At Least These Guys Don’t Go On Vacation At Taxpayers’ Expense

Three suspected ISIS operatives arrested at German refugee shelters

ISIS
The prosecutor’s office said investigations so far suggested the men, aged between 17 and 26, arrived in the country in mid-November 2015 on the orders of Isis, rather than having been recruited in Germany. They were either served with an order to carry out a specific attack or were waiting for further instructions, it said.

The suspects are believed to have sworn allegiance to Isis at the end of September 2015 at the latest, in the Syrian city of Raqqa. They are alleged to have received brief training in weaponry and explosives before pledging to carry out operations and attacks in Europe on behalf of Isis.

The terrorist organisation allegedly arranged passports for them, and gave them four-figure sum bundles of US dollars as well as mobile phones with pre-installed communication programmes.

Anti-Terror-Razzia in Flüchtlingsheimen – GSG9 nimmt drei Syrer fest

Data Protection, Data Protection, Data Protection…

This mantra is suddenly not quite as effective as it used to be in Germany.

Data

“We have to expect a long period of terror. London, Madrid, Paris, now Brussels. Even German cities will not be spared in the long run. So far, we have been lucky”, stated Rainer Wendt, chief of the German Police Union at newspaper Passauer Neue Presse.

On this frame, German politicians ask for an increased exchange of information between European authorities, in a country that is really sensitive over privacy issues and has some of the strictest rules on privacy and data protection in the world, partly as a heritage from Germany’s surveillance history through the East German and Nazi dictatorships.

“The best remedy against such attacks is information exchange,” stressed Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière.

And remember all the NSA, “friends don’t spy on friends” hysteria? U.S., Germany eye ways to deepen cyber collaboration

De Maizière will an die “Datentöpfe.” “Datenschutz ist schön, aber in Krisenzeiten hat Sicherheit Vorrang.”

German Of The Day: Checken

You know, like Checkpoint Charlie checken?

Checkpoint Charlie

Checken means “to get it” in German. To get it as in, I dunno. How about to get it as in finally-now-at last understanding that terrorists really and truly have infiltrated your country as refugees? Are we having denial yet (or still)? Denial will get you nowhere, fast.

German police Thursday arrested two Algerians suspected of links to the Islamic State group after raids targeting several sites, including refugee shelters where some of the suspects lived…

According to information acquired by the Tagesspiegel in Berlin, the former Checkpoint Charlie had been selected as the target of the attack. “As a tourist destination, Checkpoint Charlie was to be hit,” security authorities said.

Nach Informationen des in Berlin erscheinenden “Tagesspiegels” galt der frühere Checkpoint Charlie als Anschlagsziel. “Es sollte mit dem Checkpoint Charlie ein Tourismusziel getroffen werden”, hieß es in Sicherheitskreisen.

 

The Recklinghausen Connection

No, not staring Gene Hackman. This thriller stars an asylum-seeker French police killed as he tried to storm a Paris police station last week.

Paris

This guy was registered at a German asylum center in the city of Recklinghausen, had a phone with a German SIM card and carried a paper on him in which he pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State. He had also been registered under four different names in Germany.

I don’t think that’s fair. That a poor refugee gets welcomed to Germany four times like that, I mean. Then there are fewer welcomes left to go around for the next wave of folks that comes in. And the next, and the next…

Der Mann posierte in seiner nordrhein-westfälischen Flüchtlingsunterkunft mit einer IS-Fahne. Die Landesbehörden stuften ihn demnach als Verdachtsfall ein, doch im Dezember 2015 verschwand er spurlos aus Recklinghausen.

PS: There’s this German turn of speech I really like: Ich glaub ich bin im schlechten Film. That means I think I’m in a bad movie. I’ve been hearing it more and more these days, too, for some reason.

German Of The Day: Aufklärungstornados

That means reconnaissance Tornadoes.

Tornadoes

The Paris attacks brought changes: Germany has pledged “any form of support” to France in its fight against terrorism. Right now, it looks like the German military will deploy its Tornado reconnaissance jets…

Reconnaissance jets have already been used in international military missions, for example, in the Balkans and Afghanistan. There, up to six German Tornados supplied their NATO partners with information about Taliban positions. The pictures are taken with cameras attached to the fuselage of the fighter bombers. After the planes have completed their mission and landed, the film must be developed and analyzed, which takes some time, but the images have a much higher resolution and are much more detailed than other types of aerial photography.

Deutsche Fotos für den Luftkrieg der anderen

German Of The Day: Getarnt

That means disguised. You know, like the three terrorists from Paris who presumably made their way through Europe disguised as refugees? Now it’s out that at least one of them traveled through Germany.

Terror

Take this guy here, Ahmad Almohammad, one of the three who blew themselves up in front of the Stade de France. The latest reports indicate that he was in Bavaria at the end of October.

Alarming? Not alarming enough if you watch the news here. Making a big deal out of something like this would only unsettle the public.

“Zu laufenden Ermittlungsverfahren erteilen wir keine Auskünfte.”

Dear Hollywood

It’s Christmas season so here’s my wish. I know your first and foremost priority is to bash everything time-honored and traditional about us (as in US). I understand and respect that (actually I don’t, that was just a figure of speech). But seeing what’s going on in the world at this moment I would really appreciate it if you could possibly consider bringing back one of your own time-honored genres: The wartime drama. You know, like Casablanca? You could refer to it as a wartime propaganda film if that makes you feel better about it, of course.

Casablanca

I would like this Casablanca to have a Muslim hero in it, however. A Muslim Rick, so-to-speak. The reason being that one of the obvious intentions of the ISIS attacks in France (coming to Germany soon!) is to incite hatred against the Muslims living here and to hopefully, from their point of view, have this hatred lead to some form of civil war in ze Europe.

This may have seemed far-fetched a short time ago but a thoughtful look at the current atmosphere in Germany, for instance, should convince you that this is well within the realm of the possible.

The Traumfabrik (dream factory) needs to give us a positive Muslim role model here, in other words. The “normal,” moderate Muslims living here need one erst recht (all the more). This Ric, too, will need to do the right thing and combat the evil that is terrorizing us all and explain to everyone how it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, of course.

I know you’re busy and all these days and I really hate to bother you (another figure of speech) but I’m just thinking out loud here.

PS: Scarlett Johansson would make a great Ingrid Bergman character. No head scarves or anything, though.