Perhaps the best translation for "facepalm" is "fremdschämen"?

[selenak]

So, yesterday, because you can't beat real life for coincidence, Germany celebrated the U.S. Day of Independence by arresting an American spy whose day job was being a German spy. That's right, one of our secret service made some extra money by handing over intelligence to the US - on the current NSA investigations (that would be the NSA being investigated rather than the reverse), it appears.

This evokes a couple of reactions.

1.) Given that the BND (= German secret service) is handing over all the intel the Americans want anyway (according to a former NSA employee currently testifying at said investigation), why would the US pay the extra money? I thought finances are tight?

2.) The BND is famously rubbish at spying. Therefore, anyone recruited by it should come with a question mark, not doubly employed. Then again, the US secret services were convinced Chalabi and his tales of Saddam's weapons of mass destructions were pure gold, so...

3.) Seriously, guys: is the masterplan here "how many ways can we find to alienate the Germans?". Yes, nobody believed Obama anyway when he said he'd stop listening in to Merkel's cell phone now (though not on any other German cell phones), but you'd think some tactical restraint would have been ordered, not stepping up the spying. Yes, yes, we know we're vasalls and minions, not partners, you don't have to rub it in at every opportunity, US government.

4.) Also, Errol Morris' documentary about Rumsfeld was released two days ago in Germany. Thereby reminding everyone that the previous US government was worse (which doesn't make the current one look better), and that Rumsfeld and Cheney are still around to pontificate instead of facing justice at a the International Criminal Court, which they never will. And Dubya exhibits paintings.

5.) I've got nothing. At least this has some useful absurd comedy aspects which the latest Supreme Court decision has not.

In more cheerful news, after the HBO tv series based on American Gods didn't work out, Bryan Fuller will do one for Starz. This very likely will give me a Bryan Fuller show I want to watch again (sorry, Hannibal wasn't for me; I marathoned the first eight episodes last year and with every single one realised more I didn't want to watch it, so I stopped), and he strikes me as eminently suited to deal with Neil Gaiman's novel.

Comments

[sylvaine]

*facepalm* It's like something out of absurdist theater, except real.

[selenak]

Reality beats absurdist theatre every time....

[wee_warrior]

Somehow, life still beats fiction in its absurdity.

Bryan Fuller & Neil Gaiman sounds like a great combination. Certainly much better than Kripke & Gaiman. I don't know about Starz, but, oh well. SyFy does movies like Sharknado and still manages shows like BSG, after all...

[selenak]

Life always days. :)

I can't tell you how relieved I am we're saved from Kripke getting his hands on a Gaiman saga. As for Starz, I have a soft spot for the trashy yet compelling (once you get past the pilot) Spartacus, and they did have the money to pay for Eva Green in their Camelot (which I didn't like and gave up on after three eps, but still, it had some good actors - Eva Green, James Purfoy, Joseph Fiennes...). So with Fuller writing and Starz paying, we should get something worth watching!

[lizvogel]

The modern US "intelligence" industry really is embarrassing -- moral questions aside, they just don't seem to be very good at it. And re: #1, shoving money at things that are unnecessary/ineffective while claiming that there aren't funds for activities that might actually produce useful results is something bordering on a holy tradition.

(Says the espionage hobbyist. Hi, government snoops; if you're flagging this comment, you're proving my point.)

[selenak]

They certainly seem to violate the prime commandment for intellegence agents - don't get caught. And somehow despite all that data gathering still manage to be caught by surprise by major developments like ISIS in Iraq. (Probably because of all the time wasted on reading Angela Merkel texting various coalition members the latest World Cup results.)

[lilacsigil]

Hey, that's still better than the Australian spy who tried to sell not-particularly classified secrets...to Singapore, a defence ally who was training in Australia at the time.

[selenak]

LOL. What is spying coming to these days? You really can't best reality for sheer farce value.

[watervole]

But who was the German spy originally spying on?

[selenak]

According to this article, his area was "protection of German soldiers abroad" (which probably means Afghanistan, because we don't have them abroad in many other places). But the most farcical thing is how he got caught. So, if you're curious at the current salary the CIA pays to double agents: according to the FAZ article I linked, "during a first meeting in Salzburg he received 10.000 Euro, a contact email and his first couple of tasks. During two later meetings in Austria his contact paid him 5000 and 10.000 Euro." (If you're wondering why they met in Austria, the BND has their headquarters in Pullach, which is a Munich suburb. You can be in Salzburg in one or one and a half hours if the traffic is good.) All in all, he handed over around 200 documents to the US. And then he got (even more) greedy and offered the Russians to spy for them as well, at which point the BND finally caught him (this was two years after he'd started working for the Americans), because: "He sent three BND documents via email to the Russian consulate to prove his offer was genuine. As part of the internal BND security it could track in which unit exactly these documents were stored, which limited the number of suspects. Since the documents were mailed from a private PC and the man in question had been the sole co-worker officially on vacation at the time the email was sent, he was outed as the mole."

See, this is what I meant in my post about our homegrown spies being rubbish. Emailing the Russians with a job offer from your own personal PC, GOOD LORD. What would George Smiley and Karla have to say to this?!?