Globe is getting up mine.
"Germany lost track of terror suspects" November 15, 2011|By Melissa Eddy, Associated Press
BERLIN - Germany’s domestic intelligence agency was put on the defensive yesterday with questions on how a neo-Nazi group that it had been aware of in 1998 could have slipped from its radar and carried out a series of bank robberies and at least 10 killings....
I hate to be the one to tell you, but neo-Nazi groups are controlled by government instigators.
Despite all the details on membership, crimes committed, structure, and even fashion sense of such groups, authorities were scrambling for information on a Zwickau-based trio calling itself the Nationalist Socialist Underground.
Excuse me? There are only three of them?
In a statement issued yesterday, the office maintained that it had no information regarding the whereabouts of three members - two of whom apparently died in suicides - since last tracking them in 1998.
The third, identified as 36-year-old Beate Z., was arrested late Sunday on charges of cofounding and belonging to a terror organization. She is further alleged to have set fire to a house used by the group in an effort to destroy evidence, but has refused to speak with police since turning herself in last week....
This is really starting to smell rank.
Many Germans are asking how the group, which allegedly included far-right extremists who were known to authorities, could have succeeded in carrying out crimes while undetected for so many years....
You know what is my answer.
The widening case has sparked a fierce debate over the government’s ability to protect the millions of immigrants who call Germany home, as it seeks to attract more skilled workers from abroad.
“I find it shocking that our country was not capable of protecting 10 innocent people from a band of far-right terrorists,’’ said Thomas Oppermann, a senior lawmaker with the opposition Social Democrats.
He noted that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has slashed the budget to fight far-right extremism in recent years.
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Problem, reaction, solution:
"Germany will start database of extremists after discovery of neo-Nazi group" November 17, 2011|By Associated Press
BERLIN - Germany will create a national database as a clearinghouse for information on far-right extremists amid mounting criticism because its security agencies failed to detect a deadly neo-Nazi terror group for years.
Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said yesterday the new database to be used by all federal and state-level intelligence and police agencies will be modeled on a similar registry of Islamic extremists created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“We want to also use this idea, that has been very successful over the past 10 years, to foil Islamist terror attacks, against domestic terrorist structures,’’ Friedrich said....
Germany has a federal domestic intelligence agency, but all states also have their own police and domestic intelligence agency - resulting in a lack of coordination that critics say helped the neo-Nazis to remain undetected between 1998 and last week....
Weak.
The investigation into the activities of the National Socialist Underground has turned into a nationwide search of previously unsolved crimes, including suspected terror attacks in Cologne and Duesseldorf from 2000 to 2004 that are now linked to the group. The attacks injured more than 30 people, most of them foreigners.
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Others who might make the list:
"German police cleared a sit-in of thousands of protesters attempting to block a shipment of nuclear waste and detained 1,300 people Sunday, officials said....
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Who is going to clean it up if there is an accident?
"Cleaning damages $1.1m art installation" November 05, 2011|Associated Press
BERLIN - A modern art installation valued at $1.1 million was damaged after an overzealous cleaning woman scrubbed away a patina intended to look like a dried rain puddle, a Dortmund official said yesterday.
Martin Kippenberger’s “When it Starts Dripping from the Ceiling’’ remains in place at the Museum Ostwall despite the damage sustained when a cleaner scrubbed away the painted puddle beneath a rubber trough placed under a stacked tower of wooden slats.
The work by Kippenberger, a German-born artist who died in 1997, was on loan to the museum from a private collector, who agreed that it should remain on display, said Dortmund city spokeswoman Dagmar Papajewski. Insurance adjusters are assessing the damage.
It has not been decided whether the patina would be restored or if the artwork would be left in its “cleaned’’ condition, she said.
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