It doesn’t stink anymore either these days, for some reason.
Germany finishes construction of its first LNG import terminal – Completion of project in just 200 days eases fears of gas shortage amid cut in Russian supplies.
Liquefied gas is to secure the energy supply in the coming years. The first plant has already been completed in Wilhelmshaven, but terminals are also likely to follow at other locations.
It’s not like the Russians would ever interfere in Germany’s internal affairs or anything.
Germany’s cybersecurity chief faces dismissal, reports say – German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wants to dismiss the country’s cybersecurity chief due to possible contacts with people involved with Russian security services, German media reported late on Sunday, citing government sources.
Arne Schoenbohm, president of the BSI federal information security agency, could have had such contacts through the Cyber Security Council of Germany, various outlets reported.
Schoenbohm was a founder of the association, which counts as a member a German company that is a subsidiary of a Russian cybersecurity firm founded by a former KGB employee, they wrote…
War is now waged not only on the battlefield, but also on the Internet. Hackers are the soldiers of the modern age. And Russia is one of the most active players in cyberspace: Putin’s state apparatus disinforms with media loyal to the state, clogs up comment columns on social networks with the help of so-called troll factories, or blows the whistle on direct digital attacks on other states.
That means sabotage.
A lot of that going on in and around Germany these days, don’t you think?
Sabotage Hits Trains in Northern Germany, Forcing 3-Hour Halt – A train communications system in Germany was targeted by sabotage Saturday, forcing both passenger and cargo trains to halt for nearly three hours across the northwest of the country, authorities said.
“I can’t stand it, I know you planned it…”
Not quite as dramatic, granted, but just like how Fukushima took down the nuclear power industry in Germany, all it takes is a collapsed highway bridge in Italy to suddenly put Germany’s bridge infrastructure in full tilt crisis mode. You gotta worry about something, after all.
The latest reminder of the risks of aging infrastructure came Tuesday, when a highway bridge in Italy collapsed, killing at least 35 people. Germany is also exposed. Its once-envied network of roads, bridges and railways are decaying due to decades of underspending. The country has fallen to 15th in road quality behind Oman and Portugal, according to the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness rankings.
Autobahnbrücken in Deutschland – Jede achte Brücke in schlechtem Zustand.
This was gross negligence on the part of power supplier Vattenfall, if you ask me. And even grosser, uh, something for the guy who had to clean up the mess afterwards.
An innocent and relatively harmless rat was way too easily able to make his way through some little hole in the wall of a network power station place in Tempelhof today and cause a short in a 10,000 volt power line that took down the power for some 2,200 apartments and 170 businesses in the area.
Needless to say, this action took down the rat, too. We can only hope that it was clean, green energy that got him.
Erst vor wenigen Wochen hatte eine Ratte einen Stromausfall im havarierten japanischen Atomkraftwerk Fukushima Daichii ausgelöst.
Remember how the Greens in Berlin shot themselves in the foot after elections last fall by sticking ever so stickily to sticky green principles by just saying no to a two-mile stretch of Berlin autobahn that everybody in town wanted but them?
It was a stellar performance in reality check checking and how not to form a coalition government with the SPD even though everyone seemed convinced up until then that the Greens were either going to take over the Berlin city goverment completely or at least play a major role as junior partner (neither happened).
Well surprise, surprise. Green shirt ideologues what’s upstairs have now just okayed a working paper calling for a more offensive and quite massive expansion of the German autobahn system in West Germany. This is not a sell-out of green principles, however, not that you were even thinking that.
Green autobahns, as you may know, are made of biodegradable concrete and recycled plastic ALDI shopping bags, constructed using environmentally friendly green technology (wind-, I mean hot air-powered) and progressive landscaping techniques which allow for low carbon tire prints, renewable eco-outhouse rest stop stops and an overal eco-friendly and very green if not rather high global environmental greenhouse impact.
Alles im grünen Bereich, wie immer.
Observing Hermann 