Back To The Zukunft

Is this for real, folks? Did they just pop through some 70s wormhole to wreak havoc in our own current space time continuum (assuming there is such a thing as a current one)?

RAF

DNA samples tell us that RAF terrorists (?) retro-terrorized us last June while attempting an armed robbery but we didn’t even notice it because, well, like what were they going to be? RAF terrorists or something? Besides, they botched it.

What is this? I mean, their pictures are still in black and white for crying out loud.

One thing is for certain, though: They did not get away in a DeLorean. They were using a Ford Focus. At least the cops know now that they didn’t get very far. That is definitely one “no future” automobile.

The three fled the scene – a supermarket car park in Gross Mackenstedt – in a Ford Focus, having failed to grab the cash that was inside the van. The two security men inside were unhurt.

Pepper Spray’s Scarce These Days

As you all well know, Germans don’t do guns (unlike uncivilized American types). They are a peace-loving, law-abiding Volk.

Pepper Spray

But hot diggity damn do they ever love buying pepper spray! Some would say da liegt der Hase im Pfeffer (the rabbit’s in the pepper) = And that is crux of the matter.

A spate of hundreds of sex assaults allegedly committed mostly by North African men on New Year’s Eve in Cologne has sparked an “explosion in sales” of pepper spray and non-lethal guns, German officials and an industry chief said.

Authorities are investigating more than 670 criminal complaints — almost 350 of them sexual offenses — after hundreds of women were groped and robbed by groups of men outside the main railway station in the western city.

“Die Verkäufe von Pfefferspay sind seit Sommer 2015 angestiegen. Momentan verkaufe ich an einem halben Tag so viele wie sonst in zwei Monaten, 30 bis 50 Stück können da schon mal über den Tresen gehen.”

German Of The Day: Realitätsverweigerung

That means denying reality.

Invasion

It is very popular in Germany at the moment due to the refugee invasion currently taking place, part of the denial process here being that this invasion isn’t even being referred to as one. They call it the refugee question or situation or policy or crisis instead (crisis is clearly leading at the moment).

It has a long tradition. If German reality deniers don’t like the facts, the facts – or at least the ways they view them – just get twisted around (or we are informed by them that “there are no facts at all”). And that’s a fact. Happens all the time. Everything is relative, you see. See moral relativism.

Latest example: The vast majority of perpetrators committing those infamous New Year’s Eve sex attacks were newly-arrived “migrants” from Morocco and Algeria, for instance. Rather than addressing this very real problem, German reality deniers prefer organizing protest rallies against racism instead. Needless to say, these are always well-covered by the media.

This kind of predictable, incoherent reaction makes me feel sometimes like I’m Donald Sutherland’s character in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Have the minds of these people been replaced while they sleep by copies of themselves having some weird, extraterrestrial and, in this case, irrational intelligence? Why are there so many of them acting this way? Is their number increasing? Are the body snatchers going to get me next? I’m going to lay off the sleep for a few months now just to play it safe.

Auch wenn jetzt alle davon reden, man dürfe nichts “unter den Teppich kehren”. Der so hochmoralische wie unehrliche Umgang mit der Flüchtlingsfrage droht uns um die Ohren zu fliegen.

The Magical Misery Tour

Maybe Angela Merkel can do it, but this Bavarian politician dude down below can’t. He’s mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore.

Refugees

And do not, he repeats, do not return to sender.

A bus carrying 31 Syrian refugees is on the way from southern Germany to Berlin, as a Bavarian district councilor followed up on his pledge to German Chancellor Angela Merkel he’d send refugees her way if his district could no longer provide accommodation for them.

Landshut district councilor Peter Dreier said Thursday he wants to “send a sign that refugee policy cannot continue like this.”

“If Germany takes in a million refugees, that means my district will take in a share of 1,800. I will take them. But any more [refugees] I’ll send by bus to your office in Berlin.”

No Evidence Here

That the Istanbul attacker targeted Germans, we read in the Deutsche Welle.

Istanbul

Sure all ten killed were German but that was absolutely positively a pure coincidence so don’t even go there thinking ridiculous and panicky thoughts like that, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere tells his countrymen.

This isn’t an attack against Germany (in Turkey). It’s “an attack against humanity,” he says. So Germans shouldn’t feel threatened in that case. Or I guess that’s what he means by that.

“I see no reason to refrain from trips to Turkey.”

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.

Paris

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.

Cell phones

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.)?

Cologne

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.

VW

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 !%#*.

Hamburg

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.