The Terrible Truth About Germany
Lt. Col. Max Klaar (left) Bundeswehr (retired) embraces Merrit P. Drucker, retired US Army major at a ceremony in Washington. Photo: Monica Frim.
World War Two stopped in 1945, but it did not end.
The death rate among soldiers and civilians in Germany increased. No peace treaty was signed between Germany and its former opponents. And according to many Germans, there is still no real peace either, because the country is occupied and lacks a treaty.
It is identified by the United Nations as a “Hostile State;” the propaganda which helped to start the war still goes on against Germany; the conquerors have never been called to account for the atrocities they inflicted on their German prisoners of war, or for the deaths by forced starvation of millions of German civilians. Thuggish fascists still threaten freedom of speech. Thousands of political prisoners have been sentenced to jail in Germany for expressing opinions tolerated…
German Government Spyware Transforms Citizen’s Computers Into ‘Big Brother’-Type Surveillance Devices
Discovered by the Chaos Computer Club, reports GlobalPost:
The use of so-called “Trojan horse” software by authorities in a number of German states came to light after the Computer Chaos Club, a hacker group, published details of their examination of spyware planted on a laptop in Bavaria.
It found that the software — developed by a private company called DigiTask for the Bavarian police — was capable of much more than just monitoring internet phone calls. It could take screenshots, remotely add files and control a computer’s microphone or webcam to monitor the person’s home. However, the authorities insist that they did not deploy these functions. Investigations are ongoing.
Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with British computer security firm Sophos, which also analyzed the software, said that the spyware could “automatically update itself over the internet, so new functionality can be added. It can be used to install new software onto the…
City Introduces “Sex Tax Meters” For Prostitutes
Inspectors may be pulling prostitutes off the streets in Germany. Not because they’re trying to lower crime rate, but because they haven’t been paying their income taxes. Via Reuters:
Prostitutes in the German city of Bonn must carry a ticket purchased from a new parking meter-like machine while working the streets or face hefty fines from tax authorities in a scheme launched on Monday night.
In Germany, ladies of the night pay income tax — the level of which varies from region to region — but compliance is difficult to enforce with women seeking business on the street.
Germany’s first “sex tax meters,” from which prostitutes can purchase a ticket for 6 euros ($8.72) per night, will ensure the tax system is fairly implemented, a city spokeswoman said.
“Inspectors will monitor compliance — not every evening but frequently,” the spokeswoman told Reuters.
[Continues at Reuters]
Hundreds Of Mystery Underground Tunnels Below Germany
Why were vast networks of carefully constructed “goblin tunnels” built below Bavaria during the Middle Ages? Why is there not a single written word about their purpose or construction? Der Spiegel delves into the darkness:
There are more than 700 curious tunnel networks in Bavaria, but their purpose remains a mystery. Were they built as graves for the souls of the dead, as ritual spaces or as hideaways from marauding bandits?
At least 700 of these chambers have been found in Bavaria alone, along with about 500 in Austria. In the local vernacular, they have fanciful names such as “Schrazelloch” (”goblin hole”) or “Alraunenhöhle” (”mandrake cave”). They were supposedly built by elves, and legend has it that gnomes lived inside. According to some sagas, they were parts of long escape tunnels from castles. Similar small underground labyrinths have been found across Europe, from Hungary to Spain, but no one knows why they were…
German Insurer Munich Re Rewards Salesmen With Prostitutes
One of the biggest insurance companies in the world held a party for salesmen where they were rewarded with the services of prostitutes.
Munich Re is the world’s biggest re-insurer — in other words, the company acts as an insurance company for other insurance companies.
One of its divisions, Ergo, told the BBC that the party had taken place to reward salesmen in 2007. A spokesman said the people who organised it had since left.
The gathering was held at a thermal baths in the Hungarian capital Budapest as a reward to particularly successful salesmen.
U.S. Gov’t Sues Deutsche Bank For More Than $1 Billion
The US Justice Department has sued Deutsche Bank for more than $1bn (£600m) for defrauding the government.
The complaint says Deutsche’s MortgageIT subsidiary lied in order to get Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insurance for its loans.
FHA rules say lenders must make sure the borrower will be able to repay the loan, but the Justice Department claims Deutsche did not do so.
A Deutsche spokesperson described the claims as “unreasonable and unfair”. “We intend to defend against the action vigorously,” she added.
The lawsuit is one of the first targeting mortgage lenders under the federal False Claims Act.
The Young Nazi Who Grew Up To Become A Jew
Via BBC News:
As a child, Theo Haser was a loyal member of the Hitler Youth. But decades later, haunted by the horror of the Holocaust, he converted to Judaism.
As a young boy, growing up amid the nationalist frenzy of Nazi Germany, Theo Haser idolised Hitler.
When the fuehrer came to his hometown of Munich to visit, Theo and his father were at the front of the crowd reaching out to touch his hand.
“I know if I was able to shake his hand I probably wouldn’t have washed for a few months,” he recalls.
Seventy years later, in a bid to come to terms with his Nazi past, Theo has become a Jew.
“I wanted to be part of a community, this was something I had never felt in my life,” he says. “I wasn’t running away from something, I was joining something entirely new.”
Germany To Close Seven Nuclear Reactors For ‘Safety Review’
Brunsbüttel Nuclear Power Plant. Photo: Steffen Papenbroock (CC)
Could Japan’s tragedy be used as a wake-up call for other countries? Germany has decided to close some of it’s oldest nuclear reactors for safety checks after Japan’s nuclear crisis. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Germany said it would shut down its seven oldest nuclear reactors during a three-month “safety review,” a surprise reversal by Chancellor Angela Merkel whose government just months ago vouched for the plants’ safety.
Ms. Merkel’s center-right government, which already said on Monday that it would suspend a lifespan extension for country’s nuclear reactors, responded to growing public unease over nuclear power amid the Japanese crisis by agreeing to shut down the oldest of those plants. The sudden shift reflects concern within Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic party that it has been on the wrong side of an emotional political issue that analysts say could tip the balance in several upcoming regional elections.
Ms.…
Germans Protesting Nuclear Power Form 75-Mile Human Chain
Reuters reports:
Opponents of nuclear power formed a 120-km (75-mile) human chain between reactor sites in Germany Saturday to protest against government plans to extend the power plants’ operation.
Around 120,000 peaceful demonstrators, according to police and organizers, linked arms in a chain running between the northern towns of Brunsbuettel and Kruemmel that passed through the city of Hamburg…
German Cabinet Recognizes Kids’ Right to Make Noise
Take that, Prussian child rearing! AFP reports (via Google):
Germany’s cabinet Wednesday adopted draft legislation aimed at battling a growing tide of complaints against noisy children, in what is a rapidly ageing society.The legislation aims to make it easier to build creches in residential areas following a spate of objections against the din of children at play.
Some of these complaints have resulted in kindergartens being refused planning permission or childcare centres having to build noise-protection walls so as not to disturb locals.
Many are from people in their 30s and 40s, including couples with children, worried about the value of their property falling if a noisy new kindergarten springs up nearby, experts say.
In a statement, Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said: “This is a clear legislative signal in favour of a child-friendly society.”
“The noise made by children … cannot be treated in the same way as the noise made by industrial equipment,” added…
Pictures From The Secret STASI Archives
German artist Simon Menner has a bundle of photos taken by East Germany’s secret police during Cold War. Offering a glimpse into the small absurdities of life as a Communist spy, included are snap shots of suspicious household objects, agents modeling their “normal civilian” disguises, and West German spies who knew they were themselves being spied on, et cetera:
East Germany, until it ceased to exist in 1989/90, had one of the most advanced surveillance system ever in operation, the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Department of State Security) or STASI. In terms of number of agents per capita it even outranked the Russian KGB by far.
Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was decided that most of its archive should be made accessible to the public and for historic research. Even though the access is restricted, this was very much in contrast to what most of the other nations of the…
The Neo-Nazis of Jamel, Germany
Via the Huffington Post:
JAMEL, Germany — This is a town taken over by neo-Nazis.
Wooden signposts by the main road point to Vienna, Paris, and Braunau am Inn – the birthplace of Adolf Hitler. A far-right leader runs his demolition company from home, its logo featuring a man smashing a Star of David with a sledgehammer.
Every few months, townsfolk host outdoor parties where guests sing “Hitler is my Fuehrer” to chants of “Heil” around a massive bonfire.
Jamel is the most extreme manifestation of a chilling phenomenon in the former communist East Germany: a creeping encroachment of neo-Nazism that makes Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania one of only two states where Germany’s biggest far-right party, the National Democratic Party, or NPD, sits in parliament.
The extreme-right is believed to be behind some 40 attacks in the state over the past year, including stones thrown through windows of political parties and fireworks blown up in a prosecutor’s…
China Vows To Help European Debt Crisis
2010 had Greece and Ireland receiving financial help from the Internatioanl Monetary Fund and Eurozone nations. 2011 has Spain, Germany and Britain finding help from Chinese investors as Vice Premier Li Keqiang began his European tour. Via The Jakarta Globe:
Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang backed Europe in its sovereign debt battle on Wednesday, starting a three-nation tour by promising to buy more Spanish government bonds.
Li, widely tipped to be the next premier, delivered a significant vote of confidence given China’s world record foreign reserves of 2.648 trillion dollars (2.0 trillion euros), much of it in euros.
On his visit to Spain, Germany and Britain he is supporting Europe’s recovery efforts and seeking to soothe global market fears of a debt quagmire spreading from Greece and Ireland to Portugal and even Spain.
[Continues at The Jakarta Globe]
WikiLeaks Revelation: The U.S. Tortured an Innocent Man and Threatened Germany to Not Prosecute the Torturers
While the U.S. media simultaneously wrings its hands over whether Julian Assange should get life imprisonment or the death penalty and claims WikiLeaks revealed nothing important except about Iran’s WMD ambitions, Scott Horton reports at Harper’s:
Over the Christmas-New Year’s holiday in 2003, Khaled El-Masri traveled by bus to Skopje, Macedonia. There he was apprehended by border guards who noted the similarity of his name to that of Khalid al-Masri, an Al Qaeda agent linked to the Hamburg cell where the 9/11 attacks were plotted. Despite El-Masri’s protests that he was not al-Masri, he was beaten, stripped naked, shot full of drugs, given an enema and a diaper, and flown first to Baghdad and then to the notorious “salt pit,” the CIA’s secret interrogation facility in Afghanistan.
At the salt pit, he was repeatedly beaten, drugged, and subjected to a strange food regime that he supposed was part of an experiment that his captors were performing on him. Throughout this time, El-Masri insisted that he had been falsely imprisoned, and the CIA slowly established that he was who he claimed to be. Over many further weeks of bickering over what to do, a number of CIA figures apparently argued that, though innocent, the best course was to continue to hold him incommunicado because he “knew too much.”…
Naked German Man Spotted In Car Trunk On Google Street View
Look beneath the surface of everyday life, and strangeness awaits. In Mannheim, Germany, Google Street View captured this image of a naked man climbing out of a car trunk…one can only speculate as to the reason. Via CNET:
Massive Sinkhole Swallows Car (Photo)
What causes sinkholes like this to open up so rapidly? Anyone? This latest example is reported by The Local:
A large sinkhole opened up overnight in the middle of residential area in Thuringia [Germany], sucking a nearby car and part of a garage into its depths and forcing authorities to evacuate residents, police said on Monday.
The crater, measuring some 40 by 15 metres, appeared in the town of Schmalkalden around 3 am, a police spokesperson said. A nearby resident heard the noise and called police…
Is Solar Power Too Powerful For Germany?
UPI reports:
The German electricity grid faces instability because of too much solar power, an expert said.
Thanks to a generous feed-in tariff, the installation of rooftop solar panels and large-scale photovoltaic plants has exploded in Germany.
Stephan Kohler, chairman of the DENA agency, an energy adviser to the government, has warned that the green boom could turn into a disaster for Germany’s aging power grid.
“The network is facing a congestion due to solar power,” Kohler told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper. “That’s why the expansion of solar power has to be cut back quickly and drastically.”
Experts have long called for an overhaul of the European power grid to integrate the fluctuating renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power.
Experts forecast between 8 gigawatts and 10 GW of solar power capacity to be installed this year — the equivalent of roughly 10 large coal-fired power plants. In 2009, only 4 GW were installed.
Well aware…
Radioactive Wild Boars in German Forests
This is creepy news from Cyriaque Lamar on io9.com on a Der Spiegel report:
It’s been 25 years since Chernobyl fallout contaminated flora and fauna in Europe, but German hunting officials are still dealing with rising numbers of radioactive wild boars. But why?
This burgeoning boar population munches on radiation-absorbing truffles and mushrooms, and because of an overall increase in wild boars, the number of radioactive boars has gone up as well. The German Atomic Energy Law requires Berlin to reimburse hunters who bag radioactive boars. In 2009, the government paid out approximately €425,000 — or $555,000 — for polluted piggies. According to Der Spiegel, the contaminated boar population has been the most problematic in southern Germany:
Many of the boar that are killed land on the plates of diners across Germany, but it is forbidden to sell meat containing high levels of radioactive caesium-137 — any animals showing contamination levels higher than 600 becquerel…
Catholics Outraged Over German Cartoon
Scott Roxborough writes in the Hollywood Reporter:
COLOGNE, Germany — A German cartoon mocking the Catholic Church has sparked holy outrage among believers here who say it incites hatred against the Pope and the Catholic faith.
The caricature, published in the Good Friday edition of satire magazine Titanic, shows a priest apparently having oral sex with a crucifix of Jesus on the cross.
The crucifix cartoon is a barbed commentary on recent revelations that 250 people in Germany were sexual abused at Church-run schools in the past decades. The scandal has shaken the German Church. A recent poll said Germans’ trust in the Catholic Church had fallen to 17% from 29% in late January and approval ratings for Pope Benedict have dropped from 38% to 24%.
The German Press Council reported that some 100 formal complaints have been filed since the magazine came out, a level of protest not seen since 2006, when German…
