Then NSA spying on Germany most certainly is.
The German government faced an angry reaction from Turkey and accusations of hypocrisy from its own opposition on Monday after media reports that its intelligence agency spied on its NATO ally.
“Dass ein geheimer Nachrichtendienst dort Erkenntnisse sammelt, kann man ihm nicht vorwerfen. Das ist seine Aufgabe.”
Somebody said that once, not all to0 long ago, after some NSA Aufregung (excitement) about something somewhere. I forget where. But I couldn’t agree more. So, uh, where’s the outrage now?
Now that Germany’s intelligence agency BND has revealed that NATO ally Turkey is one of five countries it is spying on, I mean.
Outrage won’t be necessary this time, I guess. It appears that Germany is finally coming clean and ready to admit to the world that Turkey has officially reached non-friend status so spying in this case is allowed.
Hey, what goes around comes around.
The news reports (of NSA spying in Germany) outraged Germans, leading to favorable attitudes about the United States falling to their lowest levels in years and creating a public and private sense of mistrust. Merkel has repeatedly called the U.S. spy program a breach of trust and noted that “friends don’t spy on friends.”
According to a report today in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German intelligence service BND listened in on at least one telephone call involving former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while she was still in office.
Not only was the eavesdropping “purely accidental,” an unidentified source told the newspaper, but the conversation was also “one of the stupidest, most inane and brain-dead phone conversations I as a spy have ever had to endure. It got so bad I had to start banging my head against the wall and broke off the connection after three minutes. Laber, laber, laber! It’s like her brain is in neutral or something. And they can’t fire me for this either now because I quit!”
Deutsche Regierungskreise bestreiten allerdings, dass es eine systematische Spionage des BND gegen die USA gibt. Vielmehr sei das Gespräch, das Clinton in ihrer Amtszeit aus einer US-Regierungsmaschine heraus geführt habe, nur zufällig aufgefangen worden.
And fall and fall and fall it has. It’s been falling for at least twenty years now.
They ought to just finally get it over with and pull the plug for good. Like they already have on that other German-American whatever-it-used-to-be.
…At the time, West Germany and the United States were facing the first major postwar crisis in their relations. Many West Germans were protesting against the US war in Vietnam while many others, around 500,000 annually at the time, attended the annual fair, which was then held near the barracks in Berlin’s Dahlem district. They came because they liked the United States or American music — or maybe even its beer.
That’s no way to talk!
Just ask this lady here. Her name is Gitta Connemann and she is a member of German parliament (CDU) who just got uninvited as the main speaker at an anti-war event sponsored by the big German DGB union for making Israel-friendly comments. And they were shocking as hell, too.
This broad actually had the nerve to say “Every death is one too many but Israel has been shot at since 2006 and has the right to protect itself.”
What on earth was she thinking? Political sensitivity is clearly not her cup of chai.
“Jeder Tote ist zu viel. Aber seit 2006 wird Israel beschossen und hat ein Recht auf Selbstverteidigung.”
German television style. I like this host.
He goes for the hottest hot sauce (minute 2:30) because he’s that cool and then has to have somebody else take over for him so they can drive him to the hospital.
Nachdem er sich an einem Stück Currywurst mit einer extrem scharfen Würzsauce versucht hatte, musste er die Moderation abbrechen. “Bild.de” berichtet, dass der 38-Jährige anschließend hinter der Bühne mit Kreislaufversagen zusammengebrochen sei und in ein Krankenhaus gebracht werden musste.
Only now they’re calling it the Love Pot Parade. OK, the Hanfparade.
Some 6000 activists have gotten together in the Hauptstadt again to demand the legalization of cannabis. It’s the same procedure (and same 6000 participants?) as last year. Countless thousands more really wanted to take pot, I mean part, this year but fell asleep on the couch again next to several empty bags of those cool Dorrito-like chips they sell over at Reichelt.
“Das sind weniger, als wir uns erhofft habe”», sagte Steffen Geyer, Sprecher der Parade. Es seien wieder nur die Leute da gewesen, “die immer kommen”. Die jährliche Hanfparade gibt es seit 1997.
ENGLAND DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY!
“Great Britain declared war on Germany at 11 o’clock last night.”
According to secret Spiegel bugging sources, the Israeli intelligence service has bugged telephone conversations made by American Secretary of State John Kerry while he was busy bugging anyone he could find in the Middle East and elsewhere who might possibly be interested in negotiating a peaceful solution to the current Gaza crisis.
Spiegel sources refused to go into detail here but did confirm that all of these telephone calls were very short ones.
Der israelische Geheimdienst hat offenbar Telefonate von US-Außenminister Kerry abgehört. Nach SPIEGEL-Informationen nutzte die Regierung in Jerusalem die so gewonnenen Erkenntnisse bei Verhandlungen zum Nahost-Konflikt.
It goes like this: An EU regulation forces Osram and the rest of the industry to shift from traditional light bulbs to light-emitting diodes. They are smaller, more energy-efficient, have longer lifespans than traditional bulbs (except that they don’t really), are very much more expensive and must therefore be forced down the consumer’s throat and, well, everybody here hates the damned things and wants their old light bulbs back.
The benevolent part? Now 8,000 Osram workers lose their jobs because of this.
„Durch die EU-Verordnung ist das traditionelle Glühbirnen-Massengeschäft von Osram weggebrochen. Dort war Osram führend.“
