Berlin trauert um seinen früheren Mitbewohner David Bowie: Die Jahre 1976 bis 1978 verbrachte der am Sonntag überraschend verstorbene Brite in West-Berlin. Es wurde für ihn zum Zufluchtsort.
Category Archives: Home Cooking
The Recklinghausen Connection
No, not staring Gene Hackman. This thriller stars an asylum-seeker French police killed as he tried to storm a Paris police station last week.
This guy was registered at a German asylum center in the city of Recklinghausen, had a phone with a German SIM card and carried a paper on him in which he pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State. He had also been registered under four different names in Germany.
I don’t think that’s fair. That a poor refugee gets welcomed to Germany four times like that, I mean. Then there are fewer welcomes left to go around for the next wave of folks that comes in. And the next, and the next…
Der Mann posierte in seiner nordrhein-westfälischen Flüchtlingsunterkunft mit einer IS-Fahne. Die Landesbehörden stuften ihn demnach als Verdachtsfall ein, doch im Dezember 2015 verschwand er spurlos aus Recklinghausen.
PS: There’s this German turn of speech I really like: Ich glaub ich bin im schlechten Film. That means I think I’m in a bad movie. I’ve been hearing it more and more these days, too, for some reason.
New Year’s Eve Offenders Apparently Sold Stolen Cell Phones To Refugees
Spiegel Online reports that investigators in Cologne have gotten a fix on several of the cell phones stolen by the perpetrators of the sexual assault and robery attacks committed against hundreds of women on New Year’s Eve.
The puzzling thing here, said investigators say, is that these phones have all been traced to refugee centers or the immediate vicinities thereof.
It is unclear for the moment just how the offenders were able to sell the cell phones to these unsuspecting refugees so quickly and why they were so unfairly singled out as a target group but a task force led by Benedict Cumberbatch has just been airlifted in to clear up this inexplicable mystery in what we hope will be no time. Or at least pronto.
Inzwischen konnten einige in der Silvesternacht gestohlene Handys geortet werden. In manchen Fällen führte deren Spur in Flüchtlingsheime oder deren unmittelbares Umfeld.
German Of The Day: Kultureller Austausch
That means cultural exchange. You know, like the one that took place in Cologne on New Year’s Eve (not to mention in Hamburg, Stuttgart, Bielefeld, etc.)?
Here are a few examples of the mindset of some of the young men who participated in the festivities that night (in a report filed by the Cologne police):
After being confronted by the cops, one guy said “I’m a Syrian. You have to be friendly to me! Frau Merkel invited me.”
Another guy, after ripping up his residence permit in front of another cop, said “You can’t do anything about it. I’ll just get a new one tomorrow.”
Police trying to help some of the victims were held back by some of these men, others refused to leave the area after the police ordered them to do so, witnesses were threatened if they dared to identify any of them doing the harassment… You know, stuff like that. Nothing for anybody to get all hot and bothered about.
Der Verfasser des Berichts zieht ein düsteres Fazit: Den Maßnahmen der Beamten sei mit einer Respektlosigkeit gegegnet worden, “wie ich sie in 29 Dienstjahren noch nicht erlebt habe.”
If The Lawsuit Fits, Wear it
I’ve got your unresolved emissions issues for you right here, pal.
But what’s $48 billion to Volkswagen? Wait a minute. Actually, wow. That’s quite a bit.
Remember when Germans used to be greener than green?
Although such U.S. lawsuits are typically settled at a fraction of the theoretical maximum penalty, analysts said the size of the claim meant Volkswagen (VW) could face a larger bill than previously anticipated.
If It Looks Like Dog !%#*, And Smells Like Dog !%#*, Then…
It’s still not allowed to be called dog !%#*.
Move along folks, move along. Nothing to see here. And this has absolutely positively nothing at all to do with Germany’s WAY out of control open-arms refugee policy. So don’t even bring that up.
German officials sought to reassure the public on Tuesday after scores of women reported being sexually assaulted and robbed by what witnesses described as large groups of Middle Eastern-looking men during the New Year celebrations.
While security officials said it was unclear whether the perpetrators were recently arrived migrants, the assault reports are feeding into a simmering debate about the impact of the more-than 1 million refugees who arrived in the country last year, mainly from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa.
Germans Puzzled By Scandinavia’s Innovative New “Identity Checks”
After Sweden moved to introduce so-called “identity checks” for all passengers arriving from Denmark, Denmark, too, has now imposed controls on its southern border with Germany in an attempt to stem the flow of migrants advancing unremittingly from the south.
“What do you mean?” asked one baffled and highly underemployed German border authority when told of this. “They like actually demand to see a passport or an ID from every person who wants to enter their country and can even refuse them entry if like, say, they don’t have one? I don’t get it. What would be the point of that?”
“A step in the right direction. Schengen has collapsed. The illusion of external borders has burst. Why does it take such a long time to recognise this?”
German Of The Day: Wutbürger
That means outraged citizens. And although they’ve always been around (Germans are always empört/outraged about something), Angela Merkel’s ongoing open-arms refugee policy seems to be generating more and more of them all the time.
And whoopee! 2016 just happens to be a big regional election year. Unless things start to change real fast (ha, ha, ha), I wonder who’s going to be getting all these votes? Not.
Originally founded as a eurosceptic movement a few years ago, the party Alternative for Germany (AfD) came close to its demise – until it split in two. Now, it has experienced a surge in public opinion. Euroscepticism is barely mentioned any more; the new party is acting as an anti-refugee party. If elections were to take place today, the AfD would probably enter parliament with a double-digit election result.
No “High Abstract Threat” Here
These puppies will blow your fingers clean off.
You folks have a Happy New Year anyway!
In der Hauptstadt werden mehrere Hunderttausend Menschen auf einer rund zwei Kilometer langen Feiermeile zwischen Brandenburger Tor und Siegessäule erwartet. Hinweise auf konkrete Anschlagsplanungen in Berlin gebe es nicht, betonte ein Polizeisprecher. Es herrsche aber eine hohe abstrakte Gefährdung.
Lyrics Aren’t Everything
Especially when you don’t have any.
A wordless song released by the anti-Islam group PEGIDA has knocked Adele off the top off the top of Amazon’s German downloads chart.
The song, Gemeinsam sind wir stark! or Together We Are Strong!, is being sold to raise funds for the protest movement, short for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident.
“Unfortunately, the product does not work,” Party-Idiot Patriot wrote. “I have repeatedly listened to the song with friends, but we are neither stronger nor more German.”
Observing Hermann 