swalk—sealed with a loving kiss

Mental Floss has a delightful review of a book just published called To the Letters by historian and linguist Simon Garfield that lists some romantic and racy shorthand employed by soldiers in the 1930s to navigate around the censors and their superiors—showing that texting and sexting is not such a new phenomenon. In fact, there are examples from epistles from the ancient Romans: SVBEEQV for the Latin si vales bene est, ego quidem meaning that I am happy when you are or I hope this letter finds you well. I'd really like to incorporate some of these abbreviations into my vocabulary and would like to learn more about what we find lamentable about communication, and at any distance being something magical, and form that's not necessarily warranted moving from sonnets to spam.

übergelagert

Though not previsioning what was to come nor a admission to a separate history, in 2012 when plans were being finalised to consolidate the operations of the Bundes- nachrichten- dienst (the BND, Germany's foreign intelligence agency) in Berlin and to uproot establishments created in the former West German Republic, a small suburban community of München called Pullach im Isartal, making preparations for closure and realignment, revealed how secrets can cause forgetfulness. What lie on the BND's broad campus was no secret itself, but cordoned off from the public since shortly after the conclusion of Word War II, few voices were raised regarding what it contained. The ensemble of residential and office buildings occupied by the intelligence service were original designated as a model suburban settlement, named after Rudolf Heß, for the families of Nazi party members who were not conferred special recognition or had humbler roots. Many German children orphaned by the war also found adoptive parents here. Later, the community also became the headquarters for Organisation Todt, the party's engineering corps who build the built the Atlantic Wall. This covert history was hidden for years, villas as time-capsules and the stories of former residents going untold, incident only to its new management.

outsourcing oder linkin park

Süddeutsche Zeitung presents another angle by which German reconnaissance may be becoming more and more mired in American control through indirect means and the decision to contract out some of its own intellect functions. The relatively innocuous-looking office building, located in Abraham-Lincoln-Park just outside one of the US Army installations here and just across from the Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and just opposite the cemetery where I was seeking out another link to the the past the other other, is the headquarters of the German branch of the company. The Germany government has awarded CSC numerous, lucrative contracts to carry out spying and security related missions, usually executed with far less public scrutiny and government oversight than through ministry channels.
As if using mercenaries does not create big enough ethical problems on its own, the US-based company also performs extensive information-technology and logistics support for American intelligence services, much like the infamous Blackwater Corporation. By choosing to downwardly delegate some of its functions to a company whose loyalties and discretion are by definition already compromised, Germany has surely exposed itself to more mingling of data and lowered expectations of privacy without even the challenge of what it attempted to keep close-hold.

key-f.o.b. or check-point, checkmate

The latest reports (EN/DE) that transmogrify espionage into all-out basing forward the prosecution of shadowy wars and unconventional diplomacy seemed at first only nuance to activities already being established as taking place on German territory. The outrage and response—considering that usually silence prevails and if an answer is deigned, it is a carefully measured and delayed one, which was rather instant and uncensored, much like the unfiltered distrust aired by the German public over the whole developing situation or more through official channels, the recent, unmediated reaction to US accusations that German export policy was destabilsing the euro zone, however, suggests that the criticism may have been a little to close to home. Though maybe with no more or no less officious cooperation or ignorance—innocence on the part of the Germany than when it came to snooping, prosecuting unsanctioned campaigns under the cover of a host nation, off-shoring aut dedere aut judicare.
Investigative journalism with contributions from more than twenty reporters that American legionnaires are not only using its diplomatic missions as listening posts, siphoning internet traffic off of the major hub in Frankfurt and keeping handy insider read-aheads on European political and trade affairs, but are also using Germany as a launch-pad for its dirty and secretive drone-wars in Africa, helping to craft a post-revolutionary region more sympathetic to American interests and with methods and friendships not fit for open debate or public knowledge, even targeting newly arrived refugees for debriefing and plotting coordinates for the next attack.

a-list or he knows when you've been sleeping, he knows when you're awake

Though it's maybe too early for the decorations and music, it is the right time to think about ones greeting card list. The Retro Christmas Card Company allows one to personalise and automate—after a fashion, since carefully nicking open an envelop to a honest-to-goodness card is the still best part, even if it was handled by a third-party.

The middle-man was not the NSA this time, but another good reason for sending out cards now is that it allows the intelligence services to know who in advance of the holidays constitutes a frequent and sustained contact in ones life. The service, custom-printing and mailing, offers lots of swank retro designs—plus a selection of motifs from the Mid-Century movement of 1950s and 1960s Americana.

sanctuary

Nominated for official accolades for civilly brilliant ideas and already beloved by its residence, a community foundation has constructed and nurtured an old library building in Nürnberg into an educational centre for a neighbouring home for asylum-seekers with name of the Asylothek (although I had a high-school with a the cafetorium, I think Germans are very partial to inventing designations for facilities and the like, there's the unfortunately named Blitz Döneria by work that just does not sound like words and suffixes that ought to be associated with food and this trend is especially true for institutions like hospitals and specialty clinics—there's the Heboteum (actually right across from the döner [the Turkish version of a gyro, sort of] stand), a child-birthing school that sounds in German like a museum of mid-wifery.
The Asylothek is really clever institution, though true to its original purpose as a library (Bibliothek), offering a space for reading and reach with literature in immigrants' native languages, as well as a job-centre with courses on the German language and after-school activities for children. I think we take libraries for granted and such a place would really be a welcome comfort, having fled in the night to a strange land. Not that refugees need to be minded and treated like inmates, but a home has been established in Bad Karma, our fair city, in one of those abandoned—though not dilapidated, just given up as the business environment and demand changed—old villas that became resort hotels, with no apparent supervision to help ease the transition.  It is not due to some ancient native skill but rather a therapeutic introduction to interacting with people again after traumas that caused the proliferation of nail-salons run by people of Asian descent, when social-workers arranged for them to give each other manicures as a way of trusting and connecting, having survived the awful experiences of wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.  Care-taking is as important to perception, helping to mitigate local xenophobia and unwelcoming behaviour on the part of host communities, as it is for preparing those who sought sanctuary for success.

necropolis or flying circus

Having learnt that Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen—better known as the Red Baron, the accomplished dog-fighting ace of World War I, has his final resting-place just around the corner here in Wiesbaden, I took the afternoon to investigate and explored the peaceful and expansive grounds of the Southern Cemetery (Südfriedhof).

Walking down the pathways, not rushing and wanting to properly pay my respects to the graves less famous—to me, at least, I noticed that quite a few tombstones bore a pasted on, rather tasteless notice, which read something to the effect, “The lease has expired – please see the cemetery administration.” Later H confirmed to me that indeed plots in Germany are generally rented for a period of twenty years, with the option of extending. What happens to the remains, I asked, and was told that they are usually gone by then. Embalming and chemical preservatives are not used here, nor expensive time-capsule coffins, so everything has decomposed a few a couple decades. I wondered what became of the headstones, beautiful and austere markers meant to last an eternity, but did not ask.
I didn't think people took them home (though the Roman practise was genuine parlour culture, burying their dead in their houses) or stored them somewhere off-site, like winter-tyres. It seems irreverent but I suppose space is at a premium and very soon there would not be room for anything else besides the grave. I noticed that the more modern epitaphs usually bore ones profession also. The architects had the most inspired grave-sites—I wondered what it meant to carry ones job into the here-after (jenseits) and hoped that all really had been proud enough of their careers to make that sort of statement. Other beautiful monuments abounded, like this bas-relief tombstone of a cavalry unit from 1914 that depicts some of the sad and terrible equipage of the war, gas-masks and bayonets. I was unsuccessful in locating the von Richthofen plot, noting that such infamy is usually something buried itself, and wondered how the aeronaut and son of the Prussian elite ended up in far western Hessen. It turns out that the Red Baron was disinterred several times since his final battle: von Richthofen was first put to rest with a military funeral not far from where he was shot down, near Amiens, France in 1918.
During the interbellum years, his brother attempted to bring the body back to be buried in the family crypt, but as the ancestral home now lay in Poland and convinced by Nazi authorities just then coming into power who hoped to exploit the rockstar status von Richthofen had attained through real and attributed victories, re-interred him in Berlin, with fanfare courtesy of the new government. During divided Germany, as the graveyard straddled the border, the headstone was often victim to a stray bullet fired at people as they tried to escape into West-Berlin, and in the mid-1970s a decision was made to transport the body to Wiesbaden and reunite him with the rest of his departed family. I don't want to regularly wander the necropoleis of the city as that's morbid but was glad I took the time to search it out and now that I know it literally is just around the corner, I will look around another day.