Too Beautiful to be Published

Margot Kässmann, material celf-censored by Tai De

Given that I’m a civil servant, and that freedom of expression in Germany is more limited than in the U.S. of A., I will not publish this beautiful (fictional) story about former Bishop Kässmann, who will indeed spend some time abroad.

But not in Afghanistan.

Margot Käßmann goes to Afghanistan

Breaking new ground: Margot Käßmann (picture: tanks to JR)

Bishop Margot Käßmann, the German equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury (The Times), resigned this week after police found her drunk at the wheel of her company car. She now intends to work as a parish priest, writes the Times. However, Taide has obtained information that she has reported to duty in Kunduz, Afghanistan, as a military pastor.

“She’s having a helluva time here,” says Colonel Heinz Krauthammer. “She’s absolutely thrilled about riding a Panzer once in a while. Unfortunately, she’s squashed the only traffic light here in Kunduz which had been carefully built by a girl’s school a month earlier, sponsored by Hornbach, but there isn’t much motor traffic here anyway, except hers.”

Bishop Käßmann: Emo-Bomb on Afghanistan

“Nothing is good in Afghanistan.”

The statement is from the Germany’s leading protestant bishop, Margot Käßmann, made in her New Year’s Sermon on January 1 this year, and I believe the words she has chosen show what is bad with the Evangelical church here.

Words are central media in a protestant church. In some of the churches Käßmann is heading, words weigh more heavily than the sacraments. There is no excuse for saying that “nothing is good” in whichever country.  Not even if your country has stationed liberating or occupying forces there.

That was bad enough. Eight days earlier, in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung, she criticized the forces that ended Germany’s Third Reich for not having strategies before the war: “Why didn’t they strengthen the opposition? Why didn’t they bomb the railtracks that lead to Auschwitz?” (Warum gab es vorher keine Strategien? Warum wurde die Opposition in Deutschland nicht gestärkt? Warum wurden die Gleise, die nach Auschwitz führten, nicht bombardiert?).

Appeasement hadn’t impressed Hitler, the interviewing reporter suggested.

“Still, war releases a potential of violence I see no justification for. There is injustice, destruction, rape in its tow line. I have seen soldiers recently who can’t cope with their experiences.” Yes, Mrs Käßmann, sure. That’s what our troops are there for, in Afghanistan. j

And there was no storm of protest among the sheep.

This is no longer a church. It’s a sect. I’m off then.

German Intelligence infiltrates Taliban

German military pistols are being sold on the black market in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Voice of Germany quotes Hamburg’s Northern German Broadcasting Service (NDR). In 2006, the German Defense Ministry shipped 10,000 old Walther-P1 pistols to the Afghan Interior Ministry to equip Afghan police and army. However, both the German government and the responsible US-led security team in Afghanistan reportedly failed to properly monitor the guns’ whereabouts, according to the report.

German Walther P-1 pistol (light version): Mind your head

Typically German media coverage. They are always so negative. Instead of being proud of this achievement, they are worrying about… yes, about what? The Talibans’ chins and eyes?

If you have ever tried to fire a P-1 pistol at a cardboard standup (or whatever kind of target), this version is a lousy knock-off of the real thing, the Wehrmacht’s Walther P-38. In the Bundeswehr, the German federal army, we all hated the P-1, and I believe that most or all conscript-passed-the-P-1-test reports are as faked as the gun itself.

Anyway, some politicians are making a big fuss of the shipment (which was apparently made before asking the federal parliament’s approval):

Green Party spokesman Winfried Nachtwei accused the grand coalition government, which was in power when the guns were shipped, of a “grossly negligent course of action,” and called for the matter to be investigated in the interest of German security forces and civilian experts sent to Afghanistan.
“It would be truly absurd if soldiers were threatened by weapons irresponsibly delivered by Germany,” Nachtwei said.

I suppose the lad didn’t serve, and has never met the P-1 himself. If anyone in Afghanistan should be afraid of the P-1, it’s their illegal users.

I believe the Bundesnachrichtendienst was behind these sales.