Tag Archives: Terrorism
Ronald McDonald Sees All
You can run, suspected terrorist types, but you can’t hide from the Golden Arches.
After discovering and destroying a “highly dangerous” explosive device at Bonn’s central train station, German police are now patting themselves on the back for having already made their first arrest in the case, all thanks to the dreaded (in Germany) security camera footage in use there.
No, not the footage from the security cameras aimed at the platform where the device was found – there was no coverage there – this footage came from the security cameras used at the central station’s US-Amerikan McDonald’s restaurant.
You know, die totale Überwachung (the total surveillance) state and all that? Germans don’t like that kind of stuff for some reason (that terrorist suspect dude doesn’t like it much either, I bet). It has to do with data privacy or Google Street View or something. I forget.
Would you like fries with that?
Zwar appellieren Datenschützer, bei der Überwachung öffentlichen Raumes die Verhältnismäßigkeit zu wahren. Doch etwa in Ballungszentren Großbritanniens hat man sich an flächendeckende Kamerapräsenz längst gewöhnt – und davon kann die Polizei häufig profitieren.
The Protective Hand
You’ve heard of the invisible hand being everywhere in the free market system, right? Well if you’re a left-wing terrorist in Germany you can count on having a protective hand taking care of you, too. When it comes to the German justice system, I mean.
Four years for being an accessory to murder? Deduct the trial time, which they already have, and RAF terrorist Verena Becker will be out on the street in no time (the safe German street, now that the RAF isn’t active there anymore).
What can I say? The German judicial system has ein Herz für linke Terroristen (left-wing terrorists). They are the ones who are always the Opfer (the victims). The system made them that way or something. That’s why this article confirms “that the sentence was relatively light, but that’s a good thing.” Why that’s a good thing is still not clear to me. But I’m not German.
Germany’s Federal Interior Ministry insists that portions of the BfV files on Becker will remain confidential, as will passages in the documents related to when she was pardoned in 1989 by then German President Richard von Weizsäcker. All of this incomprehensible secretiveness has only contributed to fostering more speculation.
Michael Buback, the son of the murdered prosecutor, added some emotional moments to the trial. In a statement before the court, the chemistry professor from Göttingen admitted to feeling “attacked, insulted and disparaged” by federal prosecutors. What’s more, he accused investigators of having held a “protective hand” over Becker.
It Still Can’t Happen Here
In Toulouse, maybe. But not here in Germany.
Well nobody here in Germany seems interested in reporting about this, anyway. Hmmm. Why would the German media want to keep quiet about a German hostage-taking? Germans would never quietly knuckle under to terrorist hostage-takers, would they?
“We inform you that that your compatriot Edgar Fritz Raupach is a prisoner of the fighters of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.”
The group said it is seeking the release of Umm Seifullah al-Ansari, or Filiz Gelowicz, a Turkish-born woman jailed a year ago in Germany for aiding terrorism.
A Life Sentence?
In Germany? I don’t think so.
“An Islamic extremist who admitted killing two U.S. airmen at Frankfurt airport last year has been convicted of murder. The state court in Frankfurt found 22-year-old Arid Uka guilty Friday and sentenced him to life in prison for the March 2 attack on Afghanistan-bound servicemen as they boarded a bus at the airport.”
Well, that simply isn’t true. You may have known that there is no death penalty in Germany, but don’t be tricked by that ridiculous “life in prison” misnomer that Germans like to use all the time (lebenslänglich). Nobody spends life in prison here.
What Germans mean with a life sentence (in Germany) is 15 years. After that the convict gets paroled. Or, as in this terribly severe case, paroled and then “threatened” with possible deportation.
Uka droht nach seiner Haft die Abschiebung.
Arson Attacks Disrupt Berlin’s Disrupted Rail Traffic
Sort of. With some 2000 trains now running late in Berlin after the discovery of seven homemade explosives along the city’s railways these past three days – and none of the passangers having noticed yet because trains are always late here – the leftist peacenik terrorist group responsible for the diabolical attacks has confirmed that it would have caused “like considerable way more damage and maybe even have managed to blow something up big time if any of the freakin’ trains to be attacked would have been on time like for once already.”
But still… “This morning we slowed down the German capital and its function as a global player in the export of armaments,” said a statement from the group released Monday on a leftist website.
And speaking of terror…
Since 2003, EU countries have grudgingly relayed names and other information to US authorities concerning airline passangers who travel between EU and non-EU countries.
This has been complained about and protested against loudly and often(ly) by empörte (indignant) exponents of transparency everywhere who clearly don’t trust the American claim that this is purely an anti-terror measure and only in their best interest.
Now it turns out that these bad American spy policies robbing Germans of their personal freedom led directly to the capture of the Düsseldorfer terror cell last month that had concrete plans for a bomb attack in Germany.
The three alleged terrorists (who also had their personal freedom robbed) were detained during police raids in Düsseldorf and Bochum after authorities decided that they might be getting close to carrying out the attack.
You don’t have to say thanks or anything, Germany. America was just doing its job (rides off into the sunset, fade to black).
„Von amerikanischer Seite sind wir unter anderem auf das auffällige und ungewöhnliche Reiseverhalten der Verdächtigen hingewiesen worden.“
German Sensitivity All Sensitive Again
And this time it has to do with the killing of a mass murderer (an interesting editorial piece, I’m paraphrasing most of this).
Damned if you do, I always say. For years Germans sardonically reproached George W. Bush for not being able to capture the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. Now that Osama bin Laden has been located and killed during an attempt to capture him, that was wrong too.
Here are just a few popular and very predictable politically correct party line reactions to the killing as presented by the German state media:
“Bin Laden was simply bumped off.”
“What kind of a country is this that could cheer at such an execution?”
“He was a 54-year-old father of a family.”
“German law professors go on record as saying that the US commando action violated international law.”
And of course the admonition cannot lack that “Obama only did this to get re-elected.” Other possible reasons for the killing of the man who was responsible for the most terrible attacks upon the United States since Pearl Harbor are apparently not imaginable for those in charge at German state television (WDR, Jörg Schönenborn).
More to follow here very soon I’m sure.
Und warum nur fällt es in diesem Land so schwer, eine sehr einfache Erkenntnis zu formulieren: Diese Welt ist ohne den Massenmörder aus Saudi-Arabien eine bessere. Darauf wird man sich doch wenigstens einigen können.
What’s the big deal?
The Germans always wheel and deal like this.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle not only personally brought back two German hostages to Berlin after personally meeting with El Presidente Iranian Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in February, he and other German government officials personally saw to it that the German central bank personally provide assistance to India in an oil deal with Iran as payoff for the hostage release. Nothing personal.
So deal with it already.
The sources say the German government approved the Bundesbank’s help in the Iranian-Indian transaction in exchange for the release of the two prisoners.
No Scheiße Sherlock
“Whether the incident was linked to terrorism, I cannot say at this stage,” a spokesman for Hesse state has told reporters. How could he say? That kind of stuff just doesn’t happen in Germany, even when it does happen (it was the last news item to be reported on last night on ARD).
We don’t want to jump to conclusions, heaven forbid. Germany always has everything under control, as we all know, “incidents” like these included. But when a Kosovar Albanian and devout Muslim suddenly opens fire on a military bus full of American Air Force personnel at Frankfurt Airport, killing two and wounding two others, a possible link to terrorism might maybe ought to be taken into consideration, perhaps.
All I can say is it’s a good thing that Germany has such strict gun control laws (especially at airports). Otherwise this “incident” would have surely been much worse.
Ausgerüstet mit einer Pistole und einer beachtlichen Menge Munition, machte sich der 21-jährige Deutsch-Kosovare am Mittwochmorgen auf den Weg zur Arbeit am Flughafen Frankfurt am Main.
Observing Hermann 