry another invasion of Poland or anything just yet: Under German law, any military deployment abroad requires parliamentary approval, but this mission may require more than a simple parliamentary vote. The Defence Ministry fears it may require a change in the Basic Law, Germany’s constitution, Bild reported quoting an unidentified ministry source.
Right. The Germans will change their constitution for this? Hey, it’s better to have a dirty dozen than no dirt at all.
Still bitter about having lost his undercover job as a package deliverer I guess (he wasn’t used to actually having to work for a living) undercover undercover-journalist Günter “Undercover” Wallraff couldn’t help but have yet another fit about Amazon & Co. on German television last night.
Good timing or something. It’s strike season in Germany again (still?), as you know. Merry Christmas, Verdi!
But at least he didn’t just stop with Amazon, for once. Wallraff is also very, very angry at German consumers themselves for not purchasing their products where he wants them to (anywhere else but Amazon). Geez, he’s saying. It’s like if you just let people do whatever they want to do they’ll end up doing whatever it is they want to do. And where would that lead us to? That’s right, to where we are now.
His costumes really do rock, though. The one he was wearing last night (see above) was a little scary, though.
Wallraff kritisierte auch die Verbraucher: „Wir selber zerstören eigentlich gewachsene Struktur und wundern uns, irgendwann, dass das Leben so kalt und unpersönlich und trostlos geworden ist und Innenstädte veröden.“
When Red Friday comes, I’m gonna dig myself a hole…
Germany’s Left Party, descended from East Germany’s Communist SED in an unbroken line, now heads a “red-red-green” coalition government in Thuringia with boss Bodo Ramelow as the new state prime minister.
This truly is historic. No, not so much because the good folks at the Linke have gotten this far (Thuringia is about as East in East Germany as East in Germany can get). It’s historic because the good folks at the SPD (currently partners in the federal government‘s grand coalition) have proven that their promises to never-ever-ever-never work together with the Linke are now history.
If they could help the Left Party enough, the SPD wouldn’t hesitate to form a coalition at the national level with these people and now everybody in Germany knows it – who didn’t know it already, I mean.
Good News: Communists Are Back in Germany
Observing Hermann 