Die Welt reports:

The state police soon intends to do test inspections of passengers at the Hamburg airport for dangerous objects. German banks were also criticized lately because they allegedly used client money form the Riester retirement funds for investments with the US defense contractor L-3.

Cluster bombs are insidious weapons. They scatter a large quantity of explosive materials over a wide area; many people become injured and killed. Since August 1st, they have been rejected by over 100 countries, Germany being part of this group. The super power US, China, and Russia are not participating in the ban, however. L-3 Communications is considered, according to reports by NGO and service branches as one of the world’s leading cluster bomb producers.

The L-3 division “Security and Detection Systems” specializes in scanner and security systems, among other things, for airports. The concerned scanners are to cost around US$ 150,000 apiece. The Interior Ministry stated that the scanners were not directly ordered from the US manufacturer. The contracting partner is the firm EAS Envimet Analytical Systems in the Austrian city Brunn.

Evil tongues would also assert that the matter is that of a political decision against the US and their ways and means of waging war — in spite of bonus points by President Obama. Also speaking for this is that the traditional American Greens are the string pullers in this call for retraction:

The Greens’ defense expert Agniszka Malczak spoke of a scandal. “This way, the federal government is hollowing out their own participating ban against cluster bombs and is sacrificing the protection of the civilian population to the profiting greed of defense enterprises.” The wheeling and dealing with “this barbaric weapon” must be stopped.

A glorious battle of the morally rich Good against the American Evil, as it seems, however, according to the official listing of 2003, Germany itself belonged to the countries that, up until a little while ago, produced the feared “Clusters”:

Egypt, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Germany, France, Greece, Great Britain, India, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Italy, Canada, The Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Serbia-Montenegro, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, and USA.

Tapfer im Nirgendwo reports:

In a café in the former capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, there was a brutal attack on an American citizen.

On Monday, May 31, 2010, a demonstration took place in the late afternoon against the Israeli treatment of the terror flotilla in the Mediterranean Sea that had been disguised as an aid flotilla. During this demonstration, a few participants noisily stormed a fully occupied Starbucks Café at the Münsterplatz at the call of “Death to Israel,” and demanded the guests to stop trinking and eating because they had a message to deliver. For over five minutes the demonstrators roared out their open hate against Israel in the café, a hate that with even the best of will cannot be considered as justified criticism.

A group of young schoolgirls attempted in vain to calm the demonstrators down. The screaming carried on for yet another ten minutes. When some of the demonstrators started to physically attack the three adolescent schoolgirls, a courageous visitor of the café stepped in. His name is Steven Selthoffer. Steven Selthoffer is an American citizen and sports journalist by profession. He was active among other things during the Olympic games of 2000 and 2004 and is considered as an expert regarding the Claudia Pechstein case.

Steven Selthoffer made it clear to the demonstrators in American English that this was a café and not the place for a political forum, and that they were to quit intimidating the schoolgirls with threatening tales. He asked the demonstrators to leave the café so that he and the other guests could drink their coffee in peace.

This led to a tumultuous uprising. The demonstrators, provoked to the most extreme by the American accent of the visitor, started to scream anti-American and anti-Israeli phrases in the fully occupied room. In addition, they began violently to demand from those present to take part in the demonstration.

Because Steven Selthoffer refused to cooperate with this uprising but remained seated at his place he was attacked from behind. A heavy object wrapped in a newspaper was thrown against the back of his head so that Steven Selthoffer fell to the ground and lost consciousness for a short time. In spite of the dangerous situation, two Starbucks employees rejected medical aid and didn’t consider it necessary to call the police. With the argument that he wasn’t totally innocent in the event, the personnel also refused to detain the attacker and let him go.

Steven Selthoffer suffered serious head and neck injuries and had to be treated at the St. Elisabeth hospital. The emergency physician on duty communicated that Steven Selthoffer was “very lucky,” and that the effects from the trauma would remain for the next two to three weeks.

In a conversation with Tapfer im Nirgenwo, Steven Selthoffer acted mostly by being drawn more and more heavily into the situation. He himself admitted that his ability to concentrate depended too much on how the situation affected him. He makes a very brief comment today about the incident, „No American or Israeli should feel safe at any Starbucks.”

Neil Swartwo communicated to Tapfer im Nirgendwo by telephone from the Starbucks Headquarters in Seattle that he was shocked at the action of the employees at this Starbucks franchise. He emphasized that such action is not in accordance in any way with Starbucks’ philosophy.

Starbucks promised to publish an extensive statement.

As the blog further reported in reference to the Cologne newspaper Kölner Stadtanzeiger, along with the hate demonstrations in Cologne (PI reported), the incidents led further to a hunt for those assumed to be Jews.

One of those present told the Kölner Stadtanzeiger about the experiences he had while he was going through a group of Palestine advocates to take pictures:

“I noticed right away the green flags of Hamas, and when I then asked a police officer whether the Hamas were not on the list of terrorist groups banned by the EU, I received the answer that he didn’t know and didn’t care as well.”

The demonstration came to an end for the participant when a young fanatic brought attention to himself:

He tried to intimidate me with the battle cry “Are you a Jew?”. When I said that I was a German, I was pushed to the side by the same police officer who couldn’t answer me earlier about whether the Hamas were a banned terrorist group in the EU. There, two of his colleagues took my personal information and issued me a reprimand.”

If the favorite phrase from the fighters against the Right, “Resist the beginning urges,” is to be more than just hot air from a hypocritical Sunday homily, then it is high time to follow up those words with actions.

They are “fanactics comparable to Al-Qaeda… the terror organization is as bullheaded as the religious right in the Midwest”. Schweiger had moderate success in some second rate movies a decade ago (that is enough to become a german “movie star”). Currently, he is hitting the screens mostly in a petty commercial for german beer brewer König Pilsener. We are querying the brewer, if they intend to stop cooperation. We did not query Schweiger if he was quoted under the influence.

» Email to Koenig Pilsener: info@koenig.de

© Joachim Steinhöfel 2008