I have just been listening to a discussion panel on Radio FFH about the protests against China. (whether they were likely to have an impact on China, whether the Olympic Games should be boycotted etc.)
One of the listeners stated something like:
The Americans are behind the protests. They want to destabilize the whole region by [...]
I have just watched Geert Wilders “Fitna” movie. I was able to do so thanks to the Internet. It was not shown on German TV, neither on Dutch TV, actually I do not know whether any European TV station has shown or will show the film.
I wonder why? You might not agree on everything Geert [...]
If there is a positive prejudice about Americans it is that they tend to be more optimistic than Europeans. And I think it is true. Take my best friend - I have been talking to him this afternoon and you know what he told me? That if people started talking anti-American at a party I [...]
When I heard on the radio this week that Stern-Magazin was going to publish an interview with Lynndie England in which she tells Stern everything about Abu Ghraib she did not want to tell the US media, I decided not to buy it, because I knew it would spoil my day if I did so.
But [...]
Sarcastic, bitter and true: A cartoon in Die WELT, Feb 12, 2008, page 8. It shows from left to right: A Military (maybe former NATO General Naumann?), German Defense Minister Jung, former Defense Minister Struck and Foreign Minister Steinmeier.
To understand the cartoon one has to know that former Defense Minister Struck back in 2002 stated [...]
Ernst Cramer, born in 1913, is Chairman of the Board of the Axel Springer Foundation. In 1939 he managed to escape from Germany to the United States after an internment at the Buchenwald Camp. After his return to Germany he served as deputy editor in chief of the daily “Die Welt” from 1958 on and [...]
In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington Jeff Gedmin, President of RFE/RL, talked about the motives behind American smart power in general and RFE/RL in particular: pragmatism, idealism, American values / universal values and enlightened self- interest. The speech provided plenty of examples about the successes and challenges [...]
OK, mass-market BILD-Zeitung is not really what you would call an intellectual newspaper, but it is usually more America- and Israel-friendly than most other newspapers in Germany. The more I was surprised on Thursday (Feb 14, 2008) when reading BILD`s winner-looser column. It showed Robert Gates as looser.
The text on page one reads:
Letzte Woche sorgte [...]
Robert Gates, U. S. Secretary of Defense, Speech at the 44th Munich Conference on Security Policy, February 10, 2008
Excerpts:
(…) During the 1990s, even as we tried to predict what form the threats of the 21st century would take, Afghanistan was, in reality becoming exactly what we were discussing in theory. Subsequent events during the intervening [...]
When searching my name in google I often get really nice results. Yesterday I discovered that my blog has been recommended by “The Shield of Achilles”, a blog run by John Rohan, a United States Army officer born in Germany and currently stationed here. The context was rather sad because “Davids Medienkritik has closed!” [...]