>My understanding is Germany is still under high alert due to a credible terrorist threat picked up on monitoring. Is that accurate?


Accurate: yes, as a magazine similar to newsweek printed that the Reichstag was a primary target.
Lonely baggage at train stations and similar open spaces gets more attention [again: what is in normal times ?]
Makes agreat agrument for building a tunnel for our members of parliament, a project lately having come into the sight
of those arguing against tax revenue squandered. But I am a card-carrying member of CS [Cynicism & Sarcasm]

>I grumble about the security measures being taken but I would not want their jobs. It has to be like chasing smoke. It isn't a "war on terror" at all, using the term of art. In a real war there are armies, countries, battles, surrenders. This isn't like that. It's a fanatical movement. You kill one and another springs up in his place. Or another 100. We should call the TSA the Sisyphus Agency.

It makes a great argument for intolerance against specific near eastern "types".
Not really a great topic for a country with our past from the middle of last century.

>Actually he is one of my favorite mythical characters. Some days at work I can relate to him <g>.

Really ? Sometimes on new fixup projects I question my demigod-abilities when facing another instance of Augias' stables...

>In fact I am going to start a thread about mythical characters. We need a break from this dismal terrorist discussion. Part fun, part learning, part comments from unexpected quarters -- isn't that the point of Chatter? Chatter was never intended to be all bickering all the time.

Should be - most of the time I stay out of the discussions involving political "base assumptions" - most of those are border on "verbissen" (sorry, does not translate well into english - a mix out of "taken too seriously" and reflex-like "dogged" behaviour, coupled with a tad of missionary way of "arguing" beliefs instead of verifiable facts).
Pugnacious works for me only face2face (and even there most of the time I could not take that serious even shortly after puberty), as my reflexes are accustomed/habituated to living in an area with low gun density and are tuned down for "across the room" situations ;-) BUT: online "attacks" most of the time only (if anything...) result in a raised eyebrow - even if it happened a handful of times that this was on something I myself had written... For me the reason to stay tuned is the "unxepected quarters" ranging from Dragan's semantic gymnastics to Charles often highly parallel, but sometimes radically different POV, sprinkled with links from the mistress of those and others, from a crowd with an IQ-level they could survive on our autobahn if it were speed.

regards

thomas