And I bet he’s greener on the other side now, too.
No, but seriously folks… He was very outspoken. And he spoke out a lot. And he was a humble social critic.
Too bad he couldn’t just stick to what he was really good at. Writing The Tin Drum, for instance.
During the rise of Nazi Germany and the Second World War, Grass was in the Jungvolk (Hitler Youth) before, aged 17, being drafted into the Waffen-SS, the elite armed wing of the Nazi Party. He only revealed this fact about himself in 2006.
Demothball: to remove (naval or military equipment) from storage or reserve, usually for active duty; reactivate.
Germany plans to bring 100 mothballed tanks back into service in what is widely seen as a response to rising tensions with Russia over Ukraine.
Die im Zuge der Neuausrichtung der Bundeswehr festgelegte Obergrenze von 225 Kampfpanzern Leopard 2 soll auf 320 erhöht werden.
Only this time it’s the German state doing it.
It’s bad enough that hatemonger Salafist preacher man Abou Nagie wants to turn Germany into an Islamic theocracy – and that’s pretty bad if you stop to think about it for a bit – now it looks like he’s also been ripping off the German welfare system ITSELF in the process. Big-time-like, even. How unethical or something.
While somehow managing to forget about reporting his real earned income (Islamic hate sales are big on the Internet these days), he has taken in over 54,000 euros in Hartz IV (German welfare). The German state has been paying him and his family 1,860 euros a month for quite some time now. The leasing rates for his Mercedes were booked from an accomplice’s account, however.
And this guy calls himself a good Christian?
Laut diesem Buch kommen alle Nicht-Muslime in die Hölle.
You know, the place where after getting the mayor to hightail it out of town and burning down a planned asylum seekers‘ home on Easter Sunday, right-wing nut jobs are now threatening to behead the local district administrator if asylum seekers start arriving in May as originally planned?
German peace activists will be protesting against the real forces of evil like NATO, instead. The same procedure as every year, James.
The Easter marches reached their peak in support between 1968 and 1983, when events throughout West Germany brought hundreds of thousands out onto the streets annually to demonstrate against issues such as Washington’s military involvement in Vietnam and the nuclear arms race.
Asylum seekers’ accommodation set on fire in suspected far-right arson attack in Germany
A centre for asylum seekers has been set on fire in a suspected arson attack in Germany.
Police are investigating the blaze in the town of Tröglitz, where the mayor quit last month after a far-right protest was held outside his home.
“This is a lasting disgrace for Tröglitz…that could have many unforeseen consequences.”
Germans found to be Europe’s most aggressive drivers
Tailgating, shouting insults – nowhere in Europe do drivers react as intensely as they do in Germany, a recent study shows.
Two out of three (67%) admitted to using offensive gestures, and verbal abuse, to insult other drivers.
More than one-third (34%) said they purposefully follow close behind, or otherwise annoy drivers, in order to intimidate them.
PS: Oddity 125. Fun German Games you didn’t know you were participating in: Tailgate Tag. Germans love to drive up to within just a few inches behind the slower moving cars on the left lane of the autobahn and bully them over to the right.
Nothing! Not even the last name of this guy. He’s just Andreas L. to us. And that’s why everybody here is so pissed off at some of the German media for revealing, like, his entire name and everything!
We Germans respect his privacy, you see. Even though he’s dead – along with the other 149 innocent people he killed. Oops! We don’t know that yet. No jumping to conclusions here, folks. At any rate, we’re crazy about privacy. Some say we’re even stark raving mad about it.
In the U.S., it’s standard operating procedure to release the names of people who are suspected of committing a crime. But in Germany, where people are far more sensitive about the line between public and private, that is not done. Critics in the country have cast the move as a reckless rush to judgment, and accuse the media of exploiting the tragedy before all the facts have been established. Others believe that the co-pilot’s family could now face retaliation for the crash.
Analysis of a tablet device belonging to Germanwings Flight 9525 co-pilot Andreas Lubitz shows he researched suicide methods on the Internet in the days leading up to the crash, the public prosecutor’s office in Dusseldorf, Germany, said Thursday.
Germany is just about to make German fracking safer. In a country that doesn’t do any fracking in the first place, versteht sich (it’s understood). And they are going to make it safer by banning it altogether. Makes sense to me. When I concentrate really hard and try to think like a German, I mean (can’t do it for very long, though).
The new draft law, which now goes to parliament for approval, will impose an outright ban on fracking for shale gas in the next few years and only allow scientific test drilling under strict conditions to assess the risks and environmental impact.
The law could allow commercial shale gas fracking in exceptional cases from 2019 but only after successful test drilling and the approval of a special committee.
Germany’s gas industry has warned restricting fracking could increase the country’s dependence on imported energy at a time when geopolitical concerns, particularly over Ukraine, are growing.
The BDI industry lobby group described the new conditions as “completely over the top”.
Last year, gas imports from Russia accounted for 37 percent of Germany’s supply. Only 12 percent of Germany’s needs were covered by its own reserves, down from almost a fifth a decade earlier.
After several years of investigation, the German Bundeswehr has confirmed that the light profile of its Heckler & Koch G36 barrels are leading to accuracy problems in the field, Reuters reported. The rifle’s accuracy opens up after sustained fully-automatic fire, which heats up the barrel, causing the point of impact to shift.
So like now the German defense ministry under defense minister Ursula von der Leyen is considering issuing a different rifle that will never be used in combat, either but will at least meet the Bundeswehr’s stringent never to be used in combat standards.
Noch soll das Gewehr, von dem die Bundeswehr knapp 180.000 Stück angeschafft hat, im Einsatz bleiben. Ministerin von der Leyen kündigte aber bereits an, man müsse nach den neuen Tests prüfen, ob die Truppe “auf mittlere Sicht mit einem anderen Sturmgewehr ausgerüstet werden muss”.
The copilot of the Germanwings plane that crashed into the French Alps appears to have hidden evidence of an illness from his employers, German prosecutors said after authorities found a torn-up sick note while searching his homes.
All of this disturbs me in more ways than one, as I’m sure it does you. If it is true that “Lufthansa has one of the most complete and exhaustive selection processes that there is,” what does that say about the rest of the airlines out there? This is just like those psycho shooters who do their thing in countries with stringent gun control laws (Breivik in Norway, the Dunblane school massacre in Scotland, etc.). You have to try to improve “the system,” of course, but do you really think it’s possible to stop people like this in the end?
Other medical documents found in police searches suggested an ongoing illness and appropriate medical treatment.
Observing Hermann 