GERMAN CALLOUSNESS: Kicking Hurricane Victims While They're Down

SPIEGEL Online ^ | August 31, 2005 | Claus Christian Malzahn

[wolf78]

Hurricane Katrina has cost the lives of hundreds and devastated the US Gulf Coast. But instead of aid donations and sympathy, the Americans have heard little more than a haughty "I told you so" from Germany. It's another low point for trans-Atlantic relations -- and set off by a German minister. How pathetic.

For the record: German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder offered his condolences to US President George W. Bush for the Hurricane Katrina disaster that has hit the Gulf Coast. Both he and his fellow Germans, Schröder wrote, feel "great sympathy for the fate of those people affected by the hurricane."

Nice words to be sure, but that was it. No pledges of aid money, no announcements of immediate help -- although finally, two days later, the German interior minister did manage to come out with a hesitant offer of assistance. And let's be honest, the crisis region this time around isn't in the Third World, but is in the United States of America. There really isn't much of a need for German helpers -- experienced as they may be from aid missions from Kosovo to Afghanistan -- because the American authorities are already doing as much as can be done.

Nevertheless, German aid money delivered to American aid agencies would surely be welcome on the other side of the Atlantic. But apparently, people over here believe that the Americans over there don't really need help. Strange. The same people who normally spend their time pointing their holier-than-thou fingers at the ghettos and slums in the US, the same ones who describe America as an out-of-control capitalist monster, are now, when the Americans could really use a bit of help, oddly quiet.

[Eagle of Liberty]

The last paragraph is awesome.

[Michael81Dus]

Needs to be repeated:
At any rate, the words spoken by these idiot Germans was uncalled for!

[monday]

"Nice words to be sure, but that was it. No pledges of aid money, no announcements of immediate help -- although finally, two days later, the German interior minister did manage to come out with a hesitant offer of assistance."

This sounds like the complaints that the US govt. was being selfish the week after the tsunami flooding. Typically governments are never the quickest to respond to emergencies. All that bureaucratic incompetence and inertia makes it surprising they ever get anything done.

[joesnuffy]

Take ALL our troops out of Germany now.

[Ciexyz]

Nice to know that both Germany and Russia have offered help. Danke schoen and bolshoe spasiba!

[hershey]

This out of control US capitalist monster says heartfelt thanks to 'Spiegel'.

[Ciexyz]

However, that standard German spelling is "Katharina".

As in Katharina Witt, the East German figure skating star from the 80's.

[Clemenza]

Schadenfreude

[clyde asbury]

Maybe we should have hit Dresden harder in 1945.

[Keith in Iowa]

The Krauts, Surrender-Monkeys and the rest of the EU should be pulling their weight in Iraq, and free us up to take care of our own. Whazoo apertures.

[flieger]

Good thing we have elections here in Germany on September 18, and right now it looks as if we will finally get rid of that bunch of idiots (quite a few of them are criminals, IMO).

Oh man, I hate them!!!

What do you expect from a chancellor who calls Putin a "picture book democrat"?

Best wishes to all you folks in LA, MS, AL, GA and FL! My thoughts are with you!

[flieger]

Sorry to say that, but Dresden couldn't have been hit any harder, period - there wasn't anything left to hit.

[SunkenCiv]

---

"The American president has closed his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes such as Katrina -- in other words, disasters caused by a lack of climate protection measures -- can visit on his country." Who wrote this? None other than Jürgen Trittin, Germany's minister of the environment... It's not the American people's fault that the storm hit and they couldn't have stopped it. The Germans, on the other hand, could have done a lot to prevent World War II. And yet, care packages still rained down from US troops. Trittin's know-it-all stance is therefore not only tasteless, it is also historically blind.

---

[okie01]

My dear Herr Trittin:

Be advised that the United States intends to institute repossession procedures stemming from the Marshall Plan. Accordingly, please take steps to disassemble your infrastructure and ship it back to us -- c/o the Port of New Orleans.

Screw you very much, a$$hole.

The American People

[clyde asbury]

.. Dresden couldn't have been hit any harder, period - there wasn't anything left to hit.

Fair enough, but the same could have been said about the rest of the country.

[clyde asbury]

Goes to show the luancy of the left and green party wackos in Germany who have been put in charge.

Perhaps, but we have far too many Jürgen Trittins in charge in the US.

[optik_b]

This makes me not want to buy any German products.

[SunkenCiv]

The Biotech Boom
by Karen Lowry Miller
[original, dead link]

When Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker started out as a biochemist at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany, he could assume that if he worked hard, he would eventually win recognition from his peers and perhaps a science prize or two... Protesters were calling him a murderer and harassing his kids on their way to school. The police found his name on a terrorist hit list. He had to install a security system in his home and travel with bodyguards... One of the protest leaders who helped demonize Winnacker was Joschka Fischer, a Green-party minister from the state of Hesse. Like many radical groups at the time, the Greens were fervently against anything that smacked of Nazi-style eugenics -- just about anything with the word "gene" in it. That also included a new plant for manufacturing a genetically engineered protein for hemophiliacs, which Winnacker strongly supported. In the end, the protesters got their way. Pharmaceutical giant Bayer decided to build its plant in the United States, taking 1,300 new jobs abroad.

That was 12 years ago. These days the prevailing attitude toward biotechnology couldn't be more different. Fischer is still a Green, but he also happens to be Germany's foreign minister and a cabinet member in the government. The Greens, now part of the political mainstream, are no longer against genetics. On the contrary, they are presiding over a dizzyingly rapid expansion in Germany's biotechnology industry.

[F.J. Mitchell]

When the going gets tough-the tough get going. Our fair weather friends and leeches around the world know who the tough are.

[Convert from ECUSA]

The only difference between France and Germany these days is that the French have been backstabbing the US longer than Germany.