Beautiful German of the week.
Because somebody has to admire them.
Fehlalarm update: And the false alarms of the day so far are… Somebody left his laptop lying around at the airport in Rostock and the cops in Hannover blew up a suspicious looking bag somebody had forgotten at the train station.
http://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/hamburg/article11071200/Verdaechtige-Tuete-gesprengt.html
Just kidding about that being a bomb yesterday, folks. Just testing, I mean.
Wasn’t that hysterical? And here you thought American companies couldn’t export any cool stuff anymore.
And today’s Fehlalarm (false alarm)? A suspicious object that wasn’t a bomb this time either caused an ICE train to be evacuated at Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof (sorry, the linking is acting up a bit at the moment: http://www.stern.de/politik/deutschland/terrorgefahr-in-deutschland-fehlalarm-im-ice-attrappe-in-namibia-1625680.html)
“BKA officials have examined it and the result is that it is a so-called ‘real test suitcase’ from a U.S. company. This company produces alarm and detection systems and these test suitcases are made to test security measures.”
Or as Stern puts it: How Concern Turns to Hysteria.
The Namibian Connection?
“Nothing is clear for now. It has not been determined if the package was bound for Germany, nor even if it contains a functional explosive device. It is also questionable if the package was about to be loaded onboard or not. The proper headline should read ‘suspicious piece of baggage discovered that might have possibly been destined for Germany.'”
“Namibia steht nicht auf der Terrorismus-Landkarte.”
So you know what that means, don’t you? OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!
Funny how things clear up with time, don’t they? Just a few weeks ago warnings from “foreign partners” like this were “alarmist” and “abstract.”
Now security measures are being stepped up in Germany after Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said there were “clear indications” of a terror plot targeting Germany.
I don’t get it. I thought all this talk about international terrorism was nothing but Panikmache (fear mongering) all these years, Germany? Like take a chill pill already.
“Nach dem Hinweis eines ausländischen Partners Deutschlands solle Ende November ein mutmaßliches Anschlagsvorhaben umgesetzt werden.”
No, not in Afghanistan or in Pakistan.
In Gorleben. Unconfirmed reports say that up to 20 innocent (although greenish) German civilians were not killed in a recent non-attack, but were photographed instead, which is pretty much the same thing over here.
It is unclear at this time if the folks over at Google’s Street View have expressed an interest in purchasing the photos or not–pixelated, of course.
Um Straftaten nachträglich aufklären zu können, hat die Polizei erstmals eine unbemmannte Drohne mit Kamera eingesetzt.
At least when it comes to Germany’s interest in benefitting from currency troubles, I mean. Hey Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy… Stay hard-up or shut-up.
”The key principle of German economic policy was to persuade the French and Italians to lower the value of the D-mark so as to make Germany more competitive.”
“The Berlin government’s intransigence over the debt issue, while politically understandable from a German point of view, seemingly pays little heed to the realities of the euro economy, which are heavily tilted towards Germany.”
“In pre-EMU days, if the German economy were growing at an estimated 3.7% as it is this year, the German currency and interest rates would both come under upward pressure – damping exporters’ performance and the growth outlook. Now, however, with all EMU economies shackled together, and devaluation an impossibility for the peripheral countries, the hard-up states have nowhere to hide. Germany continues to profit from excellent export performance — and it can self-righteously point the finger of blame for the euro area’s woes at those debt-ridden peripheral states.”
This is a very complex article, I grant you, a lot like that other one I mentioned recently, but with a little bit of effort I think I can somehow manage to summarize it for you thus (and I quote, more or less):
American society is breaking apart.
Everything is spiraling further and further into the abyss.
The American people are going through a Kafkaesque odyssey, the humiliation of which is hard to comprehend.
Help is not in sight, our government and our society have abandoned us.
Wall Street is preoccupied with chasing new profits again.
That old myth about working your way up, of bootstrap success and its ultimate prize, homeownership, has evaporated.
The middle class, America’s backbone, is crumbling.
The American Dream has turned into a nightmare.
Nothing’s going to happen because the political swing to the right is extremely hurtful and absolutely disastrous to the interest of the weakest.
Becoming unemployed is a devious trap. And on and on and tra, la, la until the amen part.
Like, you had no idea, did you? My fellow Americans, I mean. So there you have it. Yet again. And no, the O Word didn’t appear in this article either.
Is the way we still be.
Bush: “As someone who valued personal diplomacy, I put a high premium on trust. Once that trust was violated, it was hard to have a constructive relationship again.”
Schroeder: “We noticed that the intellectual level of the (US president) was exceedingly limited. As such, it was difficult for us to communicate with him.”
“What is true of Afghanistan is true of Iraq. Nations that sponsor terror must face consequences. If you make it fast and make it decisive, I will be with you.”
Guess who wins (these days, I mean)? Duh. But it’s only a paritial victory, as Germany tries to spin it (they don’t want to gloat all too much publically).
After China and Germany teamed up and publicly slammed the Federal Reserve’s decision to buy $600 billion in Treasury bonds last week, now they’re shoulder to shoulder at the G20 successfully resisting this EVIL infusion of cash (= dollar devaluation) together too. They are doing this because, well, only China is allowed to devaluate its currency, I guess. And a weak dollar also means a strong euro which would hurt German exports and, well, this isn’t allowed to happen either.
Strange bedfellows aren’t they? Sure. What can/will President Obama do about it? Not much, it seems. But at least everybody over there still really, really likes him. And that’s the main thing.
It’s a mystery, isn’t it? How we got here, I mean? Well, no. I guess it isn’t. But why this happened as it did is all too, uh, deep for me. It’s kind of like this current German hole within a hole conundrum going on.
I mean, don’t like two holes make a non-hole?
“Obama muss klein beigeben”
Observing Hermann 