One in seven Germans shuns the Internet completely.
Those are actual Germans up there shunning the actual Internet with an actual laptop, I think.
Totally unrelated PS: Profiteering: Crisis Has Saved Germany 40 Billion Euros
Category Archives: Hurt Feelings
We Don’t Trust That There NSA One Little Bit
But we’ll, uh, trust them this one time here, maybe.
Al Qaeda is plotting attacks on Europe’s high-speed rail network, German newspaper Bild reported on Monday, citing a leaked National Security Agency (NSA) report.
The NSA report is based on an intercepted conference call between top Al-Qaeda operatives, in which the terrorist attacks were reportedly a “central topic”.
Berlin has responded to the threat with discreet measures such as deploying plain-clothed police officers at key stations and on main routes, Bild reported.
Der Hinweis stamme vom US-Geheimdienst NSA.
German Of The Day: Bausünde
Bausünden are building sins. Or building blunders? Or architectural abberations? Whatever. Berlin knows how. It’s just what they do here.
Photographer Turit Fröbe has now published an illustrated book about some of the most awful abberations, which must have been pretty difficult to compile. I mean, there is just too much to chose from here.
I love them all, by the way. The more sinful the better.
“Gute Bausünden zu finden, ist viel schwerer, als man denkt.”
German Job Wonder So Wunderbar That Millions Of Germans Have Two
Or need to have two, I should say.
Nearly 3 million Germans or over 9 percent of those working full-time are now working part-time as well.
Nope, it’s not because Germans are particularly fleißig (hardworking). This German job wonder that everybody envies so much over here, like everything else in life, comes with a price. The income from many of these wunderjobs is simply no longer enough to get by on. Kein Auskommen mit dem Einkommen (can’t make out with what comes in), or something like that.
Ist es pure Not oder der Wunsch, sich mehr leisten zu können?
Speaking Of Predictability
Zum Sommer gehört auch Günter Grass (Günter Grass is also a part of sommer – predictable as he is, just like those other Sommerloch monsters mentioned below).
This time the grand old man of letters suddenly felt the urgent need to attack former SPD boss (and now over-the-hill ex-Left Party boss) Oskar Lafontaine as being a sleazy traitor to the grand old SPD’s grand old cause, whatever the grand old hell that was.
I can only assume that this little outburst must have something to do with the upcoming federal elections. The SPD has ruled out ever forming a coalition government with the Left Party (one of the very few things they have managed to do right), but this is mostly because the Left Party, like the SPD itself, is already extinct (nobody has broken the part about the SPD being extinct to the SPD yet, however). Grass, of course, is about as SPD and as extinct as you can get.
And it doesn’t really matter that Grass is actually right about Lafontaine here. All it points out to me is just how much he and Lafontaine have in common. Nobody out there takes them seriously anymore.
Günter Grass gehört zum Sommer wie das Reptil zum Badesee.
Gulf States
Beautiful German weapon sales of the week – past six months, I mean.
Because somebody has to admire them.
German Outrage Industry At Full Production
When it comes to Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service having forwarded massive amounts of data to the NSA – legally, I mean.
Take the good old SPD, for instance. They’re hollering the loudest at the moment. And this despite the fact that this particularly evil cooperation with US-Amerika is nothing new at all to them. So not new, in fact (an agreement made in the year 2002), that the SPD’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier was the guy wearing the responsibility hat when this agreement was made – the current governing coalition was not even in power.
But hey, you know how it is when a political party is out of power (in more ways than one) and crawling and scratching to get back into the game. In an outrage and all. In a panic, I mean.
“In my view, the opposition has only itself to blame. Pretending to be the firefighter just to be caught as the arsonist – you can’t play both of these roles with any credibility.”
Meat Me At The Barbeque
How smart was the Green Party’s election pledge to introduce a weekly vegetarian day? Oh, I dunno. But more than 85 percent of Germans eat meat daily or almost daily. So you do the math.
Massive web surveillance by the US? German voters seem to have lost interest. The euro crisis? Boring. Comprehensive minimum wage? Zzzzzz. It has been a somnolent election season thus far. At least until this week. Suddenly, the German electorate is up in arms, furious with a proposal made by the Green Party which, many fear, could violate one of their most cherished rights: that of eating sausage whenever they want.
Absolutely Shocking Or Something
Who would have thought this possible? The German Bundesnachrichtendienst of all intelligence agencies, run by Germans of all people, in Germany of all places, has been systematically providing that evil National Security Agency of US-Amerika with vast amounts of German telecommunications information (meta records).
And the BND has been working closely with the NSA like this for over 50 years now, too. I know that there’s a news item here somewhere, I just haven’t figured out where it is yet.
“The BND has been working with the NSA for over 50 years, especially when it comes to the reconnoitering of situations in crisis areas in order to protect German soldiers stationed there and to protect and rescue abducted German citizens.”
“Der BND arbeitet über 50 Jahren mit der NSA zusammen, insbesondere bei der Aufklärung der Lage in Krisengebieten, zum Schutz der dort stationierten deutschen Soldatinnen und Soldaten und zum Schutz und zur Rettung entführter deutscher Staatsangehöriger.”
A Pissed Off Germany Will Now Close This Here Listening Station
Among others. So there, Amerika.
Who cares that these things have either already been closed down for years or no longer serve any practical purpose anymore? The German government is now going to demonstratively cancel a Cold War-era surveillance pact with the United States and Britain following concerns about their alleged electronic eavesdropping in Germany.
And who cares that this is clearly a symbolic gesture and therefore has no practical consequences for intelligence cooperation between these countries? It’s election time.
“This is a necessary and proper consequence of the recent debate about protecting personal privacy.”
The details of Anglo-American snooping on German citizens remain unclear and confusing, but many Germans have already bought the “utterly senseless narrative”, as Hans-Peter Friedrich, Germany’s interior minister, lamented this week, that “thousands of Americans are sitting down reading our e-mails and listening to our phone calls”.
Observing Hermann 