How's that for a change?
German army in new racism row
A video showing a German army instructor telling one of his soldiers to envision African-Americans in the Bronx while firing his machine gun was broadcast Saturday on national television.
The video, coming after scandals involving photos of German soldiers posing with skulls in Afghanistan and the abuse of recruits by instructors, seemed likely to raise more questions about training practices in Germany's conscript army. (...)
"We can no longer talk about an isolated case," said Lt. Juergen Rose of the Darmstaedter Signal, a group of current and former army officers and sergeants who independently review military procedures.
"Things like this don't happen in the army on an everyday basis, but unfortunately in recent years there have been a number of comparable incidents."
The Defense Ministry said the video was shot in July 2006 at barracks in the northern town of Rendsburg and that the army has been aware of it since January.
"We are currently investigating the incident," said Florian Naggies, a spokesman for the army and Defense Ministry. (...)
The instructor tells the soldier, "You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways ... Act."
The soldier fires his machine gun several times and yells an obscenity several times in English. The instructor then tells the soldier to curse even louder.
The video is the latest embarrassment for the German army. Eighteen army instructors are currently on trial for allegedly abusing and humiliating 163 recruits in 2004. Last year, newspapers published photos of German soldiers in Afghanistan posing with a skulls -- including one who exposed himself while holding a skull.
Hmm... It's a bit early to evaluate the extent of the German media's reporting on the story. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't make much of splash.
Wrong ingredients, you know.
Let's try a change of venue.
U.S. army in new racism row
A video showing a U.S. army instructor telling one of his soldiers to envision Arabs in Baghdad while firing his machine gun was broadcast Saturday on national television.
The video, coming after scandals involving photos of U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison and in Guantanamo, seemed likely to raise more questions about training practices in America's all-volunteer army.
Now - HERE we have a story!!!
It is amazing that anyone is ever surprised when young people trained to kill others in large numbers sometimes slip-up and express evil towards others in a public forum.
What is it that keeps so many people from recognizing that war is evil and a great abomination, pure and simple.
Posted by: Seven Star Hand | April 14, 2007 at 09:17 PM
And remember, it's just racism. It was only accidental that they were African Americans. I'm sure that fine german drill instructor simply forgot that there were black people in other parts of the world he could have insulted and American just slipped out.
Posted by: Kyle Beckley | April 14, 2007 at 09:19 PM
Seven Star Hand.
Well, you're half way there. Evil exists. That's a start. So what do you want to do? Love it to death?
Don't know where you live, but as a sage on the previous thread noted, some of us are the reason you aren't speaking German or wearing a swastika.
And your 'wisdom' sucks, btw.
Kyle, yeah, it's not American that slipped out. It's the NYC thing. We all know who owns that.
Posted by: Pamela | April 15, 2007 at 12:03 AM
It seems that the question should be is why a NCO is trying to prepare German infantrymen for urban combat in America? Unless of course the Bundeswehr is being invited to provide security at the UN.
Plus the ROE that the Bundeswehr operates under seems rather sensitive to familial concerns.
Posted by: Pat Patterson | April 15, 2007 at 12:29 AM
@Pat
Unless of course the Bundeswehr is being invited to provide security at the UN.
There are times in life when one does not remember what a belly laugh is. And then there is you.
Thanks.
Posted by: Pamela | April 15, 2007 at 01:41 AM
You mean the Bundeswehr actually have weapons and they fire them? Or is the only time they fire is during training.
No wonder the Germans don't want a BMS or to be part of NATO. It is those dangerous weapons which are so evil.
Posted by: joe | April 15, 2007 at 03:05 AM
Seven Star Hand asks:
"What is it that keeps so many people from recognizing that war is evil and a great abomination, pure and simple?"
It must be because the premise ' War is evil' is false. Not warring against evil is evil. I believe it was Thomas Mann who said "Tolerance of evil is a crime", or something to that effect.
Posted by: Ernest T Bass | April 15, 2007 at 03:59 AM
The actual quote, with a slightly different meaning, "Tolerance is a crime when applied to evil." But a more pertinent Mann quote would be, "It is not a good thing when people no longer believe in war. Pretty soon they no longer believe in many other things which they must believe in if they are to be decent men.
Posted by: Pat Patterson | April 15, 2007 at 06:56 AM
The apparatchiks at Der Spiegel would only consider this story worthy of a cover photo/cartoon if it done by the US military instead of the Bundeswehr. I don't expect to see much about this in the German MSM. It is much easier to criticize the "other" than themselves.
Posted by: Hector07 | April 15, 2007 at 10:04 AM
I never trusted the Bundeswehr in the first place, scre^H^H^Hdisarm them. Why do they still receive funding after the wall came down?
And I noted that the American who is most focused on this, Al Sharpton, is himself standing in the epicenter of controversy back home.
My impression of the Tawana Brawley case is that this is a woman with a miserable Stockholm Syndrome, which strongly supports the assumption that she was in fact raped, but emotionally harmed in the process so that she might be reproducing descriptions that the perpetrators themselves have forced into her mind.
Hector07 - Der Spiegel (includes videoclip)
Posted by: FranzisM | April 15, 2007 at 07:36 PM
Tawana Brawley was not raped. Al Scam-pton took advantage of a setup situation by a 'civil rights activist.' No proof requested or required.
Posted by: Mike H. | April 15, 2007 at 09:42 PM
Great a link to an unsourced snippet about Tawana Brawley on Wikipedia's article on Al Sharpton. For the record, the Grand Jury investigated these charges for 8 months, over 250 witnesses and produced over 6,000 pages of testimony and documentation. The conclusion, no abduction, no burns, no ass ault, no rape and no sodomy. Intesting claim of Stockholm Syndrome but missing the necessary ingredients, ie. an abduction. Linking to the article on Tawana Brawley would have revealed the real outcome of the case not the(pardon the expression) white-washed Sharpton version.
Sharpton eventually, "anonymously," paid off Steven Pagones after the Reverend lost a slander and defamation lawsuit brought by Pagones. Sharpton claimed that the DA investigating the original case was one of the rapists. Then there is the still missing $300,000 in donations to the Tawana Brawley Legal Fund that Brawley took when she fled to Virginia to avoid having to testify in Pagones' civil suit against her, Sharpton and two of his associates Maddox and Mason.
Posted by: Pat Patterson | April 15, 2007 at 09:48 PM
Mike H.-Sorry, I hadn't refreshed while writing my comment. So I didn't see yours until after my post showed up.
Posted by: Pat Patterson | April 15, 2007 at 09:50 PM
---> "Hmm... It's a bit early to evaluate the extent of the German media's reporting on the story. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't make much of splash."
Not quite fair, since the video was discovered by a German media outlet (Stern) which was also the first to report on it. Pretty much the whole of the German media have followed suit.
Posted by: FJM | April 16, 2007 at 12:47 AM
This is pure stupidity.
Posted by: LouMinatti | April 16, 2007 at 03:39 AM
Hector07... why are you even bringing up Tawana Brawley when Sharpton's done it again, and recently???
Posted by: LC Mamapajamas | April 16, 2007 at 04:40 AM
Sorry, Hector... that last message was intended for FrancisM.
Posted by: LC Mamapajamas | April 16, 2007 at 04:45 AM
@Hector07
"The apparatchiks at Der Spiegel would only consider this story worthy of a cover photo/cartoon if it done by the US military instead of the Bundeswehr. I don't expect to see much about this in the German MSM. It is much easier to criticize the "other" than themselves."
That's definitely the elephant in the room. There is grotesque racism in Germany beyond anything you'll ever see in the US, but I'd be surprised if the volume of coverage devoted to it in the German MSM reaches more than one percent of that devoted to racism in the evil US. Euphemisms such as "skinheads" or "far right scene" are used to describe out and out Nazis who would make todays Ku Kluxers in the US look like boy scouts with bad campfire discipline. Want to know what discrimination is like. Ask any black, or, for that matter, any Eastern European who has ever tried to get an apartment in Germany.
Posted by: Helian | April 16, 2007 at 11:33 AM
did anybody here actually watch the video? it's clearly a joke - the instructor is telling the guy to imagine various situations, and then he uses one in which he's in the bronx and "schwarzen" are insulting his mother... he tells the trainee he wants to hear him scream "motherfucker" before every burst. they're both laughing the whole time.
i am all for calling germany out, but this is totally overblown and IMO a non-story. so much worse stuff goes on in every military - including ours (i know) - than this..
Posted by: jwtkac | April 16, 2007 at 02:07 PM
LC Mamapajamas - Some guy from the other side of the pond was making a comment on German affairs, so I was digging a bit into who that is who is speaking.
It turned out that Al Sharpton´s credibility is disputed. I was considering the possibility that in this case the perpetrators blamed by Al Sharpton were entirely innocent. The Tawana Brawley case seems to be the most mysterious one in his entire career, it´s just as puzzling as the Susanne Osthoff case, to bring up a comparison with another woman who displayed all the signs of intimidation when she said that an abduction had happened.
Posted by: FranzisM | April 16, 2007 at 03:23 PM
FranzisM:
The Tawana Brawley case is not a "mysterious one." She lied about her abduction and rape. It's that simple.
Posted by: NotFrench | April 16, 2007 at 07:08 PM
I tend to agree with jwtkac here. I think the story is overblown and indeed rather a non-story. It's that "hey, how dare you insulting my mother?!?" thing you get to watch in bad gangster-rapper movies or whatever. Of course there is a sort of racism behind it if you picture Afro-Americans like that, but it is so overblown that it's rather meant as satire than real things.
What this video shows in my opinion is not a racism problem in the Bundeswehr (there are not that many black people in Germany, and much less in the Bundeswehr anyway), but rather a sick Army making clowns out of themselves. What this instructor did was nothing else than what I witnessed when I served in the Bundeswehr several times: A misfired wanna-be, make-believe "Gung-Ho" approach. The Bundeswehr, with few exeptions like fighter-pilots, SF, or submariners, are a totally unprofessional and amateur bunch of guys. Be aware that most people "serving" in our Armed Forces do so for many reasons, like having SOME job or getting SOME education for later civilian life, and the very last reason is the prospect to actually end up in a war, fighting. I remember our instructors back then how they always had that stupid grin on their face, or downright laugh out, when describing a combat scenario on an excercise, as in "Hey, wtf, we are not going to do this for real anytime soon anyway, so let's just make stupid jokes about it." I'm sad to say it like that, but the Bundeswehr is a fucking joke. I believe any Armed Forces in the world who kinda *know* that they will never really see combat, or don't have a combat history - which would offer people to look up to, or heroes, yes - would lose all self respect and make a joke out of themselves like that instructor talking "tough shit" with his baby voice, pretending to be someone. What indeed makes matters worse in the specific case of the Bundeswehr is that really the last people we could "look up to", who conducted themselves in a professional military manner, were unfortunately serving for one of the darkest evils this world has ever seen. So it becomes difficult to have them as "look up to" people, albeit I believe that the soldiers are the last to blame for the consequences when the "innocent" civilians *elect* a dictatorship to govern them.
The best time for the Bundeswehr was probably the 50s and 60s. At this time, the Armed Forces had some professional personel with war experiences taken over from the Wehrmacht (as long as they were not downright Nazis), but also had the new Officer corps of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland who were only children when Hitler was around, and who were fully united with the West against the Communist threat. Good old Cold War times, so to say. I know a man who flew the F-104 Starfighter in the Bundeswehr during the 60s, and the CO of his Squadron (JG71) was Erich Hartmann, the top-scoring Ace of all time with some 352 air victories achieved during WWII, mostly on the Eastern Front. There is no comparison between this F-104 pilot I know and the Bundeswehr in general of today. Special personel might still be the exception, as I said above, but in general even the officer corps seems to be a joke. Spineless baby-faces who just want to get some education or their degree and then get the hell out of there asap (you know, there *might* actually be some war coming, or some sitting around in Kabul). Or disaffected old men waiting for their retirement. The point is, these Armed Forces don't take themselves serious at all, and aren't taken serious by the public either. The Bundeswehr is nothing but a running gag in Germany, and all who serve are seen as "Zivilversager", i.e. people who failed in civilian jobs.
This is what this video shows in fact. And one of the reasons why I didn't consider staying in the Armed Forces, although I would have done so in a heartbeat had the choice been the US Armed Forces.
Posted by: Alex N. | April 16, 2007 at 07:33 PM
NotFrench
As opposed to Susanne Osthoff
Posted by: joe | April 16, 2007 at 07:37 PM
The fun thing is, one of the very first moments where I witnessed outright Anti-Americanism was indeed in the Bundeswehr. I joined the Heer (Army) on 2nd or 3rd September 2001, for my conscript time of 9 months. Then came 9/11, and oh do I remember all the fuzz and almost panic going on around with the guys as in "Oh damn? Is that WWIII? Will we have to go to war now?!?". When I decided whether or not to join the Bundeswehr, I was already deep into history and also considering the prospect of killing other people in a war, since I was playing with the idea of maybe making a living (or dieing) out of a military career. I was flabbergasted when I witnessed all the panic going around at this point, not just with the conscripts.
Then, during the next days, we held "minutes of silence" during Appell in the morning, or out in the contryside, in remembrence of the victims of our NATO allies. At one such Appell, the guy next to me whispered "They had it coming, stupid Americans". I whispered back "Oh, halt's Maul" (Oh shut the fuck up). He whispered "Why? Are you stupid?" and albeit I was not supposed to move my head, I just looked at him. It was at this point when I wondered how many more holding this "minute of silence in remembrance" did in fact rather feel like not to (meanwhile I know it must have been a lot more). And later on, after seeing more of the same, not just in the Bundeswehr, I was wondering that even if we would indeed ever go to war, if it would be on the side I would care to be part of.
Posted by: Alex N. | April 16, 2007 at 08:10 PM
The editors at Stern and Der Spiegel must be happy now that they'll have an excuse to bury this Bundeswehr story - a horrible school shooting in Virginia. I'm sure they'll find a way to condemn the whole of America for such a tragedy, crying their crocodile tears all the way...
Posted by: Hector07 | April 16, 2007 at 08:18 PM
O/T-During the 60's there was and still is a famous surfing beach in USMC Camp Pendleton. Surfers, at least the braver ones, would either paddle in from the north or try to sneak to the waves through the surrounding tideland. I even had the dubious pleasure of having to call my parents and explain that I had been "arrested" by the SP and that my brand new surfboard had been confiscated for surfing on a closed military establishment and that the chances of getting it back were nil.
Years later I was able to get in because I had military ID through the Coast Guard Reserves and eventually became friendly with some of the Pendleton guards. One of the guards told me, and later showed me photos, of the dummies used in bayonet drill that were dressed in surf trunks and t-shirts. The recruits were urged to to stab the M********** surfers and hippies. Non-PC then and I don't think any different from the behavior of any military unit today.
Posted by: Pat Patterson | April 17, 2007 at 02:38 AM
Though it seems highly unlikely, still you've got to ask whether this event was wholly or partially simulated, as a prank, for example, or to discredit the Bundeswehr.
It almost certainly wasn't, of course, because the "acting" and the "script" are too much in line with the dreary reality of military training.
I wonder about the photographer. Was this an intelligent recruit who had found a way to get back at his instructor? The guy's military career could go down the tubes, at least to the extent that the Bundeswehr takes its own doctrine of "Innere Führung" seriously.
A cell phone camera can work wonders these days, it seems.
I can't dismiss this incident entirely as just boys playing with guns. Whether the trainer was fully aware or not of the significance of his comments, they are, if only subconsciously, racist and identify Americans as a legitimate object of aggression. Rather strange conduct on the part of a German soldier committed to fight by the side of Americans. Where might that be coming from?
Posted by: Paul | April 17, 2007 at 02:10 PM
That's great. Condemned as pacifists and now condemned as being too agressive.
If any of you have ever completed military training (and I doubt it) you would have probably heard far worse motivators ;-)
Posted by: Combine_Dave | April 20, 2007 at 07:51 AM
NotFrench - Which does leave the question: Why? (As with Susanne Osthoff.)
Posted by: FranzisM | April 20, 2007 at 07:22 PM
"Hmm... It's a bit early to evaluate the extent of the German media's reporting on the story. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't make much of splash."
Are you kidding? You should know that the German media love this kind of stories and are far more anti-German than anti-American.*
Hector07: "I don't expect to see much about this in the German MSM."
Another expert... Only 500 - 600 hits at Google News and reports in every newspaper and news show on TV.
http://news.google.de/news?hl=de&ned=de&ie=UTF-8&q=bronx (only a few times with "Bronx" in another context).
Please tell us how much attention the second story ("U.S. army in new racism row") got... I think this will be interesting.
* The real "enemy" of the German media is Germany and you should know that. For example: http://www.politicallyincorrect.de/2007/03/ja_aber_relativierungen_von_au.html
THAT's a story that won't "make much of splash":
"Speyer
britische Soldaten schlagen Mann nieder"
http://www.swr.de/nachrichten/rp/ludwigshafen/-/id=1652/kt7kyr/index.html#meldung97716
Posted by: cbendis | April 20, 2007 at 07:26 PM