NSA May Possibly Not Have Been The Very First Intelligence Agency Ever To Spy On Other Government Officials

This just in: The current German outrage about allegations that the NSA may have listened in on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone conversations may only just be the tip of the outrage iceberg.

Outrage

Non-American intelligence experts around the world are now indicating that this type of inexcusable practice may also have actually been carried out in the past by other non-American intelligence agencies “out there” and that no one seemed to care much or be all that terribly surprised about this type of thing at the time as this is of course the very reason why said intelligence agencies freakin’ exist in the first place Himmel Herrgott Sakra (for f#?!#’s sake)!

Here are just a few of these indiscrete intelligence expert observations:

“I am amazed by such disconcerting naiveté. You’d almost think our politicians don’t bother to read the reports they get from the intelligence services.”

“I can’t believe anyone is terribly surprised. I mean, every government in the world tries to collect the best info that it can and that’s true of the German, American, British, French and countries all over the world,”

“I was a government official for many years and I assumed my cellphone and my email account was susceptible to foreign intelligence services spying.”

“You get a picture of who is friends with who, and their friends of friends. It’s like Facebook – incredibly helpful if you want to sketch out a network of contacts.”

“This is par for the course. Countries eavesdrop on other countries. If you have Angela Merkel’s telephone number you will listen in to it if you can.”

“Finding out what other governments are thinking is what intelligence agencies do.”

Berlin Finally Beats Paris And London

And every other major city in the European Union, too. By a long shot. When it comes to paying the most for electricity, that is.

Berlin

Hot damn. No more provincial image here! This German Green Revolution rocks so bad that ich kann nicht soviel fressen wie ich kotzen möchte (I can’t eat as much as I want to barf about it).

In September, Berliners paid an average of nearly $0.40 per kWh of electricity they purchase from the local power grid. To put this in perspective, the highest average electricity price in the continental United States is about $0.18 per kWh in Connecticut, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Waldsterben, Acid Rain, BSE, Bird Flu, Ozone Hole…

All must go the way of the dinosaurs sooner or later.

Ozonloch

Wait a minute. Do any of you out there even remember the Waldsterben (death of the forests) hysteria?

The ozone hole, the annual thinning of the protective ozone layer in Earth’s stratosphere over Antarctica, was slightly smaller than average this year compared to its size in recent decades, NASA said on Friday.

Speaking Of Ausländer…

Who cares about a few thousand Brits? Germany has more foreigners than you can shake a stick at and, well, more than they did back in 1993 (that’s bad, right?).

Ausländer

Some 7.2 million total there be. Not bad. For a xenophobic, racist, narrow-minded Volk living in a contemptuous and chauvinistic country still suffering under a living-dead Nazi past, I mean.

Die Zahl der in Deutschland registrierten Ausländer ist 2012 so kräftig gestiegen wie seit fast zwei Jahrzehnten nicht mehr. Sie erhöhte sich um 4,1 Prozent auf gut 7,2 Millionen, teilte das Statistische Bundesamt mit.

PS: Damn. Claudia made it. Weren’t they even allowed to vote against anybody during that vote?

Benefit Tourism Booming

More than 10,000 Britons are claiming unemployment benefit in Germany because they are not “hassled” in to finding work there.

Tourism

I dunno. What’s worse? The folks who abuse a system or a system that invites you to abuse it?

“In Britain I had to put up with patronising officials, some of whom tried to get me to accept a job as a cleaner despite my degree.”

American Political System Broken For Real This Time

Honest. Or at least that’s what we read in Der Spiegel.

Democracy

Here is a quick summary of yet another intellectually challenging and frankly quite bizarre Spiegel “analysis:”

US democracy is nearing its limits.

The United States has avoided federal default, but no one should be happy about this.

This is because the American political system is truly broken.

This latest political crisis has turned out to be a systemic crisis.

The country’s political architecture was not designed for long-lasting blockades and extortion, the likes of which have been enthusiastically practiced by Tea Party supporters for almost the last four years.

America is no longer a representative democracy. This is because in the congressional elections in 2012 the Democrats won 1.17 million more votes than Republicans but Republicans got 33 more seats in the House of Representatives.

Not even 10 percent of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are considered competitive.

The last of the mohicans, uh moderates, have been pushed out of Congress.

Politicians actually call each other names these days (which apparently never happened in the past) and this is in part due to talk radio personalities.

Radical groups and billionaires (on the right, of course) actually make campaign contributions now.

The Tea Party came into being because the old “white majority” is shrinking into a minority and this is why they now proudly hold up ignorance and stupidity as badges of honor.

But other than all that though, I thought the commentary was pretty good.

And this just in: Germans are not really rude! And this video here will prove it or something.

Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Bling

I mean Tebartz-van Elst, of course.

Bling

“I got your church and state for ya right here, pal.”

What’s all the excitement about? Religious Germans contribute freely to their churches. It’s not as if the money this guy burned had been levied by taxation or anything. Uh, wait a second. OK. So I guess it had been.

Germany separates church and state much less clearly than does America but more explicitly than Anglican Britain or Orthodox Greece. Its post-war constitution, in a clause carried over verbatim from the Weimar constitution of 1919, favours no particular faith but lets all churches levy taxes on their members through the income-tax system (8% or 9% of a taxpayer’s bill, depending on the state).

Speaking Of Bad Hair

And just when you thought that this might maybe truly and honestly be the last time any of us would ever have to see or hear anything more of Claudia Roth again…

Roth

Denkste (not a bit of it)! She just got the office of Deputy Presiding Officer of German Parliament “thrown at her” and something deep down inside of me (causing me a whole lot of indigestion) tells me that she’s going to take it.

We’ll see. Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt (hope dies last), you know.

Wer meinte, endlich Ruhe vor Claudia Roths mitteilsamer Betroffenheit über so ziemlich alle Missstände dieser Welt zu haben, hat sich zu früh gefreut.

PS: And not much of a surprise here, I guess. Germany’s Greens ruled out any further coalition talks with Angela Merkel’s conservatives early on Wednesday, leaving the chancellor to focus on discussions with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) in her efforts to form a new government.

Merkel Feeling Better

After having become a hipster. Despite the bad hair day.

Merkel

At least it’s not like she had a nervous breakdown or anything.

Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20’s and 30’s that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter.

No Private Sphere Here

Fed up with having their personal privacy abused by Facebook, Google and the NSA all the time, many Germans have decided to give up their personal privacy altogether and now actively and gladly publish online practically ever damned freaking boring imaginable thing they do like ALL DAY/EVERY DAY/ALL LIFE LONG.

Internetz

Actually, I thought they were all doing that already.

And in a related story, the Deutsche Telekom is planning to introduce “a vast computer network linking smaller computer networks worldwide,” or at least German-wide. They are then going to call this innovative and highly original new invention of theirs the Internetz. Or they sure ought to.

Or how about the Inner-Netz?

“My philosophy is that information is more useful when it’s out in the open.”