German authorities are wondering how to deal with a pensioner who stored a World War Two tank, anti-aircraft gun and torpedo in his basement?
Very carefully, I would say.
The items were removed from a house in the northern town of Heikendorf in 2015 with the help of the army.
Prosecutors and defence lawyers are now negotiating possible penalties, including a suspended sentence and a fine of up to €500,000 (£427,000).
The defendant, aged 84, must also find new homes for the monumental items.
That means farewell tour. That’s right. Angela Merkel is farewell touring these days.
And she won’t be satisfied until the tour is over and she has left her party, the CDU, in a shambles as she walks out the door and turns off the light. She has spent the last sixteen years taking the wind out of opposition parties’ sails – through compromizing her own party’s principles – and has not only managed to destroy the SPD (Social Democrats), for instance, she has turned her once conservative CDU into the new SPD. Conservative CDU voters are perfectly aware of this, of course, and the polls for the upcoming election are showing it. And that’s one of the reasons why her hand-picked mini-Merkel-man, Armin Laschet, does not exactly inspire confidence with the German electorate. This election might just get ugly, in other words. But Merkel will be fein raus (gone and off the hook). Can’t wait for books to come out. Not.
Merkels Abschied vom Kanzleramt: Was kommt nach der Bundestagswahl? „Werde mit der Zeit schon was anfangen können.“
Cell broadcasts and other mobile phone disaster alerts are dangerous. Whoever does the broadcast has your data. You know, like your telephone number? And they could reach you if they wanted to, which is the point. To save your life, for example. But Germans don’t want that. After they save your life what happens then? What happens to the data? Who regulates it? A complete, unauthorized stranger could save your life next and nobody wants that. No, thanks. Data privacy comes first in this country, pal.
German authorities faced pressure on Tuesday to set aside longstanding privacy concerns and send mobile phone alerts directly to people in potential disaster zones following the devastation wrought by last week’s catastrophic floods.
Warnung per “Cell Broadcast”: Viele Länder setzten auf das System, das per Mobilfunk in Sekunden fast die komplette Bevölkerung erreichen kann. Deutschland aber wählte eine andere Technologie.
After Russia gets its way, of course. And Sleepy Joe will just sleep right through it.
U.S., Germany to announce deal on Nord Stream 2 pipeline in coming days – The United States and Germany are expected to announce in coming days a deal resolving their long-standing dispute over Russia’s $11 billion Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.
President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel failed to settle their differences over the undersea pipeline when they met last week, but agreed Moscow must not be allowed to use energy as a weapon against its neighbors.
Not that anybody has installed it. But still.
After the German Deluge, a Flood of Political Recriminations – The Federal Office for Citizen Protection and Disaster Assistance did issue alerts on its app about coming floods, say officials. But critics say that a very small fraction of the German population has downloaded the app on their smartphones and that a much louder warning should have been sounded to allow local communities to better prepare for the deluge of midweek rain.
“For so many people to die in floods in Europe in 2021 represents a monumental failure of the system.”
That means “riding black.” That is, using public transportation without having a ticket.
Or at least that’s what it used to mean before the Woke Folk took control of Berlin’s public transport operator. There are no racial connotations with this word unless you want there to be so now there are and that’s why its use has been verboten.
Berlin public transport operator BVG will stop using the German term “schwarzfahren” (or “blackriding”) to describe travelling without a valid ticket, it said on Friday.
The decision to discontinue using the expression, which is common in colloquial speech, implements a recommendation from the Berlin Senate’s diversity programme, a spokesperson told broadcaster rbb.
Bombastically bureaucratic and terribly touchy about tanks ever since World War II, German authorities will now be fining Tesla for building them at its new car factory near Berlin.
Its planned new car factory near Berlin, I should say.
The environment ministry for Brandenburg, the state that surrounds Berlin and in which the factory will be located, had found that Tesla had constructed tanks on the territory for which it had no authorisation, wrote Tagesspiegel newspaper, which first reported the fine.
The company was banned from using the tanks it had already built, the newspaper added.
That means political scientist.
Or in this case, Chinese spy.
A retired German political scientist has been charged with spying for China for almost a decade, using the political contacts he developed while working for a think tank, the German federal prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday.
It said the man, identified as Klaus L. according to German reporting custom, had been recruited during a lecture trip to Shanghai in 2010, almost 10 years after joining the think tank, and had regularly passed on information until November 2019, in return for money and trips to China.
That means hope dies last.
Tesla Giga Berlin: Minister still hopeful for 2021 launch despite final approval delay – Tesla Giga Berlin is still waiting for final environmental approval from Brandenburg’s State Office for the Environment (LfU). Despite this, the state’s Minister of Economics, Jörg Steinbach, remains hopeful that Tesla will produce its first vehicle in Giga Berlin by the end of this year.
Bureaucracy is the key. The key to stopping anything from ever getting done. And German bureaucracy is made in Germany, after all. There is a reputation to keep up.
That means plagiarism.
Ask Green candidate Annalena Baerbock. She’ll give you a better definition. After copying it out of somebody elses’s book somewhere, that is. Plagiarism is the practice of using or copying someone else’s idea or work and pretending that you thought of it or created it. A plagiarism is an idea or a piece of writing or music that has been secretly copied from someone else’s work. This is a very popular pastime with German politicians these days. A real craze.
German Greens say plagiarism claims are ‘character assassination’ – Party hires prominent libel lawyer to defend its lead candidate, Annalena Baerbock, against allegations.
