Petersburgerstraße 9, Berlin - 1941
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Just a fiscal quarter ago the German Chancellor professed or pretended to profess (or, indeed, *pretended to pretend to profess) that the American spy apparatus' dragnet was unworthy of Stasi comparisons, analogizing such analogizing to downplaying the severity of Stasi misdeeds, though I don't think she meant metaphorically.
* This is not to say that her pretending to pretend means that her subordinate pretending wouldn't be genuine pretending, just that for those in her inner circle who knew she was pretending, she would be, by default, playing to them on another level.
Now that reports are floating around about the NSA's tapping of Merkel's mobile phone conversations, she is playacting at being a stern Answer Demanderin. You know, like, if the situation's been in fact so situated, and how it'd be therefore a necessary part of her ego, if not her job, to pretend to be so critical, though it offers only metaphorical relief to the ego.
Diplomacy was never more deserving of the subjunctive mood of a passive voice in present perfect.
I'm not sure what she's feigning on about, her having free passage between East and West - and with outstanding cell service. I think her hamming it up is downplaying what it'd be like if we ever were to have real problems.
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AriannaOnLine recently inaugurated a German domain version of their not-quite patented freedom of the unpaid journalist & desperate to be read blogger blog.
Adjacent to that at the top is a story about a requisition from German Military Command for weaponed remote aerial aircraft. They've hitherto employed reconnaissance drones only, which they can't seem to get to kill the people they are spying on.
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There is no freedom more precious than the inviolable pretension to be able to pick your poison.
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Petersburgerstraße 87, Berlin - 2013
