Limp, limper, am limpsten
Or lame, if you prefer. What some are praising as an impressive and welcomed response by Germany, others are clearly less than impressed. Germany will be sending litterally, uh, hundreds of new troops to the northern reaches of Afghanistan in the coming months while US forces in that country will be beefed up another 17,000.
Wasn’t everything supposed to be better after Obama? “The message (from Washington) is that it is a new administration and is prepared to make additional commitments to Afghanistan. But there clearly will be expectations that the allies must do more as well,” US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters the other day. He was basically asking for a few of NATO’s so-called Rapid Response Force (NRF) troops, which have never been used, of course.
And this is Germany’s response to the new message coming out of Washington? Like other European countries who have announced to send additional troops to Afghanistan, Germany will send hundreds, not thousands. And none of them are destined for combat with the Taliban, either.
And to top it off, Germany insists that the NRF should not be used for Afghan duty at all. “The NRF should not be used as a reserve,” German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said. “The NRF has fundamentally different tasks.” Yeah, like being kept on reserve in Europe, I guess, forever.
“US officials have long been frustrated by European reluctance to make new long-term troop commitments to the Afghan mission and Gates said it was unlikely that large increases would be forthcoming anytime soon.“
Low point, high point, what’s the point?
Germany’s Ifo-Barometer is pointing south bigtime. After asking 1035 experts about the world’s economic climate (not that other one), they dropped its rating (a credit rating, so-to-speak) from 67 to 45 index points, the lowest its been in, well, quite a long time.
At the same time, however, German investor confidence has just jumped to its highest level since 2007, this according to a place called the Zew Institute. “By the middle of 2009, the economy is likely to improve again. A sign of hope – no more, no less,” one analyst said.
High, low, more, less, Hauptsache (the main thing) is that everybody stays on the same sheet of music, right?
“Still, the gathering clouds have a silver lining.”
Old Europe reaching out for New Iraq’s even newer money
It’s simply breathtaking how suddenly how interesting Iraq has become for Old Europe nations like France and Germany. No sooner does President Obama take office than “stablisation” starts stabilizing the hell out of everything down there.
Nicolas Sarkozy zipped by for a visit to Baghdad last week. Now Frank-Walter Steinmeier himself, Germany’s Foreign Minister and losing chancellor candidate in Germany’s upcoming election, pulled on his obligatory bullet-proof vest and did his unannounced visit thing to check out the stabilization process first hand.
And to kickstart that big business networking made-in-Germany thing all over again, of course. The last visit by a German foreign minister here was back in 1987. The Germans made tons of money with Sadam back in those days, you must understand.
“My visit shows that we want to support the new Iraq as it moves towards consolidating democracy,” Steinmeier said. “Germany wants to assist Iraq in reconstruction,” he added. “And in handing out lucrative contracts from a country with some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves,” he didn’t say, but thought.
The Germans will now open up an economic office in Baghdad with a branch in Kurdish Irbil, both places indescribable hell holes of civil war sectarian violience, chaos and death, just a few weeks ago.
“We have seen in the last months important successes in stabilizing the country.”
Star quality
That’s what the Mercedes-Benz star used to have. Well sure, it still does, I suppose. Although with a net loss of 1.93 billion dollars last quarter, it’s suddenly not shining like it used to. That’s 65% less profit for 2008 as a whole and, needless to say, worse than anyone here had forecast.
Consumers all around the world, and not just those normally so reliably wasteful American type ones, just aren’t buying these bug luxurious German cars anymore. But take heart a little. You can still blame Chrysler on this one if you want to, Daimler. This one last time, I mean. Onkel Dr. Zetsche will be pulling out his cost-cutting axe now all the same anyway, though.
„Der Ergebnisrückgang sei vor allem auf Belastungen von 3,228 Milliarden Euro aus der Beteiligung an Chrysler sowie durch das niedrigere Ergebnis von Mercedes-Benz Cars bedingt.“
Virtual warriors now virtually out of control
Where will they strike next? This new German virtual warfare unit is going absolutely hog wild these days. It wasn’t enough that they took down the Interior Minister’s website last week. After that they just had to go and infect the French military’s computer network with that mysterious new “conficker” worm of theirs (well I have to assume that it’s theirs).
And now they’ve obviously lost all sense of proportion. They have begun infectiong hundreds of their own Bundeswehr PCs with the same worm, unable to demonstrate enough patience to wait for some virtual enemy out there to do it for them, like is supposed to happen (you can’t rely on anybody these days).
Word is that certain sections of the Bundeswehr’s IT network have now had to be taken down and isolated from the rest of the systems, to better take evasive action or something. Damn. Can you imagine how dangerous these guys would be if somebody gave them real guns (even if they only had one Barney Fife bullet each)?
“Einzelne betroffene Dienststellen wurden vom Bundeswehrnetzwerk getrennt, um eine weitere Ausbreitung zu verhindern.”
Exotic muss es sein
„American cinema is the big winner at the 59th Berlin Film Festival. Of the nine official Bear awards given, five went to films made across the pond – four of those went to South America, however. This year’s jury in Berlin was again consistent in selecting the strangest film for its audience and followed this principle to its extreme.”
It’s another heart-warming story about a young woman who was born of her mother’s rape in the 1980s, this time in Peru. The same film was made last year (or was it the year before?) in Croatia or Bosnia or somewhere, but I can’t remember if it got first place or not. Why am I the only one who finds this humorous? Oh, the glamour.
„Ein durchschnittlicher Berlinale-Interessierter wird von Kate Winslet im „Vorleser“ gelesen und Heike Makatsch aus „Hilde“ auf dem roten Teppich gesehen haben – aber von den jetzigen Gewinnern haben die Medien vor ihrer Krönung äußerst wenig berichtet.“
Miss H.
It’s good to be king
Berlin’s mayor Klaus Wowereit is becoming more like the Sun King all the time. After successfully campaigning to close the city’s famed Tempelhof Airport on grounds of nonprofitablitly, among other things, he has pushed through a rental contract with the Bread & Butter fashion tradeshow – Bread & Butter will use parts of the airport for two months a year over a period of five years, thus making it very difficult to find other renters – which appears to be anything but profitable itself. The maintenance costs to the city for the keeping the closed Airport “going” are much higher, you see.
But we may never know for sure just how bad a deal it is as the mayor refuses to disclose any details to anyone who asks him, the three opposition parties in the Rotes Rathaus included. I know what you’re thinking, but Rotes Rathaus doesn’t mean red rat house, its Berlin’s city hall and happens to be made out of red brick. Although, these days…
There’s a certain arrogance about Wowereit that obviously never sat well with those who have voted against him, but this growing distance to his Untertanen (subjects) below is slowly beginning to bug his buddies on the left now, too. Not that this matters or anything. But still.
“Sonnenkönig Wowereit schweigt.”
Attack is the best defense
Angriff ist die beste Verteidigung, they say, especially when your position is indefensible. And that definitely goes for Egon Krenz, the GDR’s last boss (or undertaker on duty when it happened), who has now been let out of prison and will soon be publishing his tell-all book about how it really and truly was, “Prison Notes.”
In classic German Opfer (victim) style, Krenz will have written, under the most dreadful conditions in a, gulp, German correctional facility, his shocking (not) revelation (not) from an ex-communist (not) who still wants to play the martyr (yup). And he’ll succeed mit links (win hands down – with the left hand down, I guess).
Prison für Krenz was of course a living hell because they served dinner at three-thirty in the afternoon and he couldn’t identify the salad they served him, the margine was runny and somebody had even vomited in his sink once, he thinks (that was in the article I read, I swear). And worst of all, the guards would regularly take turns looking at him through that peep hole thingy in his cell door. Like how rude is that?
And what had he been sentenced for in the first place? A few measly dozen killings on the Berlin Wall, and he didn’t even pull the trigger (the big guys never do). He got six and a half years and actually had to sit out four (4) of them because he was being persecuted by capitalism or something. But thank goodness an expert evaluated him as having a “favorable social prognosis” (some expert always does) so he’s out now after all.
Yup, it’s autograph time at the editorial department of Neues Deutschland where he’s started his book selling tour. Of course the tour probably ends here, too, but still. His fans are all over him, hundreds showed up. Rumor is that one guy even got off with his prison pillow cases and has already auctioned them off on eBay.
Sure, he’ll probably make a lot of money with this book, but it’s not about money with Krenz, comrades. Or it’s not just about money, I should say. It’s about the snivelling, too. And the denial. And the victimization (his, of course). Lest we ever forget or something.
And besides, everybody loves a good horror story now and then.
“Jeder hat das Recht, sich so an die DDR zu erinnern, wie er sich erinnern will.”
Observing Hermann 