Occasionally, the topic of the Muslim wear of the niqab comes up in German chat forums. The niqab, for those of you unfamiliar with it.....is the facial covering which allows only the eyes to be seen, which some Islamic women wear.
Twenty years ago, other than in a German airport with people transiting through.....you rarely ever saw the garment. Today? You can walk the shopping district of any German city and probably see at least ten women over a four-hour period wearing it. German business operations now have to deal with customers who walk in and require service. German government operations also are affected. As are schools, libraries, and transportation services.
France has written up a law which affects the wearing in a direct way. You can't wear it in a general public area....like buses, or on streets. Violation involves a 150 Euro fine, and re-education class which teaches you about the law. The only exceptions to the law....are your place of worship, your home, and your private vehicle.
I've done a fair amount of reading over the subject, and have come to observe that there just isn't any written code or Islamic rule from the Quran that dictates you must wear it, or even the gloves that you occasionally see women wearing as well.
So, I come to this odd feature of communications. In the world that we live.....there are verbal and non-verbal communications. Over the past ten thousand years....we've relied upon communications to get ideals, comments, and discussion across a wide spectrum.
One could say that the Age of Enlightenment started in the mid-1600's.....this whole thought process of communications started to bring about a thriving society. Books, knowledge, discussion, logic, philosophy, openness, science, study, the thought process, and contact all mixed to bring in a bold new world that exists in Europe today.
The non-verbal side of this? While glance, eye-contact, volume, diction, vocal nuance, posture, and dress all matter.....the niqab hides the others (facial view, eye brows, etc). Happiness, frustration, emphasis, humor....can all be lost because of the niqab.
Criticism of the situation? It's hard to sit there and have a conversation with someone whose basis of life is heavily influenced by their religious thought process, and what someone told them to believe in. They've bought into the argument, and will defend their position.....acting as though you've challenged their entire religious process by commenting on a nigab problem. If a number of German comedians started to pick up the nigab and wear it as a manly garment.....everyone enthusiastic about the nigab would get all peppy and frustrated by the act. The comedians will come out in the dozen-odd nigabs that are commonly seen.....each with a more revealing look....and eventually ask the women in question which nigab is the only one discussed in the Quran. You can sit and imagine the various answers given on that question.
The German tolerance crowd will have a problem in getting this settled across the non-tolerance crowd.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Robbery in My Region
Last Wednesday night, we had a robbery in the local area (Biebrich, a neighborhood of Wiesbaden).
Late that night, a truck pulled up and dumped off a pallet in the parking lot adjacent to a local grocery. The pallet had 55 fir Christmas trees.
As Thursday morning came....the staff arrived and were going to put the trees near the door for sale....but discovered that during the evening....the trees were stolen.
Total value? Cops say roughly 2,000 Euro.
You'd have to sit and imagine this scene. Late on an evening.....some guys walking around, and just noticing the trees unguarded. You had to have a truck or van.....plus a friend or two to help. You can figure the trees were 'bundled' and it likely took ten minutes to load up the van and drive off.
The team? I'm guessing that they will try to set up their own sales operation on some parking lot in the middle of nowhere....thus hoping no one comes to ask about a sales permit or where they got their trees.
Late that night, a truck pulled up and dumped off a pallet in the parking lot adjacent to a local grocery. The pallet had 55 fir Christmas trees.
As Thursday morning came....the staff arrived and were going to put the trees near the door for sale....but discovered that during the evening....the trees were stolen.
Total value? Cops say roughly 2,000 Euro.
You'd have to sit and imagine this scene. Late on an evening.....some guys walking around, and just noticing the trees unguarded. You had to have a truck or van.....plus a friend or two to help. You can figure the trees were 'bundled' and it likely took ten minutes to load up the van and drive off.
The team? I'm guessing that they will try to set up their own sales operation on some parking lot in the middle of nowhere....thus hoping no one comes to ask about a sales permit or where they got their trees.
Friday, November 28, 2014
The Funding Gimmick for Refugees
The German federal government finally came out this morning and agreed to pass down funding to individual German states in support of their operations for refugees.
The amount? A maximum of 500 million Euro for 2015 and 2016, to be paid out on expenses for the refugee centers. The negative to the deal? Half of the money must be paid back within twenty years. So you can imagine yourself a mayor of some town which has been ordered by the a state government in Germany to take in 150 refugees, and there's finally some real funding besides the six to seven Euro a person per day for food. Then you sit there and think about the 100,000 Euro that you might be able to procure to cover 'other' expenses for 2015 and 2016.....now realizing that somewhere over the next twenty years.....you have to invent some property tax or fee within the city to pay back 50,000 Euro.
Yeah, it's a screwed-up loan in some ways....without any stupid fee or interest rate attached.
The likely end scenario to this? Every mayor and city council member will grab onto the money and accept it with no heartburn. The payback deal? They aren't worried....they won't be around in ten to fifteen years when people start to discuss this. The folks standing there in eighteen years? They will be yanking on both the CDU and SPD to dismiss the stupid pay-back part of the deal, and they will eventually do this.
So, this whole thing is a contrived gimmick to make the government look good for now, and look stupid twenty years in the future. That's the simplicity of the deal.
As for use? I'd take a guess that new furniture will be procured in 2015, along with some leased vehicles now being used by the refugee centers. The 500 million Euro? I'll make a bet that most of the money is already spent by the end of 2015, and it'll just lead onto episode number two.....more funding.
The amount? A maximum of 500 million Euro for 2015 and 2016, to be paid out on expenses for the refugee centers. The negative to the deal? Half of the money must be paid back within twenty years. So you can imagine yourself a mayor of some town which has been ordered by the a state government in Germany to take in 150 refugees, and there's finally some real funding besides the six to seven Euro a person per day for food. Then you sit there and think about the 100,000 Euro that you might be able to procure to cover 'other' expenses for 2015 and 2016.....now realizing that somewhere over the next twenty years.....you have to invent some property tax or fee within the city to pay back 50,000 Euro.
Yeah, it's a screwed-up loan in some ways....without any stupid fee or interest rate attached.
The likely end scenario to this? Every mayor and city council member will grab onto the money and accept it with no heartburn. The payback deal? They aren't worried....they won't be around in ten to fifteen years when people start to discuss this. The folks standing there in eighteen years? They will be yanking on both the CDU and SPD to dismiss the stupid pay-back part of the deal, and they will eventually do this.
So, this whole thing is a contrived gimmick to make the government look good for now, and look stupid twenty years in the future. That's the simplicity of the deal.
As for use? I'd take a guess that new furniture will be procured in 2015, along with some leased vehicles now being used by the refugee centers. The 500 million Euro? I'll make a bet that most of the money is already spent by the end of 2015, and it'll just lead onto episode number two.....more funding.
Zwangseinquartierung?
Gunter Grass is an intellectual German writer who is fairly respected around Germany. He won the 1999 Noble Prize for Literature, and is an occasional guest on various talk shows. So, when he speaks....he adds weight to the conversation. I won't say it's always positive weight, but it's in one direction or another.
Yesterday, Grass had a public speaking and talked up the dismal situation on refugees in Germany. The government operation simply isn't running well, and has made some of the refugees frustrated. So Grass's solution to this is: Zwangseinquartierung.
Zwangseinquartierung?
Around 1943, as the allies finally starting bombing German industrial cities....various neighborhoods were destroyed. Families would return from the shelter to find their apartment building heavily damaged and no place to live. Friends, neighbors, and relatives did the Christian thing, and invited this family to move in with them. That's what Zwangseinquartierung relates to.
Across Germany.....Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Mannheim, etc....Zwangseinquartierung became a reality of life. In the beginning, it wasn't a big issue. By the spring of 1945....especially if you lived in Berlin or Frankfurt....a lot of people were living in this type of situation. Going through all of 1945 and 1946....it's wasn't until 1947 and in some cases 1948.....that Germans started to see new housing construction efforts and a chance to leave the cramped quarters they'd been stuck into.
Sit and imagine yourself in a comfortable ninety-square meter apartment (maybe three tiny bedrooms), and deciding that you'd take in a family of four. You move your kids around, and the family gets one bedroom to themselves. You settle back, and try to exist in this fashion for three to five years. Stressful? Yes. Frustrating? Yes. But you did it because it was the right thing to do.
In this case, Gunter Grass is asking something that goes beyond the acceptance level of most Germans. The refugees in question don't speak German.....and likely have various personal practices (from culture to religion) that make them significantly different from the 1940's crowd. Imagine a new house partner who has problems with you smoking, or booze in the house, or wine being used with cooking a dinner. Imagine a new house partner who likes to get up at 5AM, or watch soccer games nightly, or whines about your cats roaming the apartment.
Oddly enough, this topic that Gunter Grass raised got a minute or two of national news coverage last night, and got onto the front page of most big name German newspapers. By next week....some chat forums will use the topic to discuss integration and refugee treatment. The public? You could probably walk around urban and rural areas.....bringing this up. If a neighbor's house blew up from a gas-leak....a dozen folks would offer up some temp situation in their house. If you had some three-member refugee family show up from some faraway land.....from a hundred houses in the village....you might not find more than one single family to accept them, and that offer would be limited to one month max.
So, I'd kindly like to out-think Gunter Grass on this particular topic. Across Germany today....way out in the boonies.....in rural areas far away from Frankfurt and Mannheim.....are villages with dozens of empty houses and apartments. They've been unoccupied for five to ten years. These are villages without industry nearby or business opportunities. You could flip the electricity and water on within hours. Throw in 2,000 Euro of cheap furniture, and you got an apartment for a three-member family today. Why not shuffle these folks into these rural regions and utilize the assets you already have. Pay the landlord some rental amount fair for the region, and signal the issue as solved.
Oh, the refugee wanted a job and a more urban environment? Well....you didn't mention that requirement. Look, you just can't be picky about this sort of stuff. These refugees made a decision not to stay in their old land, because of a dozen-odd problems. Well.....if you come to Germany....you kinda have to accept what the deal of being a refugee involves. Maybe you have to accept a rural village in the middle of nowhere, along with neighbors who drink booze daily, and be pleasant with people who aren't of your religion. If it bothers you...move on. Maybe there is a perfect place for refugees in Europe. Maybe not.
All of this brings me to this conclusion. There never was a plan "A" in Germany to handle refugees. Plan "B" is marginally working and an embarrassment to most German intellectuals. The average German on the street....frankly doesn't care for the refugee mess, plan "B", or the discussions that intellectuals bring up. Refugees can't be too picky about the mess they are in. And if anyone says there's not a cost passed down to the local German taxpayer.....they are a fraud and aren't respectful of the truth.
Yesterday, Grass had a public speaking and talked up the dismal situation on refugees in Germany. The government operation simply isn't running well, and has made some of the refugees frustrated. So Grass's solution to this is: Zwangseinquartierung.
Zwangseinquartierung?
Around 1943, as the allies finally starting bombing German industrial cities....various neighborhoods were destroyed. Families would return from the shelter to find their apartment building heavily damaged and no place to live. Friends, neighbors, and relatives did the Christian thing, and invited this family to move in with them. That's what Zwangseinquartierung relates to.
Across Germany.....Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Mannheim, etc....Zwangseinquartierung became a reality of life. In the beginning, it wasn't a big issue. By the spring of 1945....especially if you lived in Berlin or Frankfurt....a lot of people were living in this type of situation. Going through all of 1945 and 1946....it's wasn't until 1947 and in some cases 1948.....that Germans started to see new housing construction efforts and a chance to leave the cramped quarters they'd been stuck into.
Sit and imagine yourself in a comfortable ninety-square meter apartment (maybe three tiny bedrooms), and deciding that you'd take in a family of four. You move your kids around, and the family gets one bedroom to themselves. You settle back, and try to exist in this fashion for three to five years. Stressful? Yes. Frustrating? Yes. But you did it because it was the right thing to do.
In this case, Gunter Grass is asking something that goes beyond the acceptance level of most Germans. The refugees in question don't speak German.....and likely have various personal practices (from culture to religion) that make them significantly different from the 1940's crowd. Imagine a new house partner who has problems with you smoking, or booze in the house, or wine being used with cooking a dinner. Imagine a new house partner who likes to get up at 5AM, or watch soccer games nightly, or whines about your cats roaming the apartment.
Oddly enough, this topic that Gunter Grass raised got a minute or two of national news coverage last night, and got onto the front page of most big name German newspapers. By next week....some chat forums will use the topic to discuss integration and refugee treatment. The public? You could probably walk around urban and rural areas.....bringing this up. If a neighbor's house blew up from a gas-leak....a dozen folks would offer up some temp situation in their house. If you had some three-member refugee family show up from some faraway land.....from a hundred houses in the village....you might not find more than one single family to accept them, and that offer would be limited to one month max.
So, I'd kindly like to out-think Gunter Grass on this particular topic. Across Germany today....way out in the boonies.....in rural areas far away from Frankfurt and Mannheim.....are villages with dozens of empty houses and apartments. They've been unoccupied for five to ten years. These are villages without industry nearby or business opportunities. You could flip the electricity and water on within hours. Throw in 2,000 Euro of cheap furniture, and you got an apartment for a three-member family today. Why not shuffle these folks into these rural regions and utilize the assets you already have. Pay the landlord some rental amount fair for the region, and signal the issue as solved.
Oh, the refugee wanted a job and a more urban environment? Well....you didn't mention that requirement. Look, you just can't be picky about this sort of stuff. These refugees made a decision not to stay in their old land, because of a dozen-odd problems. Well.....if you come to Germany....you kinda have to accept what the deal of being a refugee involves. Maybe you have to accept a rural village in the middle of nowhere, along with neighbors who drink booze daily, and be pleasant with people who aren't of your religion. If it bothers you...move on. Maybe there is a perfect place for refugees in Europe. Maybe not.
All of this brings me to this conclusion. There never was a plan "A" in Germany to handle refugees. Plan "B" is marginally working and an embarrassment to most German intellectuals. The average German on the street....frankly doesn't care for the refugee mess, plan "B", or the discussions that intellectuals bring up. Refugees can't be too picky about the mess they are in. And if anyone says there's not a cost passed down to the local German taxpayer.....they are a fraud and aren't respectful of the truth.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Germans, Road Funding, and Reality
In the early 1990s....I bought a property just north of Kaiserslautern. It was a small village (2,500 residents), that had a hotel, a pharmacy, two pubs, a bakery and a butcher-shop. At the end of town....lay this road to the 'big' village just four kilometers away. They had the gas station, the four grocery stores, the real pool, an ice-cream shop and twenty-odd business enterprises, along with a railway station.
For the past five or six decades....the route between these two villages became an important topic. There was no walking trail, as you might expect with most German villages. The road between the two? Well....it was roughly 5.5 kilometers....ziging and zaging at ninety-degree turns. No trees. No streams. No bridges. Just open fields and a slightly slanted hillside. Five-and-a-half kilometers of pavement to cover a four-kilometer distance.
What I learned the first year, as winter set in....between the morning temperatures and humidity.....you'd have black ice to develop. At least once a week from November to March....some car would skid off the road. Some would flip over. Some would ram into the side of an oncoming car. I reached a point by the second winter that I'd bypass the road and go an alternate route. The locals all knew that the curves built into the road since the 1920s.....was an issue. Both city councils had gone to the county and cited numbers/statistics over and over.....trying to get the road fixed.
Around the mid-1990s.....the county agreed to put funding into the road. Basically....they repaved it. Yeah.....the curves remained and you got the impression that no one at the county understood the overall issue at all. They simply understood that people wanted a repaving job......end of story.
So, an odd thing happened. Germany had the World Cup games for 2006. Kaiserslautern ended up as one of the cities in Germany with at least four games to be played. For the Pfalz (the state), this was a big deal......so they pulled out a big bundle of infrastructure money for the city of Kaiserslautern, and the county around it. All of this occurred in 2003, with three years of time to achieve various "shovel-ready" jobs.
Somewhere in the mix of things.....someone finally got this road project on the 'fix-list'. So they arrived one day and shut down the road for approximately six months. Then they reopened it.
They'd put in a paved bike trail between the two villages (the big shocker). You could now walk the route in a matter of twenty-five minutes.
The nine zig-zags? They removed three of them entirely, and spaced out the curves so you could drive 100 kph easily on this road (prior to this.....I wouldn't have driven faster than seventy kph). Over the next winter.....I can only remember two accidents occurring the entire winter on the road.
The other village down the road? They had a back-road leading into the village, which the Americans had started to refer years ago as 'suicide-road', because ice and snow would accumulate, and limited sunlight on the road throughout the winter made it highly dangerous. There was a sixty-degree curve at one point, where a dozen cars a year would slide off and run down a small hillside. Well.....this whole road was rebuilt, and turned into a highly safe road.
The truth is.....if the World Cup had never come.....we'd never have been given the extra money to do all of this extra stuff. In some ways, this is the reality of Germany today. You need some gimmick to attract extra funding from the state apparatus. Statistics aren't enough.....and since you can't fire political figures......you end up with a strange method of solving problems.
For the past five or six decades....the route between these two villages became an important topic. There was no walking trail, as you might expect with most German villages. The road between the two? Well....it was roughly 5.5 kilometers....ziging and zaging at ninety-degree turns. No trees. No streams. No bridges. Just open fields and a slightly slanted hillside. Five-and-a-half kilometers of pavement to cover a four-kilometer distance.
What I learned the first year, as winter set in....between the morning temperatures and humidity.....you'd have black ice to develop. At least once a week from November to March....some car would skid off the road. Some would flip over. Some would ram into the side of an oncoming car. I reached a point by the second winter that I'd bypass the road and go an alternate route. The locals all knew that the curves built into the road since the 1920s.....was an issue. Both city councils had gone to the county and cited numbers/statistics over and over.....trying to get the road fixed.
Around the mid-1990s.....the county agreed to put funding into the road. Basically....they repaved it. Yeah.....the curves remained and you got the impression that no one at the county understood the overall issue at all. They simply understood that people wanted a repaving job......end of story.
So, an odd thing happened. Germany had the World Cup games for 2006. Kaiserslautern ended up as one of the cities in Germany with at least four games to be played. For the Pfalz (the state), this was a big deal......so they pulled out a big bundle of infrastructure money for the city of Kaiserslautern, and the county around it. All of this occurred in 2003, with three years of time to achieve various "shovel-ready" jobs.
Somewhere in the mix of things.....someone finally got this road project on the 'fix-list'. So they arrived one day and shut down the road for approximately six months. Then they reopened it.
They'd put in a paved bike trail between the two villages (the big shocker). You could now walk the route in a matter of twenty-five minutes.
The nine zig-zags? They removed three of them entirely, and spaced out the curves so you could drive 100 kph easily on this road (prior to this.....I wouldn't have driven faster than seventy kph). Over the next winter.....I can only remember two accidents occurring the entire winter on the road.
The other village down the road? They had a back-road leading into the village, which the Americans had started to refer years ago as 'suicide-road', because ice and snow would accumulate, and limited sunlight on the road throughout the winter made it highly dangerous. There was a sixty-degree curve at one point, where a dozen cars a year would slide off and run down a small hillside. Well.....this whole road was rebuilt, and turned into a highly safe road.
The truth is.....if the World Cup had never come.....we'd never have been given the extra money to do all of this extra stuff. In some ways, this is the reality of Germany today. You need some gimmick to attract extra funding from the state apparatus. Statistics aren't enough.....and since you can't fire political figures......you end up with a strange method of solving problems.
Germans and Stress
I sat and was reading a curious article this morning out of Der Western (a newspaper here in Germany). They reported that a health insurance company (GfK) had gone out and done a survey on stress. What they found was.....roughly three out of ten Germans report that they are under constant pressure at work. Four out of ten report that the work-load continues to escalate.
German work environments, as a whole....are a bit different than American environments. There aren't that many office chatter moments, or loose conversation. Germans tend to keep the office environment fairly professional and are focused on the work given. Expanding out an office to handle additional work-loads? In an American office.....if you are making more profit and having more customers.....it'd just immediately happen, and you'd let these folks go if business dropped. German businesses aren't made in that way.....they will only add personnel when absolutely necessary....trying to avoid cuts later if the business declines slightly.
Why do a report on stress? Because it's all going to lead later to some type of wellness situation or stress rehab center....like the Kur. The Kur is the concept of sending a guy with stress or depression or anxiety off for a month of forced relaxation. For an American, it'd be like your doctor finally saying your work is hurting your life....so here's a four-week hotel deal in the Rockies, without the family, and you are supposed to attend daily classes, walk or swim every day, and talk to a mental health guy at least once or twice a day. It's been going on for decades here in Germany, and most people say it works.
The odd thing about this report that GfK produced? They found that one out of four folks thought that exceptional stress was a positive on their lives. I sat there and pondered over this. There's no written explanation for what they said, or forty-line detail over why people would think that way.
Maybe there is 'good' stress and 'bad' stress. Maybe people live such routine lives at home....that this brief eight hours of stressful work is a blessing to some people. I might even agree that stress makes people more creative....finding ways to shorten a process or lessening paperwork.
What will happen to the report? It'll likely get filed, and never be brought up again.....sadly.
German work environments, as a whole....are a bit different than American environments. There aren't that many office chatter moments, or loose conversation. Germans tend to keep the office environment fairly professional and are focused on the work given. Expanding out an office to handle additional work-loads? In an American office.....if you are making more profit and having more customers.....it'd just immediately happen, and you'd let these folks go if business dropped. German businesses aren't made in that way.....they will only add personnel when absolutely necessary....trying to avoid cuts later if the business declines slightly.
Why do a report on stress? Because it's all going to lead later to some type of wellness situation or stress rehab center....like the Kur. The Kur is the concept of sending a guy with stress or depression or anxiety off for a month of forced relaxation. For an American, it'd be like your doctor finally saying your work is hurting your life....so here's a four-week hotel deal in the Rockies, without the family, and you are supposed to attend daily classes, walk or swim every day, and talk to a mental health guy at least once or twice a day. It's been going on for decades here in Germany, and most people say it works.
The odd thing about this report that GfK produced? They found that one out of four folks thought that exceptional stress was a positive on their lives. I sat there and pondered over this. There's no written explanation for what they said, or forty-line detail over why people would think that way.
Maybe there is 'good' stress and 'bad' stress. Maybe people live such routine lives at home....that this brief eight hours of stressful work is a blessing to some people. I might even agree that stress makes people more creative....finding ways to shorten a process or lessening paperwork.
What will happen to the report? It'll likely get filed, and never be brought up again.....sadly.
Monday, November 24, 2014
Talking the Solidarity Tax
Here in Germany, we have a special tax called the Solidarity Tax. It came up on the list of topics today for an odd reason.
After the wall came down (1989)....there was an urgent need for more capital for Germany to rebuild the eastern part of the country. So, the Solidarity Tax was invented. Up to 1,922 Euro a year for a married couple working was the breaking point where you didn't have to worry about the Solidarity Tax. After that annual tax base, if you made more.....you paid the Solidarity Tax, and it was on a increasing volume. As you made more, you paid more. The max was 5.5-percent.
An example of this....after your bill was figured up and you owed 10,000 Euro for your annual tax situation (both you and the wife).....then the government tossed 550 Euro more onto the situation (10,550 Euro total now).
The original goal was to run this for a definite period. Well....that period comes up for review in 2019.
The use of the pot of money? This has become a topic that political figures now chat about, and would like to use in different ways......besides pushing the money toward the eastern parts of Germany. Is the east still behind? Some would argue about this, but if you rode around on the various streets, roads and bridges.....I think you'd come to agree that they are finally at the same level as the western part of Germany.
The CDU position? They'd like to just take down the tax entirely.....handing the money back to business operations and private citizens.
The Greens and SPD? Today, they came out and said that they'd like to continue the tax, but now refocus the money around the sixteen states.
Does it matter? From 1998 to 2009 (11 years), it added up to about a 100 billion-plus Euro. You can imagine two scenarios. One is where sixteen German states get the 100 billion-plus over ten years.....to build roads, schools, bridges, concert halls, and monuments. The other is where the German private consumer and business operations get the money back to themselves and spend it on the economy (new cars, new houses, vacations, boob-jobs, investment money, retirement funds, etc).
For 2015 and 2016, I don't see it being more than a topic brought up three or four times a year. For the 2017 election? It'll become one of the three biggest topics of the campaign. For the small guy who doesn't pay much in taxes, this won't amount to much personally, and they would prefer to see the money go toward their individual states. For higher wage earners and corporations? They'd probably prefer to see the money in their hands. To be honest.....the little guy really isn't contributing much into this pot and probably shouldn't have much to say. But the reality here is that politics makes it an across-the-board mess for the public to sort out.
So, when you hear about the Solidarity Tax.....it's a lot of cash that will come to exist in a different form in less than five years. It might be a curious topic to hear about.
After the wall came down (1989)....there was an urgent need for more capital for Germany to rebuild the eastern part of the country. So, the Solidarity Tax was invented. Up to 1,922 Euro a year for a married couple working was the breaking point where you didn't have to worry about the Solidarity Tax. After that annual tax base, if you made more.....you paid the Solidarity Tax, and it was on a increasing volume. As you made more, you paid more. The max was 5.5-percent.
An example of this....after your bill was figured up and you owed 10,000 Euro for your annual tax situation (both you and the wife).....then the government tossed 550 Euro more onto the situation (10,550 Euro total now).
The original goal was to run this for a definite period. Well....that period comes up for review in 2019.
The use of the pot of money? This has become a topic that political figures now chat about, and would like to use in different ways......besides pushing the money toward the eastern parts of Germany. Is the east still behind? Some would argue about this, but if you rode around on the various streets, roads and bridges.....I think you'd come to agree that they are finally at the same level as the western part of Germany.
The CDU position? They'd like to just take down the tax entirely.....handing the money back to business operations and private citizens.
The Greens and SPD? Today, they came out and said that they'd like to continue the tax, but now refocus the money around the sixteen states.
Does it matter? From 1998 to 2009 (11 years), it added up to about a 100 billion-plus Euro. You can imagine two scenarios. One is where sixteen German states get the 100 billion-plus over ten years.....to build roads, schools, bridges, concert halls, and monuments. The other is where the German private consumer and business operations get the money back to themselves and spend it on the economy (new cars, new houses, vacations, boob-jobs, investment money, retirement funds, etc).
For 2015 and 2016, I don't see it being more than a topic brought up three or four times a year. For the 2017 election? It'll become one of the three biggest topics of the campaign. For the small guy who doesn't pay much in taxes, this won't amount to much personally, and they would prefer to see the money go toward their individual states. For higher wage earners and corporations? They'd probably prefer to see the money in their hands. To be honest.....the little guy really isn't contributing much into this pot and probably shouldn't have much to say. But the reality here is that politics makes it an across-the-board mess for the public to sort out.
So, when you hear about the Solidarity Tax.....it's a lot of cash that will come to exist in a different form in less than five years. It might be a curious topic to hear about.
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Robbery in the Neighborhood
The upstairs guy came to note to me today....that his lady-friend's Audi A3 (seven years old) had been stolen overnight.
Yep, it'd been parked in front of our house, and this morning.....gone.
For 2014, I think the village (around 4,000 residents), just a couple miles outside of Wiesbaden, is up to around ten vehicles stolen. They tend to be Audi or BMW.
The odds? Two months ago, one of the village's stolen cars was noted on the autobahn going into Czech. The cops picked up on the plate numbers.....pulled the guy over, and arrested him.
I'd take a guess that from Wiesbaden itself...counting up the 'burbs' within the town.....there's probably near a hundred vehicles stolen this year. It has to be a mafia group working the deal.....all driving the vehicles as quickly as possible from the region over toward Czech and onto either Ukraine or Russia. They just make up forged registration paperwork and nobody says anything as they sell it.
Action by the cops? Nothing much. There's only three roads into town and you'd think they'd put up some camera that gets active at night and takes pictures of folks within the vehicle.
The thing that gets me.....even if you have full insurance, you ARE screwed. A seven-year old car will pull maybe $7500 max from the insurance company. A new car? Figure $25,000. So, in effect....this car which was in great shape and maybe another five to seven years of availability.....is gone and you have to find the fifteen-odd thousand out of your pocket. In my mind, it's a pretty negative deal.
Yep, it'd been parked in front of our house, and this morning.....gone.
For 2014, I think the village (around 4,000 residents), just a couple miles outside of Wiesbaden, is up to around ten vehicles stolen. They tend to be Audi or BMW.
The odds? Two months ago, one of the village's stolen cars was noted on the autobahn going into Czech. The cops picked up on the plate numbers.....pulled the guy over, and arrested him.
I'd take a guess that from Wiesbaden itself...counting up the 'burbs' within the town.....there's probably near a hundred vehicles stolen this year. It has to be a mafia group working the deal.....all driving the vehicles as quickly as possible from the region over toward Czech and onto either Ukraine or Russia. They just make up forged registration paperwork and nobody says anything as they sell it.
Action by the cops? Nothing much. There's only three roads into town and you'd think they'd put up some camera that gets active at night and takes pictures of folks within the vehicle.
The thing that gets me.....even if you have full insurance, you ARE screwed. A seven-year old car will pull maybe $7500 max from the insurance company. A new car? Figure $25,000. So, in effect....this car which was in great shape and maybe another five to seven years of availability.....is gone and you have to find the fifteen-odd thousand out of your pocket. In my mind, it's a pretty negative deal.
A Local Clinic
I live in an area of Germany (within twenty miles of Wiesbaden) that has had its share of sorrow and woes over history.
In 1242, the local folks around Wiesbaden had upset the Catholic Bishop of Mainz, who maintained some control over the region. The Bishop sent over some thugs....and burned a good portion of Wiesbaden down to the ground.
From WW II, roughly 4,000 Jews from around Wiesbaden were rounded up and sent off to death or concentration camps.
From 1676/77, the local town of Idstein conducted witch trials and sentenced off 39 men and women to death.
Toward the conclusion of WW II....the US and UK conducted bombing runs over the train station just over the hill from where I live and destroyed the whole railway, and just about every house within walking distance of the station.
So, this week, I came around to Hadamar.....a town just north of Limburg, maybe twenty minutes driving distance from my place.
Hadamar has a fascinating little history. In 1883, some medical group got some funding and renovated a former monastery into a clinic. The original concept was to take vagrants and "nuts" from the region, and intern them within a walled community, and attempt to treat them. There might have been some positive aspects with the plan in the beginning, but with all things....it's not easy to follow the moral trail.
236 rooms for men, and 80 rooms for women were set up. It was generally supported by the state health care apparatus created by Bismarck.
Over a twenty-year period, it progressed from a treatment center....to simply a holding facility.
After the Kaiser was kicked out and new governmental reforms occurred in the 1920s....Hadamar found itself various practices to tout.....to include sterilization and euthanasia. The government finally stepped in by 1927 and deemed these to be inappropriate.
As the Nazi era came into effect (1930s).....the state apparatus gradually changed. Less funding became one of the objectives of the new structure of health control.....based mostly out of Berlin, instead of individual states.
Hadamar needed more of a gimmick to ensure it's financial survival. In 1939, Hadamar became the place where you sent German kids with serious issues to be sterilized. The Berlin folks made it a funded project. At some point, the evaluation went to a new stage where euthanasia was accepted (easily in fact). Within six months, the new attitude was that you didn't need to limit this to just kids....you could do the same thing with adults.
The local gas chamber at the facility went into full operation, and by the end of summer of 1941....they'd done the job on 10,000 individuals. Note, these were Germans....kids, crazies, adults with mental issues, women who'd married Jews, disturbed guys left over from WW I, etc.
This entire operation was known throughout the community and openly became a treat that teachers would use on students...suggesting they'd be sent off to the ovens if they were cooperative. At some point near the end of 1941....the Catholic Bishop sent off a letter to Berlin....noting that this was fully known by the public and not being condoned or accepted well.
For some reason, the Hitler staff made a decision to temporarily shut down the operation by the end of 1941.
This was short-lived....with the operation starting back up in 1942. The new method was to avoid the gas chambers and crematorium methods....simply using old-fashioned euthanasia on incoming patients.
The groups? After 1942, the list simply got wider. German Army solders who'd suffered shell-shock....were being sent there. Germans at the facility were killing their own society, without any reservations.
All total? Generally, the number with phase I and II....come near 15,000 killed. Most all were Germans.
When the US Army arrived in the spring of 1945....it's difficult to figure out how they stumbled upon the operation. Nothing much is written of this discovery. I would suspect that some locals got into a conversation with approaching US Army personnel....told them of the facility and figured that would finally settle the problem for the locals.
The Army walked in and came to be fairly shocked at the extent of the operation. By the end of 1945....there was one significant problem with the charging of crimes on this. They had enough rules in the book for war crimes, but simply killing your own countrymen....that wasn't in the book of rules. So, they invented a new rule called rule number 'ten', which involved crimes against humanity.
The investigation continued, and by 1947, Germany had established a court process to handle 'euthanasia' crimes. They eventually hanged three of the folks who ran the establishment.
Hadamar? After WW II.....there was some agreement that there were still a number of mentally ill people around, and the facility made sense to keep open. Today, it's a mental facility with modern buildings and some plaques on the wall to note it's long history. Buried around the facility are the remains of the 15,000-odd folks.
How many sterilizations took place there? Unknown. From Germany as of a total, it was near 400,000. You can figure that tens of thousands probably were greeted at the gate of Hadamar, and a day later were sterilized. In some ways, you can look around Germany today, adding up the men lost in the World War I/II, and the Germans forced under sterilization, and note the zero-population growth attained in today's atmosphere.
There's a phrase that fits this....social Darwinism. Basically....society working to evolve itself, within it's own medical means, and ensure the fittest and more mentally capable folks carry society forward.
For me, this is an odd piece of history from the local region. How many folks know the story? I'd take a guess that barely one or two percent know the whole story. It's not a pleasant thing that you'd like to share or discuss.
Photo: ushmm.org. Date is probably around the summer of 1941 before they were told to shut down for phase one. Smoke is from the crematorium on the site.
Photo: ushmm.org. Date is probably around the summer of 1941 before they were told to shut down for phase one. Smoke is from the crematorium on the site.
Germany and Refugee News
When you talk refugee status in Germany....you tend to get a brief and chaotic look by the typical German.
This week, there were some talks about how the region (Hessen) will handle the housing situation. On the table currently.....there's the Bundeswehr Army barracks in Fulda, which is supposed to be completely vacated by mid-summer of 2015 (one report says third-quarter, one media source said mid-summer). The talk from the political folks is that the barracks has moved up to choice number one, but folks around Fulda are not pleased with the discussion.
The three centers currently in operation around Hessen have reached maximum capacity (3,000). So the recent efforts have been to funnel some folks out to small towns and just force town councils to cook up some type of arrangement because there's just no more room.
Added to the chaos is the decision this week by Hessen's finance ministry to channel roughly 30 million Euro over to the refugee centers.....to make up for cash already used by the local communities of Giessen, Bad Arolsen and Kirchhain. What some political folks have said....it's simply not enough. Trying to find more loose capital in the state budget of Hessen is just about impossible at this point....without cutting into actual programs and allowances....thus getting just about everyone infuriated.
A month ago, the government put out a figure that they estimate for the full-year of 2014 in Germany.....of 300,000 refugees. The simple truth is....they just don't have the capacity to handle this type number, and it's likely to be just as many in 2015. The pressure on individual communities to cover basic life requirements? If you only get X amount of Euro to feed and house 300 refugees....then you figure food, heat, utilities, etc.....you come to the point where it's just a break-even point and you wonder what happens in two years? Disgruntled refugees sitting and thinking they were going to be on some mythical and magical deal with a real house, real job, and real lifestyle.
Folks around Fulda have to be concerned over the old military barracks turning into a refugee center, but then you look around Germany at dozens of US facilities in some stage of being turned over, and the locals are likely freaking out because they really don't want ownership at this point in time. It simply begs for creating a ghetto out of thin-air.
In essence, there simply never was a plan "A", and we've mostly wrapped up a marginal plan "B" for the situation, and probably already looking for a plan "C".
This week, there were some talks about how the region (Hessen) will handle the housing situation. On the table currently.....there's the Bundeswehr Army barracks in Fulda, which is supposed to be completely vacated by mid-summer of 2015 (one report says third-quarter, one media source said mid-summer). The talk from the political folks is that the barracks has moved up to choice number one, but folks around Fulda are not pleased with the discussion.
The three centers currently in operation around Hessen have reached maximum capacity (3,000). So the recent efforts have been to funnel some folks out to small towns and just force town councils to cook up some type of arrangement because there's just no more room.
Added to the chaos is the decision this week by Hessen's finance ministry to channel roughly 30 million Euro over to the refugee centers.....to make up for cash already used by the local communities of Giessen, Bad Arolsen and Kirchhain. What some political folks have said....it's simply not enough. Trying to find more loose capital in the state budget of Hessen is just about impossible at this point....without cutting into actual programs and allowances....thus getting just about everyone infuriated.
A month ago, the government put out a figure that they estimate for the full-year of 2014 in Germany.....of 300,000 refugees. The simple truth is....they just don't have the capacity to handle this type number, and it's likely to be just as many in 2015. The pressure on individual communities to cover basic life requirements? If you only get X amount of Euro to feed and house 300 refugees....then you figure food, heat, utilities, etc.....you come to the point where it's just a break-even point and you wonder what happens in two years? Disgruntled refugees sitting and thinking they were going to be on some mythical and magical deal with a real house, real job, and real lifestyle.
Folks around Fulda have to be concerned over the old military barracks turning into a refugee center, but then you look around Germany at dozens of US facilities in some stage of being turned over, and the locals are likely freaking out because they really don't want ownership at this point in time. It simply begs for creating a ghetto out of thin-air.
In essence, there simply never was a plan "A", and we've mostly wrapped up a marginal plan "B" for the situation, and probably already looking for a plan "C".
Friday, November 21, 2014
The Tolerance Week by ARD
The public-network folks continue to run this week with the topic of tolerance. Our local public-run radio state (HR3) did their part yesterday.
One of the editors for the radio station out of Frankfurt did her part.....by donning a burka (completely covered, to include the face), and walked along the streets of Frankfurt to get commentary from people. Generally, the tolerance level noted by the public....didn't get past the marginal level, as the dressed-up burka gal discovered.
You can imagine the scene. Gal dressed in black burka....face covered except for eyes, and a film crew behind her covering the public viewing her along a major shopping area of Frankfurt. A circus-like atmosphere to bring up into the public spectrum via the network's tolerance week theme. The brief thirty-odd second clip with the tolerance coverage? Short and to the point.....the public perception isn't progressing, and it's just not going to be accepted (in the long-run or short-run).
It's an interesting gimmick here....tolerance. Because of intellectual status, a number of people were willing to use tolerance to reinforce their perceptions and beliefs upon the intolerant.....assuming that they weren't focused or thinking the right way. All you needed to do....was simply put a few pieces of reality out there.....let them know that peer pressure was to be applied....and people would fall in your direction. It's a simple task, if you think about it.
An entire network (state-run of course), spending an entire week, and working all of their news pieces, forums, and a fair amount of their entertainment works (movies, TV shows, etc) into the situation. All focused on some element of tolerance, and selling it to you as the viewer.
I'm just an American who happens to be in the middle of this and logically viewing it the way that an American would see it. The tolerance group assumes they are in the tolerate chair, and what they suggest is the right point to view everything. The folks on the other side of this.....by their view....are intolerant. So, their view is simply to right-a-wrong. How they came to be in the right chair and focused in such a way? Unknown. Nor would I suggest that they have any understanding of the people that they are focused against.
It's a fair amount of effort that the network guys have used in this discussion....across the entire nation of Germany. Oddly enough....from regular viewers.....there might only be ten million Germans who routinely view ARD....of the eighty million residents. For what was put into this effort....I'm not sure if any pay-back will ever occur.
Anyway, the positive is that we are on Friday, and the theme has come to a conclusion as of today. The tolerance sales job comes to a close, and reality goes back into prospective.
One of the editors for the radio station out of Frankfurt did her part.....by donning a burka (completely covered, to include the face), and walked along the streets of Frankfurt to get commentary from people. Generally, the tolerance level noted by the public....didn't get past the marginal level, as the dressed-up burka gal discovered.
You can imagine the scene. Gal dressed in black burka....face covered except for eyes, and a film crew behind her covering the public viewing her along a major shopping area of Frankfurt. A circus-like atmosphere to bring up into the public spectrum via the network's tolerance week theme. The brief thirty-odd second clip with the tolerance coverage? Short and to the point.....the public perception isn't progressing, and it's just not going to be accepted (in the long-run or short-run).
It's an interesting gimmick here....tolerance. Because of intellectual status, a number of people were willing to use tolerance to reinforce their perceptions and beliefs upon the intolerant.....assuming that they weren't focused or thinking the right way. All you needed to do....was simply put a few pieces of reality out there.....let them know that peer pressure was to be applied....and people would fall in your direction. It's a simple task, if you think about it.
An entire network (state-run of course), spending an entire week, and working all of their news pieces, forums, and a fair amount of their entertainment works (movies, TV shows, etc) into the situation. All focused on some element of tolerance, and selling it to you as the viewer.
I'm just an American who happens to be in the middle of this and logically viewing it the way that an American would see it. The tolerance group assumes they are in the tolerate chair, and what they suggest is the right point to view everything. The folks on the other side of this.....by their view....are intolerant. So, their view is simply to right-a-wrong. How they came to be in the right chair and focused in such a way? Unknown. Nor would I suggest that they have any understanding of the people that they are focused against.
It's a fair amount of effort that the network guys have used in this discussion....across the entire nation of Germany. Oddly enough....from regular viewers.....there might only be ten million Germans who routinely view ARD....of the eighty million residents. For what was put into this effort....I'm not sure if any pay-back will ever occur.
Anyway, the positive is that we are on Friday, and the theme has come to a conclusion as of today. The tolerance sales job comes to a close, and reality goes back into prospective.
Frankfurt Update
HR, our local public-run TV network, did a news report from last night to cover the developing episode in Frankfurt over marijuana. The Linke Party has pushed the subject to the top of the discussion stage within the local city hall, and there's going to be some debate over the next week or two of a pilot-program.....which more or less opens the door for Frankfurt to become the first city in Germany with an open-policy on marijuana usage.
What you see lining up....is a group of different political parties finding common ground. The Linke Party, the Greens, the SPD, and the FDP.....all appear to agree on this open-door policy. The CDU? Without enough numbers to oppose it, will simply be the minority. The CDU has strongly hinted that there is no cause to rush into this or develop this as a fast-paced project. At this point, I think they've lost the argument, and the pro-marijuana crowd have the numbers to approve just about any program they desire.
Based on commentary so far, I'd take a guess that it'll be a step-by-step process, with some relaxed rules going into effect by spring of 2015. Another round of talks by fall of 2015, with more relaxation. And by summer of 2016....pot shops will be in full operation within Frankfurt city limits....taxed by the city....and selling to adults.
No one in Wiesbaden or Mainz will care much. Mostly because if you needed a joint.....you already have your local guy that you buy from. But, if you felt the need to be legal.....it's a 30-minute train ride to Frankfurt and you could buy your weed from the legit city dealer there.
What's all this say? Society has changed over the past five decades, and a majority of voters (I think) have smoked marijuana and don't think it's a big deal. The Linke Party is pressing a topic that people connect with.....and are getting more local support than they did five years ago. This in turn.....takes votes away from the SPD.
All of this would lead a person to ask if the voting public is changing. I noted this morning that a new poll suggest eighty-percent of Germans are in favor of assisted suicide now, which means it'll come up in 2015 as a major political topic. If you had a listing of significant topics that people were generally against in 1984.....here thirty years later....they'd be mostly approved by the general public. It's a trend. Society is more accepting of things that were not acceptable years ago.
With the trend, I'd say by 2016....Frankfurt will have legal pot shops, and Wiesbaden might see the same thing by 2018.
What you see lining up....is a group of different political parties finding common ground. The Linke Party, the Greens, the SPD, and the FDP.....all appear to agree on this open-door policy. The CDU? Without enough numbers to oppose it, will simply be the minority. The CDU has strongly hinted that there is no cause to rush into this or develop this as a fast-paced project. At this point, I think they've lost the argument, and the pro-marijuana crowd have the numbers to approve just about any program they desire.
Based on commentary so far, I'd take a guess that it'll be a step-by-step process, with some relaxed rules going into effect by spring of 2015. Another round of talks by fall of 2015, with more relaxation. And by summer of 2016....pot shops will be in full operation within Frankfurt city limits....taxed by the city....and selling to adults.
No one in Wiesbaden or Mainz will care much. Mostly because if you needed a joint.....you already have your local guy that you buy from. But, if you felt the need to be legal.....it's a 30-minute train ride to Frankfurt and you could buy your weed from the legit city dealer there.
What's all this say? Society has changed over the past five decades, and a majority of voters (I think) have smoked marijuana and don't think it's a big deal. The Linke Party is pressing a topic that people connect with.....and are getting more local support than they did five years ago. This in turn.....takes votes away from the SPD.
All of this would lead a person to ask if the voting public is changing. I noted this morning that a new poll suggest eighty-percent of Germans are in favor of assisted suicide now, which means it'll come up in 2015 as a major political topic. If you had a listing of significant topics that people were generally against in 1984.....here thirty years later....they'd be mostly approved by the general public. It's a trend. Society is more accepting of things that were not acceptable years ago.
With the trend, I'd say by 2016....Frankfurt will have legal pot shops, and Wiesbaden might see the same thing by 2018.
Wind-Power Approval in Hessen
After hours of debate yesterday here in Wiesbaden....the regional council finally voted on the expansion of windmills onto the Taunus ridge overlooking the valley and the city. A couple of "no-votes" were registered, but they had more than enough to pass the project. As I've written on for the past couple of months....here in the Rhine Valley, it's been a hostile episode brewing.
For at least a decade....as you drove north in the Pfalz area (the German state to the south of Hessen) toward Mainz and Wiesbaden.....you'd notice dozens of windmills. Expansion has been a monthly episode. Last week, as I drove south toward Kaiserslautern, I noted two new mega-sized windmills going up. All total, from Kaisersalutern to Mainz, I'd take a guess that well over 100 wind-mills now exist within two or three miles of the autobahn route.
The expansion has finally reached the ridge on the south side of the Rhine River.....overlooking Mainz, and this by itself.....thus getting the Hessen state crowd frustrated. Landscape damage, Scenery encroachment. Terrain alteration.
So, as an energy company did the numbers and realized that wind flow over the Taunus ridge was a big deal.....the mere suggestion of putting up a wind-farm (maybe five or six windmills) on the ridge overlooking Wiesbaden itself.....got some folks all peppy.
The fight has gone on for a year, and the council has said it's part in approving the deal. The mayor....a SPD party member....even put it in blunt terms.....if you were against coal power and nuke power, you have zero choice in this matter but to accept wind power, wherever it might end being applied.
For me? It's a curious thing. My village is about two miles from the edge of where one of the wind-parks would be developed. The idea was to carve out around twenty-odd acres of wooded area (protected by the state, no less).....allowing an access road to be developed (maybe avoiding paving it, but there are dozens of fire-access roads there anyway)....and put up the wind-mills.
If they are mega-sized wind-mills.....I'd be able to easily sit on my balcony and notice them twirling during daylight hours. Amongst the four thousand residents of the village.....I'd take a guess that ten-percent will be extremely bothered and frustrated by the event, but there's not much you can say or do. The mayor of Wiesbaden is right.....if you are anti-nuke power, there's no real solution other than accepting the wind-mills as your "friend".
For at least a decade....as you drove north in the Pfalz area (the German state to the south of Hessen) toward Mainz and Wiesbaden.....you'd notice dozens of windmills. Expansion has been a monthly episode. Last week, as I drove south toward Kaiserslautern, I noted two new mega-sized windmills going up. All total, from Kaisersalutern to Mainz, I'd take a guess that well over 100 wind-mills now exist within two or three miles of the autobahn route.
The expansion has finally reached the ridge on the south side of the Rhine River.....overlooking Mainz, and this by itself.....thus getting the Hessen state crowd frustrated. Landscape damage, Scenery encroachment. Terrain alteration.
So, as an energy company did the numbers and realized that wind flow over the Taunus ridge was a big deal.....the mere suggestion of putting up a wind-farm (maybe five or six windmills) on the ridge overlooking Wiesbaden itself.....got some folks all peppy.
The fight has gone on for a year, and the council has said it's part in approving the deal. The mayor....a SPD party member....even put it in blunt terms.....if you were against coal power and nuke power, you have zero choice in this matter but to accept wind power, wherever it might end being applied.
For me? It's a curious thing. My village is about two miles from the edge of where one of the wind-parks would be developed. The idea was to carve out around twenty-odd acres of wooded area (protected by the state, no less).....allowing an access road to be developed (maybe avoiding paving it, but there are dozens of fire-access roads there anyway)....and put up the wind-mills.
If they are mega-sized wind-mills.....I'd be able to easily sit on my balcony and notice them twirling during daylight hours. Amongst the four thousand residents of the village.....I'd take a guess that ten-percent will be extremely bothered and frustrated by the event, but there's not much you can say or do. The mayor of Wiesbaden is right.....if you are anti-nuke power, there's no real solution other than accepting the wind-mills as your "friend".
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Germany and E-Cigarettes
There's a debate about to erupt in Germany....over e-cigarettes. Currently, you can buy the "liquid" for the e-cigarettes anywhere. Court action is looming in a German federal court in Leipzig, where the judges will decide if the "liquid" must controlled, and thus only available at pharmacy operations.
The vapor unit that you'd buy at the store for smoking....is basically propylene glycol. It's a mixture of a flavor unit (any type you want), a petroleum product, and nicotine. The health guys fighting to make it a pharmacy item....say that it's bad for you to smoke....so the pharmacy is the only option possible for control purposes.
I would imagine that if the petroleum product wasn't involved....then it'd be the same as tobacco, and thus freely sold at any number of local convenience locations.
German newspapers aren't saying much over the odds here. It's a bold new world for the vapor units, and I suspect it could go either way. As for forcing this onto pharmacy operations? It'd probably jump the profit margin of drug stores around Germany by five-percent easily. Some lobbyists pursuing this? It would not surprise me to find some group focused on this and trying to make the case more positive.
So, don't be surprised to wake up in a couple of weeks, to find some German court ruling and a bunch of smokers all grumpy for a day or two over their habit being screwed with once again.
UPDATE: 21 Nov 2014, the court said no.....e-smokes are not drugs. So you can still buy your vapor stock at any store.
The vapor unit that you'd buy at the store for smoking....is basically propylene glycol. It's a mixture of a flavor unit (any type you want), a petroleum product, and nicotine. The health guys fighting to make it a pharmacy item....say that it's bad for you to smoke....so the pharmacy is the only option possible for control purposes.
I would imagine that if the petroleum product wasn't involved....then it'd be the same as tobacco, and thus freely sold at any number of local convenience locations.
German newspapers aren't saying much over the odds here. It's a bold new world for the vapor units, and I suspect it could go either way. As for forcing this onto pharmacy operations? It'd probably jump the profit margin of drug stores around Germany by five-percent easily. Some lobbyists pursuing this? It would not surprise me to find some group focused on this and trying to make the case more positive.
So, don't be surprised to wake up in a couple of weeks, to find some German court ruling and a bunch of smokers all grumpy for a day or two over their habit being screwed with once again.
UPDATE: 21 Nov 2014, the court said no.....e-smokes are not drugs. So you can still buy your vapor stock at any store.
The Age of Enlightenment Finally Comes to Africa
Back in the late summer, as Ebola was becoming front page news.....someone did up a historical analysis of Ebola's affect on Africa....shining a great deal of light on how the disease would pop up in central Africa for a couple of months.....kill a couple of hundred....then seem to fade off. In this 2013-2014 episode....it had appeared in western Africa instead....gotten past the couple of hundred, and was NOT fading off. The question seemed to linger there.....why?
This week, from the Wall Street Journal, there's a fine article by Peter Wonacott ("Village Healers Complicate Ebola Fight"), that puts some reasons out on why it spread out in western Africa and seems to have no brick wall to run into.
As the article draws upon.....as the disease went into turbo fashion.....health care workers began to appear in the more remote areas of western Africa, and were immediately seen by the local village healers as a threat. If you'd built up your whole life on being the 'witch-doctor' of some village....you really didn't want someone coming in to steal your thunder or business.....or getting the people into modern medicine.
The general accusation? The medical experts arriving were after body organs and helping some process to steal them from innocent villagers.
You can sit and be amused by the accusation, but that's the type of mentality that you are dealing with. Add to the mentality.....that the village healers believe it's necessary to wash down dead bodies before burial. You can guess just how much this aides in Ebola moving quickly through a village and never
All of this puts me to history repeating itself, and a short discussion on Europe. Village healers were a popular thing throughout Europe, and really didn't get challenged until the end of the 1600s. When you look at the various occasions of the plague, rampant abuse of religion, and accusations of witchcraft.....your life hung in the balance every single day.
As the Age of Enlightenment came....it was more of a do-or-die battle between science and healers. You couldn't make a law that would allow new ideas or medical processes to be accepted. It was simply a case of someone trying something different....it works....then trying to get public sentiment to go against the leadership or healer of the local village.
The problem in Africa? Modern society arrived some years ago in central Africa and village healers have been on the downswing in terms of trust. That's not the same deal as in western Africa.....where a healer still has the full trust of the village. But Ebola has not been kind in it's relationship with healers.....they are rapidly dying off. Unless some gifted talker is sitting in the wings....there's going to be this window open where modern science and medicine might enter and gain a threshold.
Europe did not really advance at monumental speeds in the Age of Enlightenment....it walked gracefully like a duck, and sometimes slammed into brick walls. In the case of western Africa, the Age of Enlightenment has finally and gracefully arrived. It may not be pretty.
This week, from the Wall Street Journal, there's a fine article by Peter Wonacott ("Village Healers Complicate Ebola Fight"), that puts some reasons out on why it spread out in western Africa and seems to have no brick wall to run into.
As the article draws upon.....as the disease went into turbo fashion.....health care workers began to appear in the more remote areas of western Africa, and were immediately seen by the local village healers as a threat. If you'd built up your whole life on being the 'witch-doctor' of some village....you really didn't want someone coming in to steal your thunder or business.....or getting the people into modern medicine.
The general accusation? The medical experts arriving were after body organs and helping some process to steal them from innocent villagers.
You can sit and be amused by the accusation, but that's the type of mentality that you are dealing with. Add to the mentality.....that the village healers believe it's necessary to wash down dead bodies before burial. You can guess just how much this aides in Ebola moving quickly through a village and never
All of this puts me to history repeating itself, and a short discussion on Europe. Village healers were a popular thing throughout Europe, and really didn't get challenged until the end of the 1600s. When you look at the various occasions of the plague, rampant abuse of religion, and accusations of witchcraft.....your life hung in the balance every single day.
As the Age of Enlightenment came....it was more of a do-or-die battle between science and healers. You couldn't make a law that would allow new ideas or medical processes to be accepted. It was simply a case of someone trying something different....it works....then trying to get public sentiment to go against the leadership or healer of the local village.
The problem in Africa? Modern society arrived some years ago in central Africa and village healers have been on the downswing in terms of trust. That's not the same deal as in western Africa.....where a healer still has the full trust of the village. But Ebola has not been kind in it's relationship with healers.....they are rapidly dying off. Unless some gifted talker is sitting in the wings....there's going to be this window open where modern science and medicine might enter and gain a threshold.
Europe did not really advance at monumental speeds in the Age of Enlightenment....it walked gracefully like a duck, and sometimes slammed into brick walls. In the case of western Africa, the Age of Enlightenment has finally and gracefully arrived. It may not be pretty.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Limburg in the News
About thirty minutes driving from my village is the town of Limburg. It's an interesting town with scenic landscapes and occasional disruptions that get itself into the news. This week, there are two episodes noted.
First, the city is reviewing a legal episode with two guys who have been painting over Nazi symbols in the city. The guys will say that the graffiti is a big negative for the city, and it's their civic duty to paint over the symbols. The city says....you just need to notify us on the location and we quickly move in to "fix" the situation our own way (with their own paint, I'd assume). The city dragged the two into court for an original fine of 3,000 Euro. Some talk has occurred, and the fine is down to roughly 1,000 Euro presently.
The remaining issue is that the two guys just don't agree with the fine. They've made it clear....the city does not act as quickly as they say. The city disagrees. Some judge will decide if the thousand Euro is fair or not. I'm of the mind that plenty of the locals will donate to a fund and pay the fine for the two guys.
All of this got Hessen regional attention last night because HR covered it in detail....with more positive light put upon the two guys, and the city looking doubtful on their position.
Why does this Nazi stuff even come up? There are accusations that anti-immigrant feelings exist in Limburg, and there's the potential killing of a guy back in October....that may or may not have been related to racism (cops still aren't convinced). A bunch of Nazis in the area? You just don't see evidence of that....except for graffiti around the town, which might be the work of kids, or just one single guy with an agenda.
The other story of interest revolves around the bridge at one end of town which was destined to be replaced by a bigger bridge. The older bridge wasn't that old.....nor was it a small bridge. Some investor had put up the idea of redesigning the older bridge with four 'hanging' apartment complexes, on the sides of the building (facing both directions).
The bridge was more than capable of handling this. Each complex was supposed to be eleven stories, and it'd end up being apartments, hotels, stores, and restaurants. It's an idea that has never been done....mostly because of the radical design.
This drew a fair amount of criticism. The scenic and landscape crowd were against it. The business operators from the center of town felt it'd draw people away. The hotel owners around town weren't happy with more competition. It's difficult to find anyone who felt positive about the project.
The main issue I saw.....somewhere around fifty years from now....the safety factor of the bridge would have come up in some fashion, and the whole complex might have to come down.
They had a city vote this week over the issue. A massive rejection vote came from the city council....so the episode is finished. The hanging bridge project is a no-go.
Picture: credit the NNP.de folks, but it's a artist rendering.
First, the city is reviewing a legal episode with two guys who have been painting over Nazi symbols in the city. The guys will say that the graffiti is a big negative for the city, and it's their civic duty to paint over the symbols. The city says....you just need to notify us on the location and we quickly move in to "fix" the situation our own way (with their own paint, I'd assume). The city dragged the two into court for an original fine of 3,000 Euro. Some talk has occurred, and the fine is down to roughly 1,000 Euro presently.
The remaining issue is that the two guys just don't agree with the fine. They've made it clear....the city does not act as quickly as they say. The city disagrees. Some judge will decide if the thousand Euro is fair or not. I'm of the mind that plenty of the locals will donate to a fund and pay the fine for the two guys.
All of this got Hessen regional attention last night because HR covered it in detail....with more positive light put upon the two guys, and the city looking doubtful on their position.
Why does this Nazi stuff even come up? There are accusations that anti-immigrant feelings exist in Limburg, and there's the potential killing of a guy back in October....that may or may not have been related to racism (cops still aren't convinced). A bunch of Nazis in the area? You just don't see evidence of that....except for graffiti around the town, which might be the work of kids, or just one single guy with an agenda.
The other story of interest revolves around the bridge at one end of town which was destined to be replaced by a bigger bridge. The older bridge wasn't that old.....nor was it a small bridge. Some investor had put up the idea of redesigning the older bridge with four 'hanging' apartment complexes, on the sides of the building (facing both directions).The bridge was more than capable of handling this. Each complex was supposed to be eleven stories, and it'd end up being apartments, hotels, stores, and restaurants. It's an idea that has never been done....mostly because of the radical design.
This drew a fair amount of criticism. The scenic and landscape crowd were against it. The business operators from the center of town felt it'd draw people away. The hotel owners around town weren't happy with more competition. It's difficult to find anyone who felt positive about the project.
The main issue I saw.....somewhere around fifty years from now....the safety factor of the bridge would have come up in some fashion, and the whole complex might have to come down.
They had a city vote this week over the issue. A massive rejection vote came from the city council....so the episode is finished. The hanging bridge project is a no-go.
Picture: credit the NNP.de folks, but it's a artist rendering.
Update on the Old Burger King Story
Back in the spring, I blogged on Burger King in Germany and some investigative reporting which laid out some sanitation and employee issues with one single group (eighty-nine franchise operations) which were owned by one single company (a Russian guy with a German company, and a Turkish guy as it's operating officer). The BK headquarters in Germany put the foot down and forced some significant changes with those operations. Truth be told.....it hurt every single Burger King in Germany in the pocketbook because people thought they were all crappy.
Well....months have passed. In today's Focus reporting.....they say that the headquarters of Burger King in Germany has done recent audits and inspections of the eighty-nine facilities, and found they all slipped back into a negative situation. Vacation pay and sick leave pay have been screwed with almost 3,000 employees of the eighty-nine franchise operations....which they were warned about this practice in the spring after they did an audit. After a short period of retreat, they came right back to the same issue.
So, this week....as Focus reports it.....the contracts over the franchises affected appear to be in a questionable phase.....as the national headquarters is trying to retake the situation and correct an apparent management problem.
Whether the eighty-nine operations stay in business is a question mark, and I suspect that they will.....except some national guru will step in as the temp-boss of the deal until the legal aspects are settled.
Where does the mess really begin? Burger King had an aggressive discount coupon campaign which has been active for a number of years. I probably get at least one whole page of coupons every month in some mailer. If I were aggressive.....I'd probably visit BK at least ten times a month and save at least ten Euro. That ten Euro was profit from the individual BK operation. Imagine ten thousand customers in a region which did that. Monthly, it's a ton of lost profit.
The national BK folks went with this agenda of discount coupons, not the local franchise owners. So, if you had an invisible owner and a operations manager working together.....the guy who bought the franchise operations would have a magic number in his head for profit, and he'd want to reach that number by every single trick in the book. So, money would be found somewhere in the daily operations and all help to reach the magic profit point, even if you were screwing over employees.
The Russian owner here? I'm guessing he bought into the operation back when they weren't so obsessive about the monthly coupons. The profit talk from burger operations like McDonalds, Wendys and Burger King are generally regarded as reasonable and it's hard to find a failure. With the discount coupon gimmick.....they bring in more customers, but the local operation isn't making any real income off that customer.
Another failed business? This one falls into a different category. They failed more because of a coupon strategy than anything else.
Well....months have passed. In today's Focus reporting.....they say that the headquarters of Burger King in Germany has done recent audits and inspections of the eighty-nine facilities, and found they all slipped back into a negative situation. Vacation pay and sick leave pay have been screwed with almost 3,000 employees of the eighty-nine franchise operations....which they were warned about this practice in the spring after they did an audit. After a short period of retreat, they came right back to the same issue.
So, this week....as Focus reports it.....the contracts over the franchises affected appear to be in a questionable phase.....as the national headquarters is trying to retake the situation and correct an apparent management problem.
Whether the eighty-nine operations stay in business is a question mark, and I suspect that they will.....except some national guru will step in as the temp-boss of the deal until the legal aspects are settled.
Where does the mess really begin? Burger King had an aggressive discount coupon campaign which has been active for a number of years. I probably get at least one whole page of coupons every month in some mailer. If I were aggressive.....I'd probably visit BK at least ten times a month and save at least ten Euro. That ten Euro was profit from the individual BK operation. Imagine ten thousand customers in a region which did that. Monthly, it's a ton of lost profit.
The national BK folks went with this agenda of discount coupons, not the local franchise owners. So, if you had an invisible owner and a operations manager working together.....the guy who bought the franchise operations would have a magic number in his head for profit, and he'd want to reach that number by every single trick in the book. So, money would be found somewhere in the daily operations and all help to reach the magic profit point, even if you were screwing over employees.
The Russian owner here? I'm guessing he bought into the operation back when they weren't so obsessive about the monthly coupons. The profit talk from burger operations like McDonalds, Wendys and Burger King are generally regarded as reasonable and it's hard to find a failure. With the discount coupon gimmick.....they bring in more customers, but the local operation isn't making any real income off that customer.
Another failed business? This one falls into a different category. They failed more because of a coupon strategy than anything else.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
ARD and It's Tolerance Gimmick
This week in Germany....ARD (Channel One)....is hyping up tolerance. Yep, a week with various projects and forums on TV, to talk up the topic of Germans needing to practice more tolerance. It's hard to say if this was a politically driven thing, or if the network executives made the decision on their own.
So, Monday night included both a movie and a chat forum after the movie. The movie basically centered around an immigrant family who were defended in the neighborhood by an elderly German gal. It concludes that by helping the immigrants, the woman was displaying tolerance, and standing by her principal. Afterwards, with "Hard But Fair" as the talk forum, they ran over the same conversation and pressed on the issue that everyone should show tolerance.
It's a curious thing for an American to sit in the midst of this discussion and observe where the chat wants the public to progress to, and center around. In the logical world, it is tolerance versus intolerance....a battle that is always underway.
There's a philosopher, John Rawls, who wrote a piece years ago to say.....society must in the end tolerate intolerance....because the tolerate folks would just end up being intolerant themselves if they refused to accept the situation.
Tolerance has a point where it's no longer a society advancement tool, and it becomes some "bat" which people use to manipulate and force people to accept things that aren't in their best interest. Four residents of a village of 2,000.....could remove their clothing and suggest that a nude society is more pure and accommodating.....saying they are the tolerant ones, and the clothing folks are the intolerant folks.
Star Trek introduced everyone to the new society of Borg as characters. Borg individuals had analyzed everything and come to logical conclusions that if everyone went along one thought process, one thinking process, and one research process.....then you'd come to their conclusion....they were better than mankind. One voice, one stance, one state of tolerance. Beyond that, we don't need to function. The Borg solution was to dissolve mankind, and bring everyone within one state of mind and one direction.
Smokers will consider themselves an independent group and don't really want to inflict their habit or smoke upon non-smokers. For decades.....they were tolerated. Today? Non-smokers have been intolerant of smokers.....making demands....and trying to establish themselves as a superior group. Non-smokers demand not just smoke-free buildings, but even smoke-free open-air areas (bus-stops, city parks, etc). Tolerance versus intolerance? Not possible.
Modern society has lost something. Intellectuals have drafted up some new form of reality, and placed the argument of using tolerance to solve all problems. Once they've picked the right position....they line up the magnetic charm, discussion topics, and bullet statements.....to hit on the opposition, the intolerant. The response here? Who says you are in the right?
In the end, the only real segment of tolerance that ought to be demonstrated is the free right to respect a guy's position....whether for something, or against something. Beyond that, intolerance is just a bogus gimmick used by an intellectual crowd to pursue some unknown agenda.
How many Germans are buying into ARD's week of tolerance? Not that many. By the time you figure up the very limited audience of 15-to-25 year old young people who absolutely do not view ARD, it's fairly small. Toss in a limited crowd from the 25-to-45 year old group. Maybe three million Germans watched the movie last night (out of eighty million residents), and only a quarter of the three million (my humble estimates) watched the chat forum after that. The message was accomplished....just in meager numbers.
I'll end this with a quote which I think is appropriate for the situation. Penn Jillett: "Tolerance is you saying something crazy, and me smiling and saying that's nice."
So, Monday night included both a movie and a chat forum after the movie. The movie basically centered around an immigrant family who were defended in the neighborhood by an elderly German gal. It concludes that by helping the immigrants, the woman was displaying tolerance, and standing by her principal. Afterwards, with "Hard But Fair" as the talk forum, they ran over the same conversation and pressed on the issue that everyone should show tolerance.
It's a curious thing for an American to sit in the midst of this discussion and observe where the chat wants the public to progress to, and center around. In the logical world, it is tolerance versus intolerance....a battle that is always underway.
There's a philosopher, John Rawls, who wrote a piece years ago to say.....society must in the end tolerate intolerance....because the tolerate folks would just end up being intolerant themselves if they refused to accept the situation.
Tolerance has a point where it's no longer a society advancement tool, and it becomes some "bat" which people use to manipulate and force people to accept things that aren't in their best interest. Four residents of a village of 2,000.....could remove their clothing and suggest that a nude society is more pure and accommodating.....saying they are the tolerant ones, and the clothing folks are the intolerant folks.
Star Trek introduced everyone to the new society of Borg as characters. Borg individuals had analyzed everything and come to logical conclusions that if everyone went along one thought process, one thinking process, and one research process.....then you'd come to their conclusion....they were better than mankind. One voice, one stance, one state of tolerance. Beyond that, we don't need to function. The Borg solution was to dissolve mankind, and bring everyone within one state of mind and one direction.
Smokers will consider themselves an independent group and don't really want to inflict their habit or smoke upon non-smokers. For decades.....they were tolerated. Today? Non-smokers have been intolerant of smokers.....making demands....and trying to establish themselves as a superior group. Non-smokers demand not just smoke-free buildings, but even smoke-free open-air areas (bus-stops, city parks, etc). Tolerance versus intolerance? Not possible.
Modern society has lost something. Intellectuals have drafted up some new form of reality, and placed the argument of using tolerance to solve all problems. Once they've picked the right position....they line up the magnetic charm, discussion topics, and bullet statements.....to hit on the opposition, the intolerant. The response here? Who says you are in the right?
In the end, the only real segment of tolerance that ought to be demonstrated is the free right to respect a guy's position....whether for something, or against something. Beyond that, intolerance is just a bogus gimmick used by an intellectual crowd to pursue some unknown agenda.
How many Germans are buying into ARD's week of tolerance? Not that many. By the time you figure up the very limited audience of 15-to-25 year old young people who absolutely do not view ARD, it's fairly small. Toss in a limited crowd from the 25-to-45 year old group. Maybe three million Germans watched the movie last night (out of eighty million residents), and only a quarter of the three million (my humble estimates) watched the chat forum after that. The message was accomplished....just in meager numbers.
I'll end this with a quote which I think is appropriate for the situation. Penn Jillett: "Tolerance is you saying something crazy, and me smiling and saying that's nice."
Monday, November 17, 2014
Frankfurt and Legalization?
Our local press here in the Hessen region....Frankfurt's FAZ....is reporting that a forum opening up today within Frankfurt, with the topic of legalizing marijuana. The deputy mayor of Frankfurt, a Green Party member, is the one holding the forum.
No city or state within Germany has total legalization of marijuana. What is approved to some degree is medical marijuana.
Where does this lead onto? Generally, the only political party with a stance generally against legalization is the CDU/CSU team. The Greens are supportive of legalization, as are most of the SPD folks who comment on this. I've never heard the Linke Party comment over it.....but I'd suspect that they generally go along with the legalization idea, with some limits.
Last weekend, I watched a local Hessen news piece over a roadblock deal where on a Friday or Saturday night.....a significant number of people were pulled over and checked out. In the old days.....it was merely an alcohol check and a vehicle safety review. This episode also involved a drug-testing procedure. They hauled one guy away because he tested positive for cocaine and was still on a high.....which generally means a loss of license.
What few people grasp....when they do the street tests and you fail on some drug like marijuana or ecstasy.....it's the same issues as if you were drunk. License lost for a number of months.....a fine....and your insurance company gets a note about the episode (you could see a higher cost for insurance).
Generally, I'd say the trend in Germany will be city-by-city acceptance of marijuana, with Frankfurt likely the first place to accept it. I'd also say that people will be shocked over the first couple of years as more and more folks fail the alcohol/drug checks conducted by the cops. These are the people who go out on a Friday night.....enjoy an evening at some club....huff on some joint three or four times with their friend.....and discover that this was the unlucky night to bump into the safety patrol folks.
Frankly, the German cops just don't care about some user and his marijuana joint. Course, if they happen to safety review some car and find some guy with enough marijuana for two-thousand joints.....well, that's different. That's dealer status, and a simple conviction.
No city or state within Germany has total legalization of marijuana. What is approved to some degree is medical marijuana.
Where does this lead onto? Generally, the only political party with a stance generally against legalization is the CDU/CSU team. The Greens are supportive of legalization, as are most of the SPD folks who comment on this. I've never heard the Linke Party comment over it.....but I'd suspect that they generally go along with the legalization idea, with some limits.
Last weekend, I watched a local Hessen news piece over a roadblock deal where on a Friday or Saturday night.....a significant number of people were pulled over and checked out. In the old days.....it was merely an alcohol check and a vehicle safety review. This episode also involved a drug-testing procedure. They hauled one guy away because he tested positive for cocaine and was still on a high.....which generally means a loss of license.
What few people grasp....when they do the street tests and you fail on some drug like marijuana or ecstasy.....it's the same issues as if you were drunk. License lost for a number of months.....a fine....and your insurance company gets a note about the episode (you could see a higher cost for insurance).
Generally, I'd say the trend in Germany will be city-by-city acceptance of marijuana, with Frankfurt likely the first place to accept it. I'd also say that people will be shocked over the first couple of years as more and more folks fail the alcohol/drug checks conducted by the cops. These are the people who go out on a Friday night.....enjoy an evening at some club....huff on some joint three or four times with their friend.....and discover that this was the unlucky night to bump into the safety patrol folks.
Frankly, the German cops just don't care about some user and his marijuana joint. Course, if they happen to safety review some car and find some guy with enough marijuana for two-thousand joints.....well, that's different. That's dealer status, and a simple conviction.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Six-hour TV Show
At 8:15 last night, Pro-7 (a commercial network here in Germany) started up their game-show "Schlag den Raab". It's an odd show featuring a host (Stefen Raab) and a guest. There's roughly ten challenges, and at the end....someone goes home with million or so. Last night's episode involved 2.5 million Euro.
It's safe to say from the thirty-odd choices from the evening....Pro-7 is always lucky if they get into the top four shows. With last night's show, they drew a market share of roughly 22-percent, which means a ton of Germans tuned in and watched the show. Typically....this live show runs for about three hours....sometimes a little bit longer.
Well....last night, the show finally ended at 2:22 AM, it finally resulted in a winner. Yep, it ran for more than 360 minutes or six hours (if you prefer).
What the German analysts say is that some of the challenges of the show simply didn't go as well as planned....thus taking longer. And the last challenge simply didn't work.....and folks discovered that Pro-7's production team didn't ever have a plan-B in their mind for a live-show and if a challenge simply could not work.
In this case? They finally concluded the episode and Raab lost.
German TV folks (both state-run and commercial) do a fair amount of live-production TV. I'd take a guess that during an average week.....discounting sports events....there's probably forty hour of live shows a week. Some are interview or forum type.....some are game-shows....and some are variety-hour type (like the old Ed Sullivan Show). A plan-B mentality? No. I've watched at least twenty odd shows where something went wrong, and it was clear that plan-A was going to scrapped.
Back in the summer.....the state-run TV crowd ran a variety show in the middle of the day with some challenge involving chilli-peppers. The TV host got involved.....got himself into some pretty harsh peppers, and basically had to leave the live-show for a local hospital. One of the guests got suddenly drafted....handed a live-mic and proceeded to carry out the rest of the show. In the US.....most VIP guests would have freaked out and walked way saying it wasn't their job. In this case, the guy did a four-star job and proved that he had an enormous amount of talent.
Will Pro-7 review the show and the results? Maybe. But they had an all-time high number of people to watch, and it might turn out the same way for the next such show. So maybe.....just going for the gusto and skipping a plan-B.....might be part of plan-A.
It's safe to say from the thirty-odd choices from the evening....Pro-7 is always lucky if they get into the top four shows. With last night's show, they drew a market share of roughly 22-percent, which means a ton of Germans tuned in and watched the show. Typically....this live show runs for about three hours....sometimes a little bit longer.
Well....last night, the show finally ended at 2:22 AM, it finally resulted in a winner. Yep, it ran for more than 360 minutes or six hours (if you prefer).
What the German analysts say is that some of the challenges of the show simply didn't go as well as planned....thus taking longer. And the last challenge simply didn't work.....and folks discovered that Pro-7's production team didn't ever have a plan-B in their mind for a live-show and if a challenge simply could not work.
In this case? They finally concluded the episode and Raab lost.
German TV folks (both state-run and commercial) do a fair amount of live-production TV. I'd take a guess that during an average week.....discounting sports events....there's probably forty hour of live shows a week. Some are interview or forum type.....some are game-shows....and some are variety-hour type (like the old Ed Sullivan Show). A plan-B mentality? No. I've watched at least twenty odd shows where something went wrong, and it was clear that plan-A was going to scrapped.
Back in the summer.....the state-run TV crowd ran a variety show in the middle of the day with some challenge involving chilli-peppers. The TV host got involved.....got himself into some pretty harsh peppers, and basically had to leave the live-show for a local hospital. One of the guests got suddenly drafted....handed a live-mic and proceeded to carry out the rest of the show. In the US.....most VIP guests would have freaked out and walked way saying it wasn't their job. In this case, the guy did a four-star job and proved that he had an enormous amount of talent.
Will Pro-7 review the show and the results? Maybe. But they had an all-time high number of people to watch, and it might turn out the same way for the next such show. So maybe.....just going for the gusto and skipping a plan-B.....might be part of plan-A.
Saturday, November 15, 2014
The Niqab Story
I read a fair number of newspapers....to include German papers in the mix. Today, from The Western ( a daily from north Germany)....I came across this curious story.
Basically....a elementary school with a fair number of immigrants in the mix has found itself in the middle of a frustrating problem. A Muslim traditionalist mother, who wants to wear the facial covering (the niqab) on top of the burka as she comes into the school on occasion.
The principal or headmaster.....admits that she noticed this from early on, and had some problems with it. When she's standing there or sitting at a conference table.....she wants to see the person's face and be able to judge expressions. It helps her in terms of saying the right thing, or realizing how puzzled the receiver of the information might be.
Years ago, I sat in a verbal communications class, and we probably spent three hours discussing what you look for as you converse with someone. You look for direct eye-to-eye contact. You try to gauge the smile or frown....to mean something good or bad. You might notice a smirk which tells you the person isn't buying into your talk. There were probably twenty factors that you could get from facial expressions. So, in this case, I can understand what the headmaster is referring to.
The lady in question? She's a Muslim Tamil from Sao Lanka.
The headmaster might have left the whole debate on the table.....but then some kids freaked out with this lady appearing in a black burka and completely covered.....with the kids thinking she was a man. You can sit and imagine six-year-old or eight-year-old kids in most cultures thinking this.
So a meeting was arranged with the woman and her husband. The headmaster, according to Der Western, asked the guy directly....why the woman had to hide her face. The guy seemed to be perplexed by the question....shrugged his shoulders in admitting there's no clear answer....then said: "It's her thing".
Yeah, it's not much of an answer, but that's the whole routine of people just accepting things and never asking questions. You end up with a naive way of looking at life.
Eventually, in this chat.....the mother came to agree that when she came into the school.....she'd do so with the niqab removed. Things seemed to be OK, and smoothed out at that point. For a couple of occasions, the mother kept to the agreement and the story ought to end there.
Well...after a while, the mother just started to enter again with the niqab in plain view. All Der Western will say at this point is that the headmaster of the school admits she's not that tolerant on this issue. So you can sense.....somewhere down the line, there's going to be another confrontation or some authority from the community will step in and have someone at the gate to prevent simple entry into the school unless you meet their criteria.
I make a couple of trips into Wiesbaden each week. In the shopping district.....it's an interesting trend. From twenty years ago....you never came across anyone in the old fashioned burka outfit. There might have been some updated burka outfits with simple conservative tastes.....like you'd see in Turkey. Ten years ago you started to notice traditional burkas appearing....in black....the type of outfits that you'd notice in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. Today? I'd take a guess that I'll see at least ten veiled women (niqab) per day. It's to the point where Germans simply look and barely notice now.
My general belief where this will go? Some turning point will occur, and some German comedian will decide it's time to don a Batman-mask or a Green Lantern-mask and just encourage people to walk around with masks all the time. Then someone will invent a male niqab and market it as a political piece of clothing....to say something without verbally saying it. Muslims will take offence to this, and German political figures will get hyped up to invent a law to forbid it. The courts will say you can't outlaw one, without outlawing all.
In this way, I see the traditional Muslim crowd pushed into thinking about what it was to drive them away from the old country, into Germany.....and what the priorities were to start with.
If you swap a lifestyle from one country for another.....what are you considering to give up and be like.....in order to have the better deal or better economic situations? What is your priority in life?
I would be the first to admit that hair covering in German society have been accepted for over a thousand years, and really not much of an issue. Covering the face? No. Getting Germans to accept this trend? It's a short trend, because German humor will eventually kick in and ridicule you in public and private. At that point, it's going to force people to think about their lifestyle.
Basically....a elementary school with a fair number of immigrants in the mix has found itself in the middle of a frustrating problem. A Muslim traditionalist mother, who wants to wear the facial covering (the niqab) on top of the burka as she comes into the school on occasion.
The principal or headmaster.....admits that she noticed this from early on, and had some problems with it. When she's standing there or sitting at a conference table.....she wants to see the person's face and be able to judge expressions. It helps her in terms of saying the right thing, or realizing how puzzled the receiver of the information might be.
Years ago, I sat in a verbal communications class, and we probably spent three hours discussing what you look for as you converse with someone. You look for direct eye-to-eye contact. You try to gauge the smile or frown....to mean something good or bad. You might notice a smirk which tells you the person isn't buying into your talk. There were probably twenty factors that you could get from facial expressions. So, in this case, I can understand what the headmaster is referring to.
The lady in question? She's a Muslim Tamil from Sao Lanka.
The headmaster might have left the whole debate on the table.....but then some kids freaked out with this lady appearing in a black burka and completely covered.....with the kids thinking she was a man. You can sit and imagine six-year-old or eight-year-old kids in most cultures thinking this.
So a meeting was arranged with the woman and her husband. The headmaster, according to Der Western, asked the guy directly....why the woman had to hide her face. The guy seemed to be perplexed by the question....shrugged his shoulders in admitting there's no clear answer....then said: "It's her thing".
Yeah, it's not much of an answer, but that's the whole routine of people just accepting things and never asking questions. You end up with a naive way of looking at life.
Eventually, in this chat.....the mother came to agree that when she came into the school.....she'd do so with the niqab removed. Things seemed to be OK, and smoothed out at that point. For a couple of occasions, the mother kept to the agreement and the story ought to end there.
Well...after a while, the mother just started to enter again with the niqab in plain view. All Der Western will say at this point is that the headmaster of the school admits she's not that tolerant on this issue. So you can sense.....somewhere down the line, there's going to be another confrontation or some authority from the community will step in and have someone at the gate to prevent simple entry into the school unless you meet their criteria.
I make a couple of trips into Wiesbaden each week. In the shopping district.....it's an interesting trend. From twenty years ago....you never came across anyone in the old fashioned burka outfit. There might have been some updated burka outfits with simple conservative tastes.....like you'd see in Turkey. Ten years ago you started to notice traditional burkas appearing....in black....the type of outfits that you'd notice in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. Today? I'd take a guess that I'll see at least ten veiled women (niqab) per day. It's to the point where Germans simply look and barely notice now.
My general belief where this will go? Some turning point will occur, and some German comedian will decide it's time to don a Batman-mask or a Green Lantern-mask and just encourage people to walk around with masks all the time. Then someone will invent a male niqab and market it as a political piece of clothing....to say something without verbally saying it. Muslims will take offence to this, and German political figures will get hyped up to invent a law to forbid it. The courts will say you can't outlaw one, without outlawing all.
In this way, I see the traditional Muslim crowd pushed into thinking about what it was to drive them away from the old country, into Germany.....and what the priorities were to start with.
If you swap a lifestyle from one country for another.....what are you considering to give up and be like.....in order to have the better deal or better economic situations? What is your priority in life?
I would be the first to admit that hair covering in German society have been accepted for over a thousand years, and really not much of an issue. Covering the face? No. Getting Germans to accept this trend? It's a short trend, because German humor will eventually kick in and ridicule you in public and private. At that point, it's going to force people to think about their lifestyle.
Friday, November 14, 2014
Explaining Apartment Issues in Germany
After a fair debate yesterday.....I've sat down this morning and done research to find condo-apartments and their cost levels here in Germany.
So, for Frankfurt......if you were looking for a one-bedroom deal, within 10 km, in the range of 50,000 Euro or less, you'd have twelve options to pick from. I would admit....some aren't in the inner-city....some aren't new.....some are probably in the range of 28-to-35 square meters.....and some won't include parking.
For Mainz, with the same requirements.....there are ten condo-apartments up for sale.
For Wiesbaden, with the same requirement.....there are seven condo-apartments up for sale.
For Worms, with the same requirement....there are seventeen condo-apartments up for sale.
For Kaiserslautern, with the same requirement.....there are thirty-five condo-apartments up for sale.
Is there a market for smaller condo-apartments with nothing fancy to be built? No. That's the simple part of this story. If you were going to invest some serious money into a building construction project, and the idea was sixty one-bedroom standard condo-apartments.....you'd make a lousy return on your money. So no one likes to finance these.
Houses? A different story. Course, I could go out into the rural areas of Germany (like Kaiserslautern for example), and find forty houses in the 50,000 to 120,000 Euro range. Some are fixer-uppers.....some are standard-built houses from the 1970s.....and some are barely 90 square meters.
When people get into the mindset of a condo-apartment and renting....they don't really like to come up in five years and talk about finally buying a place. It's a path that the typical German establishes and just refuses to consider the "next step". So, you end up with a thirty-year old guy, who has partnered up with some thirty-year old gal, and happily renting a place. They may never go beyond that point and just enjoy the simple and humble dwelling they've rented. At age sixty-five, they both kinda wake up and realize that the rent of 1,100 Euro is a bit high for a retired couple to afford, but what options do you have left now?
You also run into the other problem of Germans becoming anchored down to a neighborhood or area of town. There's the bus route that became part of their daily routine. There's the subway station just around the block. There's the bakery on the walk into work. There's the stability factor of knowing the twenty-two places of business that they might use on a weekly basis. So anchoring down to an apartment is fundamental.
I'd also inject here that people get used to the fact that whatever building they choose for their apartment dwelling.....they've come to accept the fact that the bathroom window is drafty, or that the heat isn't perfect, or that the lighting as you leave the building is lousy. So one day....a new owner comes onto the scene....fixes everything to be perfect, and then pushes the rent up by sixty-percent. The place is now unaffordable for the old renter. So, as this guy goes to search for a new place.....he discovers that rent for the nice and 'fixed-up' places.....is beyond his expenses. So he rents a marginal place with drafty bathroom window, limited heat, and poor lighting. He's hoping to just scrap by and wait until another new owner arrives to fix this place.
There's a problem here, but it's not that simple.
So, for Frankfurt......if you were looking for a one-bedroom deal, within 10 km, in the range of 50,000 Euro or less, you'd have twelve options to pick from. I would admit....some aren't in the inner-city....some aren't new.....some are probably in the range of 28-to-35 square meters.....and some won't include parking.
For Mainz, with the same requirements.....there are ten condo-apartments up for sale.
For Wiesbaden, with the same requirement.....there are seven condo-apartments up for sale.
For Worms, with the same requirement....there are seventeen condo-apartments up for sale.
For Kaiserslautern, with the same requirement.....there are thirty-five condo-apartments up for sale.
Is there a market for smaller condo-apartments with nothing fancy to be built? No. That's the simple part of this story. If you were going to invest some serious money into a building construction project, and the idea was sixty one-bedroom standard condo-apartments.....you'd make a lousy return on your money. So no one likes to finance these.
Houses? A different story. Course, I could go out into the rural areas of Germany (like Kaiserslautern for example), and find forty houses in the 50,000 to 120,000 Euro range. Some are fixer-uppers.....some are standard-built houses from the 1970s.....and some are barely 90 square meters.
When people get into the mindset of a condo-apartment and renting....they don't really like to come up in five years and talk about finally buying a place. It's a path that the typical German establishes and just refuses to consider the "next step". So, you end up with a thirty-year old guy, who has partnered up with some thirty-year old gal, and happily renting a place. They may never go beyond that point and just enjoy the simple and humble dwelling they've rented. At age sixty-five, they both kinda wake up and realize that the rent of 1,100 Euro is a bit high for a retired couple to afford, but what options do you have left now?
You also run into the other problem of Germans becoming anchored down to a neighborhood or area of town. There's the bus route that became part of their daily routine. There's the subway station just around the block. There's the bakery on the walk into work. There's the stability factor of knowing the twenty-two places of business that they might use on a weekly basis. So anchoring down to an apartment is fundamental.
I'd also inject here that people get used to the fact that whatever building they choose for their apartment dwelling.....they've come to accept the fact that the bathroom window is drafty, or that the heat isn't perfect, or that the lighting as you leave the building is lousy. So one day....a new owner comes onto the scene....fixes everything to be perfect, and then pushes the rent up by sixty-percent. The place is now unaffordable for the old renter. So, as this guy goes to search for a new place.....he discovers that rent for the nice and 'fixed-up' places.....is beyond his expenses. So he rents a marginal place with drafty bathroom window, limited heat, and poor lighting. He's hoping to just scrap by and wait until another new owner arrives to fix this place.
There's a problem here, but it's not that simple.
Bedtime Stories
I sometimes come across a piece of German history, with a twist. This essay covers such a twist.
In 1812, the Brothers Grimm wrote and published a book with eighty-six tales....to include Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Puss in Boots.
Three years later, 1815, the Brothers Grimm would publish a second fairy tale book with seventy tales.
What most people of today believe is that the nifty little fairy tales that are told today.....are the original writings of 1812 and 1815. Well....a professor went back to examine the original stories, as written in German. The stories aren't exactly the same as today.
There's a fair amount of physical pain, suffering, and adult writings built into the original stories. For example....Rapunzel had a fair amount of lusty time with the guy in the tower, and was showing signs of being pregnant at some point in the story. Cinderella's original effort to fit into the shoe? Well....she was told to take a knife and carve on the foot to make it fit.
Shocked? Well....in the period of 1812....books weren't exactly written for child audiences. They were developed and marketed for adults. It is that simple.
Within a couple of years, the Brothers Grimm came to realize that they had a winner in terms of stories, but it drew the attention of kids more than adults. So, there came this cleaning-up of the two books. Within thirty years....around fifty stories from the first edition had been changed or deleted. By the 1850's.....the books were totally marketed for kids, instead of adults.
Does it really change anything? It ought to make you sit there and wonder about various books written from the 1500s up to the 1900s. Various writers have found inspiration to write one version of a story, and later come to realize after they've published the book......that maybe some revision should take place. Most publishers probably don't want to admit that there is more than one version of a particular book.
Will a market suddenly come to exist with the original Brothers Grimm stories? I'd take a guess here and say yes. The new translation using the old original text will be popular for gift purposes.
In 1812, the Brothers Grimm wrote and published a book with eighty-six tales....to include Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Puss in Boots.
Three years later, 1815, the Brothers Grimm would publish a second fairy tale book with seventy tales.
What most people of today believe is that the nifty little fairy tales that are told today.....are the original writings of 1812 and 1815. Well....a professor went back to examine the original stories, as written in German. The stories aren't exactly the same as today.
There's a fair amount of physical pain, suffering, and adult writings built into the original stories. For example....Rapunzel had a fair amount of lusty time with the guy in the tower, and was showing signs of being pregnant at some point in the story. Cinderella's original effort to fit into the shoe? Well....she was told to take a knife and carve on the foot to make it fit.
Shocked? Well....in the period of 1812....books weren't exactly written for child audiences. They were developed and marketed for adults. It is that simple.
Within a couple of years, the Brothers Grimm came to realize that they had a winner in terms of stories, but it drew the attention of kids more than adults. So, there came this cleaning-up of the two books. Within thirty years....around fifty stories from the first edition had been changed or deleted. By the 1850's.....the books were totally marketed for kids, instead of adults.
Does it really change anything? It ought to make you sit there and wonder about various books written from the 1500s up to the 1900s. Various writers have found inspiration to write one version of a story, and later come to realize after they've published the book......that maybe some revision should take place. Most publishers probably don't want to admit that there is more than one version of a particular book.
Will a market suddenly come to exist with the original Brothers Grimm stories? I'd take a guess here and say yes. The new translation using the old original text will be popular for gift purposes.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Greenpeace's Big Stumble
Two days ago, the Greenpeace guys arrived at a conference where Sigmar Gabriel, the SPD minister for Energy (and economy) was going to deliver a speech. The plan was for two individuals to walk up on the stage and hold two placards.....bringing Gabriel down a step or two because of his current strategy on energy within Germany.
It would be best to describe Gabriel as fifty-percent of New Jersey's Chris Christie and fifty-percent Governor Jerry Brown of California. Gabriel is more than capable of standing up and delivering a speech with minimal notes, and fairly noted for being clever.
In this case, as the security folks for the conference wanted to come up and drag the two Greenpeace folks off.....Gabriel waved them off and noted that he'd like to have them on the stage, then delivered a seventeen-minute response....unwritten and directly aimed at the lousy unplanned idea of dumping coal and nuke power without consequences.
The improvised speech came to an end, and the conference crowd applauded.
The Greenpeace achievement? Virtually nothing. Instead of knocking SPD's Gabriel down a notch, which you'd typically expect on these type 'operations'.....Gabriel made the Greenpeace stance look childish and immature. Gabriel thrusts the public up into a pondering state of energy. If you want all these wonderful and environmentally friendly strategies in place.....you need to pay a price. No one from the Greenpeace side in Germany has ever explained that in any detail. Gabriel did explain the details, and it's a full plate of consequences upon the German consumer.
Another attack in the future upon Gabriel? I would bet on it. Greenpeace will sit down....evaluate the damage done to themselves, and hope to find some news media sources who will hype up their topics in a better forum. My humble guess is that the prime-time ARD Sunday night show on political topics....will shortly decide to invite Gabriel on to talk for an entire evening, and the Greenpeace folks hope to find one individual with the capability of carrying the message for their cause.
Gabriel probably took a quarter of the Greenpeace crowd in favor of rapid energy transformation away, with some simple words, and strong criticism.
So, for a brief period on Monday....some blunt common sense was delivered to the German people.
It would be best to describe Gabriel as fifty-percent of New Jersey's Chris Christie and fifty-percent Governor Jerry Brown of California. Gabriel is more than capable of standing up and delivering a speech with minimal notes, and fairly noted for being clever.
In this case, as the security folks for the conference wanted to come up and drag the two Greenpeace folks off.....Gabriel waved them off and noted that he'd like to have them on the stage, then delivered a seventeen-minute response....unwritten and directly aimed at the lousy unplanned idea of dumping coal and nuke power without consequences.
The improvised speech came to an end, and the conference crowd applauded.
The Greenpeace achievement? Virtually nothing. Instead of knocking SPD's Gabriel down a notch, which you'd typically expect on these type 'operations'.....Gabriel made the Greenpeace stance look childish and immature. Gabriel thrusts the public up into a pondering state of energy. If you want all these wonderful and environmentally friendly strategies in place.....you need to pay a price. No one from the Greenpeace side in Germany has ever explained that in any detail. Gabriel did explain the details, and it's a full plate of consequences upon the German consumer.
Another attack in the future upon Gabriel? I would bet on it. Greenpeace will sit down....evaluate the damage done to themselves, and hope to find some news media sources who will hype up their topics in a better forum. My humble guess is that the prime-time ARD Sunday night show on political topics....will shortly decide to invite Gabriel on to talk for an entire evening, and the Greenpeace folks hope to find one individual with the capability of carrying the message for their cause.
Gabriel probably took a quarter of the Greenpeace crowd in favor of rapid energy transformation away, with some simple words, and strong criticism.
So, for a brief period on Monday....some blunt common sense was delivered to the German people.
Explaining the Green Apology
The Green Party of Germany.....came out with an interesting report and apology yesterday. The report was a fairly thick piece (at least 250 pages). The topic? During the last election, the suggestion came up over the Greens having a relationship from years ago with pedophilia groups.
The Green Party agrees.....in their beginning....there was this connection to a small faction within their newly founded group, which pushed for expansion on adult-child relationships. Kinda shocking but at that point in organizing....I doubt if the Greens had a grasp of everything on the agenda.
The original Green Party came out of West Germany around 1980. As the Wall came down, there was a East Germany variety of the political effort.....called Alliance 90. In 1993, the two groups came together. It's safe to say that both groups had splinter organizations within them....favoring certain topics (like nuke energy or anti-nuke missiles) more than the average Green-minded voter.
For this report, the Greens went back to the early membership and tried to understand how adult-child relationships got started. What they found.....was a platform suggestion by one fringe group within the effort, which simply suggested that as long as a relationship was safe and non-violent, then relationships with minors should be without any legal pitfalls. The platform suggestion didn't really go anywhere, but it got widely circulated and some people signed the platform petitions without really reading the entire document (yep, Germans do the same stupid stuff as Americans.....sign without reading).
If you looked at environmental political activity from the 1960s....up through the 1980s....and past the Wall coming down.....you come up with three different variations (my suggestion of Greens version 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0).
The early version of Greens version 1.0 was a wild crowd who talked mostly anti-cruise missiles and anti-NATO. This crowd was never going to get past one-to-two percent of the national vote. The news media would cover them for various reasons, but it never made much sense....considering the low voter interest.
The Greens version 2.0 was a more thoughtful crowd, and had expanded it's list of political topic to around a dozen significant ideas. They were still anti-NATO, anti-cruise missiles.....but they came around to be pro-recyclables, pro-wind energy, pro-farm, and a number of items which interested the more intellectual of the voter crowd. They staged party meetings with less hectic or chaotic discussions. This Greens group would attract somewhere near four-to-five percent of the national vote.
So, we come to today's Green (3.0). They probably have at least forty-odd political topics or platforms. These include immigration, pension reform, jobs creation, and the economy. There are still a handful of Greens who dress in the traditional 1970s garb and will jump on nukes whenever possible. But the average Green today can attract seven-to-ten percent of the voters in significant elections.
The Greens of the 1970s would never have been suggested as a partner in state or regional politics. Today? The CDU of Hessen has teamed up with the regional Green Party, and given a portion of state cabinet posts to the Greens. It's an odd relationship but the right-leaning CDU has found a couple areas where they are in agreement, and can find mutual interests.
One area of the CDU-Green effort has been the ongoing project to expand the Frankfurt airport. Local hostility is still brewing over the noise levels of the airport, and the Greens have been active in forcing some changes to lessen the noise situation. The Greens have been pushed into looking at the airport from a business prospective......it hires a large segment of the Frankfurt population and you really don't want to do anything that might jeopardize the ongoing operation, or it's expansion. For a Green to find common ground in this....would have been unthinkable a decade ago. So, they've come a long way.
All of this goes back to the early days, and how this report fits into the process of change. The Greens of today sit down and examine political impacts. Being radical.....doesn't really mean that much. You need to have an end that fits neatly into the whole argument. Just being pure Green.....isn't really much of an achievement anymore. Yeah, maybe they've flipped a bit and are more of Green-Lite.....but still, they lean that way.
So the apology is in written form and and supposed to mean something. Maybe that's the end of this mess with the stains that go back three decades ago.
The Green Party agrees.....in their beginning....there was this connection to a small faction within their newly founded group, which pushed for expansion on adult-child relationships. Kinda shocking but at that point in organizing....I doubt if the Greens had a grasp of everything on the agenda.
The original Green Party came out of West Germany around 1980. As the Wall came down, there was a East Germany variety of the political effort.....called Alliance 90. In 1993, the two groups came together. It's safe to say that both groups had splinter organizations within them....favoring certain topics (like nuke energy or anti-nuke missiles) more than the average Green-minded voter.
For this report, the Greens went back to the early membership and tried to understand how adult-child relationships got started. What they found.....was a platform suggestion by one fringe group within the effort, which simply suggested that as long as a relationship was safe and non-violent, then relationships with minors should be without any legal pitfalls. The platform suggestion didn't really go anywhere, but it got widely circulated and some people signed the platform petitions without really reading the entire document (yep, Germans do the same stupid stuff as Americans.....sign without reading).
If you looked at environmental political activity from the 1960s....up through the 1980s....and past the Wall coming down.....you come up with three different variations (my suggestion of Greens version 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0).
The early version of Greens version 1.0 was a wild crowd who talked mostly anti-cruise missiles and anti-NATO. This crowd was never going to get past one-to-two percent of the national vote. The news media would cover them for various reasons, but it never made much sense....considering the low voter interest.
The Greens version 2.0 was a more thoughtful crowd, and had expanded it's list of political topic to around a dozen significant ideas. They were still anti-NATO, anti-cruise missiles.....but they came around to be pro-recyclables, pro-wind energy, pro-farm, and a number of items which interested the more intellectual of the voter crowd. They staged party meetings with less hectic or chaotic discussions. This Greens group would attract somewhere near four-to-five percent of the national vote.
So, we come to today's Green (3.0). They probably have at least forty-odd political topics or platforms. These include immigration, pension reform, jobs creation, and the economy. There are still a handful of Greens who dress in the traditional 1970s garb and will jump on nukes whenever possible. But the average Green today can attract seven-to-ten percent of the voters in significant elections.
The Greens of the 1970s would never have been suggested as a partner in state or regional politics. Today? The CDU of Hessen has teamed up with the regional Green Party, and given a portion of state cabinet posts to the Greens. It's an odd relationship but the right-leaning CDU has found a couple areas where they are in agreement, and can find mutual interests.
One area of the CDU-Green effort has been the ongoing project to expand the Frankfurt airport. Local hostility is still brewing over the noise levels of the airport, and the Greens have been active in forcing some changes to lessen the noise situation. The Greens have been pushed into looking at the airport from a business prospective......it hires a large segment of the Frankfurt population and you really don't want to do anything that might jeopardize the ongoing operation, or it's expansion. For a Green to find common ground in this....would have been unthinkable a decade ago. So, they've come a long way.
All of this goes back to the early days, and how this report fits into the process of change. The Greens of today sit down and examine political impacts. Being radical.....doesn't really mean that much. You need to have an end that fits neatly into the whole argument. Just being pure Green.....isn't really much of an achievement anymore. Yeah, maybe they've flipped a bit and are more of Green-Lite.....but still, they lean that way.
So the apology is in written form and and supposed to mean something. Maybe that's the end of this mess with the stains that go back three decades ago.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
The Fake Grandson Gimmick
Germany has an interesting criminal scam going on....referred to as the "fake grandson" trick.
An older German....usually over the age of sixty-five.....gets a call that little "Johan" has gotten into trouble and needs seven-thousand Euro (rarely ever less than three-thousand) to get out of trouble. So the older relative doesn't consult with Mom or Dad....they just go to the local bank and withdrew the money. They hand it over to someone who meets them at the bank door, and then find out six hours later that little "Johan" wasn't ever in trouble.
I'd take a guess that the trick occurs at least twenty times a day across Germany (eighty million residents).
The local newspaper here in Wiesbaden will chat on the ongoing subject at least once a week. Last week....a bank clerk asked an old gal why she was taking five-thousand Euro out of the bank and the story came out. The clerk called the cops and stopped the old person from falling into the victim status.
A crime? I'm not sure if the prosecutor folks can do much. As far as I can see...no one has been convicted yet of a crime.
An older German....usually over the age of sixty-five.....gets a call that little "Johan" has gotten into trouble and needs seven-thousand Euro (rarely ever less than three-thousand) to get out of trouble. So the older relative doesn't consult with Mom or Dad....they just go to the local bank and withdrew the money. They hand it over to someone who meets them at the bank door, and then find out six hours later that little "Johan" wasn't ever in trouble.
I'd take a guess that the trick occurs at least twenty times a day across Germany (eighty million residents).
The local newspaper here in Wiesbaden will chat on the ongoing subject at least once a week. Last week....a bank clerk asked an old gal why she was taking five-thousand Euro out of the bank and the story came out. The clerk called the cops and stopped the old person from falling into the victim status.
A crime? I'm not sure if the prosecutor folks can do much. As far as I can see...no one has been convicted yet of a crime.
The Andre Lawrence Sheppard Story
This is one of those essays that require some details.
So, we have this American, Andre Lawrence Sheppard. He went off in 2003, and joined the Army (voluntarily). He did three years....spending one year in Iraq. At the conclusion of that contract, he came to two decisions....one....that he wanted to sign another contract with the Army, and do more time within the US Army, and two.....he didn't ever want to go back to Iraq again.
Apparently, Sheppard finds someone within the Army (he never specifies who) who promised him that he could sign another contract and avoid another tour in Iraq. He signs the contract, and within months....he's in Germany within a unit who has orders to Iraq. He walks out the front gate of the post and applies for asylum in Germany (within Bavaria). That was in 2007.
Since 2007, Sheppard has had this odd life situation going on. During the Vietnam years....it didn't take more than a year or two for some German folks to find cause to accept a guy for asylum. It was the era of the draft, and it was pretty simple. Now? They revised the rules over the years, and with the voluntary system in place.....it takes a different reading to bring about asylum.
The German law dictates that if racism were the issue......it'd be easy to accept. That wasn't put into the application....nor could Sheppard provide any evidence of racism being a problem.
Religion or political opinion involved? Well, no. That would have helped, but from the original application....they weren't really cited.
Membership in a group? No.
So, we come to the EU clause that might help. If you can say that your unit was going to commit war crimes....it'd be easier to cite that and asylum would be simple to approve. At this point, Sheppard can't point at any member of his unit that has been accused of war crimes (I've looked and yet to find some accusation that would fit).
I've followed the story for almost five years now. This week....it came back up.
Sheppard sits in an asylum detention center in Bavaria. He gets free room and board in the center's boarding building, along with a cellphone. He waits.
For roughly two years....the Bavarians handled the episode, and finally rendered their verdict....he didn't qualify for asylum. In some ways, he's screwed up his own case by re-enlisting the second time, and then saying someone promised him that he wouldn't have to deploy. While he keeps repeating this comment....he's never pointed out who said this, or how they could makes such a promise. You can imagine the implications of making promises like this.....ninety-five percent of Army members would make such a request and thus you'd never deploy anywhere and just pretend you were in the Army, while getting paid for nothing.
In April of 2011, after they said "no"....he appealed. Twenty months would pass. At some point in early 2013....the regional court in Munich was going to open the process of appeal and comment. Then someone said that the EU court needed to comment over the process, and this one single rule about war crimes being an option.
This week.....the EU court said fine....they'd comment. Yes, he has the right to an asylum. Sheppard's lawyer was all happy about this comment. But when you examine the whole comment, the EU court simply handed the package back to Munich and said they were the ones who'd approve Sheppard's case. The package sent to the EU court? It apparently contained little about Sheppard's individual case or under what rule they'd use to approve the asylum.
Total time in the refugee center so far? Seven years.
The Munich court? I'm guessing they will slow-ball the episode and pick up the case again in early spring of 2015. Maybe by October of 2015....they will announce the appeal decision. I'm guessing it will go against Sheppard.
The odd thing? I spent twenty-two years in the American military and know that each year.....a certain number of people apply for conscientious objector status. If they have less than a year left on their contract.....the military will usually slow-ball this and simply let the time run out, with the guy walking out the door. More than a year? It'll turn into a process and usually result in various boards examining you, and at least twelve months are spent trying to prove your religious or personal change. It's not simple, but they figure that the volunteer method they use now.....keeps out the people with conscientious objector status.
For desertion.....what's the Army maximum sentence, if handed over? Eighteen months. Typically....the Army will review the case and in a number of cases (over past decade).....you rarely get more than six months in some stockade. Sheppard? He's basically spent seven years of his life on this waiting game....in a refugee center. It's hard for me to reason the logic to this. I would have quietly done the six months in some stockade, than spend seven years in some refugee center.
What happens to Sheppard? As we get closer to the court decision....I'm guessing he'll make a decision to relocate to Switzerland or Serbia...thinking their processes might be easier.
Did he pick the wrong German state to apply for asylum? On this question....I'd offer this analysis. There are sixteen German states, and each reacts different to legal cases. As an American, you 'd laugh about that comment, but it's the method commonly accepted. In my mind, he picked the one state where they ask stupid questions, and you need to establish more than just the minimum on answers. The fact that he volunteered the second time to sign-up, and then cited someone promised him that he'd never go to Iraq.....just wouldn't work in a Bavarian court. Maybe a Berlin or Hamburg court might have worked better, but I doubt that he knew that angle to German law.
Should he have just smoked a couple of joints and done the admittance to a marijuana problem? Yeah, I would have suggested that right off the bat, and simply accepted the discharge as part of the deal to get the heck out of the situation.
Should he have just pretended he saw and talked to imaginary people? Yeah, I would have suggested that angle. The Army doesn't like nutcases being around. The discharge would have taken three or four months maximum.
So I think Sheppard screwed up, and he's paying with years of his life for the consequence. Seven years wasted in some refugee camp in Bavaria. Other than learning German and just sitting around....what else has happened? He's a guy in search of a country to accept him, and it just isn't going to be Germany.
So, we have this American, Andre Lawrence Sheppard. He went off in 2003, and joined the Army (voluntarily). He did three years....spending one year in Iraq. At the conclusion of that contract, he came to two decisions....one....that he wanted to sign another contract with the Army, and do more time within the US Army, and two.....he didn't ever want to go back to Iraq again.
Apparently, Sheppard finds someone within the Army (he never specifies who) who promised him that he could sign another contract and avoid another tour in Iraq. He signs the contract, and within months....he's in Germany within a unit who has orders to Iraq. He walks out the front gate of the post and applies for asylum in Germany (within Bavaria). That was in 2007.
Since 2007, Sheppard has had this odd life situation going on. During the Vietnam years....it didn't take more than a year or two for some German folks to find cause to accept a guy for asylum. It was the era of the draft, and it was pretty simple. Now? They revised the rules over the years, and with the voluntary system in place.....it takes a different reading to bring about asylum.
The German law dictates that if racism were the issue......it'd be easy to accept. That wasn't put into the application....nor could Sheppard provide any evidence of racism being a problem.
Religion or political opinion involved? Well, no. That would have helped, but from the original application....they weren't really cited.
Membership in a group? No.
So, we come to the EU clause that might help. If you can say that your unit was going to commit war crimes....it'd be easier to cite that and asylum would be simple to approve. At this point, Sheppard can't point at any member of his unit that has been accused of war crimes (I've looked and yet to find some accusation that would fit).
I've followed the story for almost five years now. This week....it came back up.
Sheppard sits in an asylum detention center in Bavaria. He gets free room and board in the center's boarding building, along with a cellphone. He waits.
For roughly two years....the Bavarians handled the episode, and finally rendered their verdict....he didn't qualify for asylum. In some ways, he's screwed up his own case by re-enlisting the second time, and then saying someone promised him that he wouldn't have to deploy. While he keeps repeating this comment....he's never pointed out who said this, or how they could makes such a promise. You can imagine the implications of making promises like this.....ninety-five percent of Army members would make such a request and thus you'd never deploy anywhere and just pretend you were in the Army, while getting paid for nothing.
In April of 2011, after they said "no"....he appealed. Twenty months would pass. At some point in early 2013....the regional court in Munich was going to open the process of appeal and comment. Then someone said that the EU court needed to comment over the process, and this one single rule about war crimes being an option.
This week.....the EU court said fine....they'd comment. Yes, he has the right to an asylum. Sheppard's lawyer was all happy about this comment. But when you examine the whole comment, the EU court simply handed the package back to Munich and said they were the ones who'd approve Sheppard's case. The package sent to the EU court? It apparently contained little about Sheppard's individual case or under what rule they'd use to approve the asylum.
Total time in the refugee center so far? Seven years.
The Munich court? I'm guessing they will slow-ball the episode and pick up the case again in early spring of 2015. Maybe by October of 2015....they will announce the appeal decision. I'm guessing it will go against Sheppard.
The odd thing? I spent twenty-two years in the American military and know that each year.....a certain number of people apply for conscientious objector status. If they have less than a year left on their contract.....the military will usually slow-ball this and simply let the time run out, with the guy walking out the door. More than a year? It'll turn into a process and usually result in various boards examining you, and at least twelve months are spent trying to prove your religious or personal change. It's not simple, but they figure that the volunteer method they use now.....keeps out the people with conscientious objector status.
For desertion.....what's the Army maximum sentence, if handed over? Eighteen months. Typically....the Army will review the case and in a number of cases (over past decade).....you rarely get more than six months in some stockade. Sheppard? He's basically spent seven years of his life on this waiting game....in a refugee center. It's hard for me to reason the logic to this. I would have quietly done the six months in some stockade, than spend seven years in some refugee center.
What happens to Sheppard? As we get closer to the court decision....I'm guessing he'll make a decision to relocate to Switzerland or Serbia...thinking their processes might be easier.
Did he pick the wrong German state to apply for asylum? On this question....I'd offer this analysis. There are sixteen German states, and each reacts different to legal cases. As an American, you 'd laugh about that comment, but it's the method commonly accepted. In my mind, he picked the one state where they ask stupid questions, and you need to establish more than just the minimum on answers. The fact that he volunteered the second time to sign-up, and then cited someone promised him that he'd never go to Iraq.....just wouldn't work in a Bavarian court. Maybe a Berlin or Hamburg court might have worked better, but I doubt that he knew that angle to German law.
Should he have just smoked a couple of joints and done the admittance to a marijuana problem? Yeah, I would have suggested that right off the bat, and simply accepted the discharge as part of the deal to get the heck out of the situation.
Should he have just pretended he saw and talked to imaginary people? Yeah, I would have suggested that angle. The Army doesn't like nutcases being around. The discharge would have taken three or four months maximum.
So I think Sheppard screwed up, and he's paying with years of his life for the consequence. Seven years wasted in some refugee camp in Bavaria. Other than learning German and just sitting around....what else has happened? He's a guy in search of a country to accept him, and it just isn't going to be Germany.
The Hartz IV Story
Germany, because of the EU rules.....has an open-door policy on other EU members coming into Germany and working. When they get to an unemployed situation....the same people are expected to go over to the employment office in each community and get more employment opportunities. Generally, as a German....you can decline a couple of these and at least get Hartz IV welfare pay. For a foreigner, you weren't supposed to decline any type of employment.....otherwise, you'd lose welfare pay.
Well....some Romanian gal decided to challenge the system. After a lengthy court process....a EU court determined that state welfare is for state people, not foreigners. If you come into Germany, pretend to look for work, but never find it.....you don't get welfare. Basically, Germany is inviting you to return to the old country.
Germany will say that roughly 4.3 million Germans are on some type of state help. How many foreigners fit into the group? Unknown. The government and journalists have been careful not to put that figure out into the public perception of the problem.
Hostility involved? Yes....for months, German news media reports have hyped up the problem of Bulgarians and Romanians who've entered the country.....taken up some ghetto-like residences....and opted for state welfare. Local authorities have been looking for various ways to get the people on German welfare or to leave, but the EU rules are pretty strong. However, with the welfare path more clear now.....you won't survive long in Germany without some type of pay. So, either they work at minimum wage, or they leave of their own accord.
Well....some Romanian gal decided to challenge the system. After a lengthy court process....a EU court determined that state welfare is for state people, not foreigners. If you come into Germany, pretend to look for work, but never find it.....you don't get welfare. Basically, Germany is inviting you to return to the old country.
Germany will say that roughly 4.3 million Germans are on some type of state help. How many foreigners fit into the group? Unknown. The government and journalists have been careful not to put that figure out into the public perception of the problem.
Hostility involved? Yes....for months, German news media reports have hyped up the problem of Bulgarians and Romanians who've entered the country.....taken up some ghetto-like residences....and opted for state welfare. Local authorities have been looking for various ways to get the people on German welfare or to leave, but the EU rules are pretty strong. However, with the welfare path more clear now.....you won't survive long in Germany without some type of pay. So, either they work at minimum wage, or they leave of their own accord.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
The Accident Story
At some point on this past Saturday morning.....a high-performance car salesman drove a McLaren F1 out of a sales lot near Hamburg. The driver/salesman....had a eight-year old kid in the passenger seat, and this was a demo drive.
No one has really said how the eight-year old kid fits into this story. Journalists say that the parents had brought the kid along, and it appears like 'dad' was going to buy the car and this was an 'extra' in the deal.....driving the kid around in the car for an hour.
The F1 has a total package of 627 horse-power.
On this morning, the salesman took the car to a country road about twenty miles north of Hamburg, and took a couple of curves.....then crossed the lane and ran into a Opel Corsa.
Fire Department got the call and came out. The fiberglass body of the F1 had more or less come apart. Cops won't say much over the speed other than to note there were no skid marks for the F1. Based on the video I saw last night on Channel One (ARD) news.....I'd take a guess he was doing a minimum of a 100 kph (62 mph) and maybe upwards. The speed on this country road was 60 Kph (37 miles per hour).
Both the old guy in the Opel and the young salesman in the F1 are dead. The old guy dies at the scene, and the young guy later at the hospital. The kid? Well....he somehow survives but as fire rescue folks comment....he freaked out completely as they arrived and it took a little bit of effort to cut him out of the car. He was totted off to the hospital with a concussion and some injuries, but will survive.
The odd thing to this story? This is a three-mile long road....from one village to another. Less than a year ago....another high performance car had an accident on the road.....a 570-hp Ferrari. In that case, the Ferrari driver survived, and the old gal in the other vehicle died.
All of this brought out commentary by professional drivers and high-performance enthusiasts that people misunderstand the nature of the high-performance cars, putting risk at a higher level, and harming the public with their antics.
Around ten years ago....south of Kaiserslautern, I ended up on state road 48. It's an interesting two-lane road that goes through some woods, hills, and tight curves. It is a magnet for speed enthusiasts....in particular...high-performance motorcycles. People press their machines to maximum speed and beyond....often crossing the line and coming close to hitting you. On that afternoon, I counted four people who came fairly close to hitting my vehicle.
Cops know it's a problem and have pushed more speed patrols over the past decade for weekend work. A good team might hand out twenty tickets easily on one single Saturday afternoon. These aren't the cheap tickets either. They pull the driver over.....conduct a vehicle safety check, and toss every single possible violation onto the guy, besides the speeding ticket they got. I sat and watched a news piece recently where one guy had an illegal muffler on the bike. They told him to just leave it for a tow truck to pick up later (figure at least a thousand Euro in fines, and another 500 Euro for the truck episode).
Hostility brewing out of this speeding episode? It's hard to say. Germans are addicted to high-performance cars, and they don't take kindly to restrictions. In this case, two incidents within a one-year period on a 3-km road? This will bring up some political consequences, I think.
No one has really said how the eight-year old kid fits into this story. Journalists say that the parents had brought the kid along, and it appears like 'dad' was going to buy the car and this was an 'extra' in the deal.....driving the kid around in the car for an hour.
The F1 has a total package of 627 horse-power.
On this morning, the salesman took the car to a country road about twenty miles north of Hamburg, and took a couple of curves.....then crossed the lane and ran into a Opel Corsa.
Fire Department got the call and came out. The fiberglass body of the F1 had more or less come apart. Cops won't say much over the speed other than to note there were no skid marks for the F1. Based on the video I saw last night on Channel One (ARD) news.....I'd take a guess he was doing a minimum of a 100 kph (62 mph) and maybe upwards. The speed on this country road was 60 Kph (37 miles per hour).
Both the old guy in the Opel and the young salesman in the F1 are dead. The old guy dies at the scene, and the young guy later at the hospital. The kid? Well....he somehow survives but as fire rescue folks comment....he freaked out completely as they arrived and it took a little bit of effort to cut him out of the car. He was totted off to the hospital with a concussion and some injuries, but will survive.
The odd thing to this story? This is a three-mile long road....from one village to another. Less than a year ago....another high performance car had an accident on the road.....a 570-hp Ferrari. In that case, the Ferrari driver survived, and the old gal in the other vehicle died.
All of this brought out commentary by professional drivers and high-performance enthusiasts that people misunderstand the nature of the high-performance cars, putting risk at a higher level, and harming the public with their antics.
Around ten years ago....south of Kaiserslautern, I ended up on state road 48. It's an interesting two-lane road that goes through some woods, hills, and tight curves. It is a magnet for speed enthusiasts....in particular...high-performance motorcycles. People press their machines to maximum speed and beyond....often crossing the line and coming close to hitting you. On that afternoon, I counted four people who came fairly close to hitting my vehicle.
Cops know it's a problem and have pushed more speed patrols over the past decade for weekend work. A good team might hand out twenty tickets easily on one single Saturday afternoon. These aren't the cheap tickets either. They pull the driver over.....conduct a vehicle safety check, and toss every single possible violation onto the guy, besides the speeding ticket they got. I sat and watched a news piece recently where one guy had an illegal muffler on the bike. They told him to just leave it for a tow truck to pick up later (figure at least a thousand Euro in fines, and another 500 Euro for the truck episode).
Hostility brewing out of this speeding episode? It's hard to say. Germans are addicted to high-performance cars, and they don't take kindly to restrictions. In this case, two incidents within a one-year period on a 3-km road? This will bring up some political consequences, I think.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
The Wall: 25 Years
Tonight is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. In Germany, it's a big party-like atmosphere for a number of folks. For other folks, nothing.
The news people will admit that there's a percentage of people in Germany who'd prefer the wall to go back up....one in six is the usual number given.
Generally, from an American prospective....I'd say if you live in Berlin...no matter what your age is.....it's a big deal and worth the celebration.
If you grew up in one of the bigger DDR towns....no matter what age you are.....it might be worth some celebration.
If you had family living across the border through the twenty-eight year period.....it might be worth celebrating.
Kids who were born in the mid-eighties? I doubt if any of them really care, and don't see the big deal.
West Germans? They typically get aggravated to some degree because solidarity taxes were put into effect, and they paid tens of billions to upgrade the DDR state and it's sixteen million people.
German historians dust off the binders and talk of the glorious changes that came.
German construction companies get weepy-eyed over the change.....knowing they made billions off the infrastructure built over the years.
People living in the eastern sectors of Germany today? They mostly talk over high unemployment rates and limited opportunities. Maybe it's a wonderful new land today, with the local grocery featuring twenty different types of decaf coffee. But then you start to look for a decent job, with respectful pay.....and it's just not there.
So, when you look across the landscape, part of the nation is celebrating, and part are quietly sitting there with no hyped-up feelings. And one group is thinking a wall ought to go back up.
The news people will admit that there's a percentage of people in Germany who'd prefer the wall to go back up....one in six is the usual number given.
Generally, from an American prospective....I'd say if you live in Berlin...no matter what your age is.....it's a big deal and worth the celebration.
If you grew up in one of the bigger DDR towns....no matter what age you are.....it might be worth some celebration.
If you had family living across the border through the twenty-eight year period.....it might be worth celebrating.
Kids who were born in the mid-eighties? I doubt if any of them really care, and don't see the big deal.
West Germans? They typically get aggravated to some degree because solidarity taxes were put into effect, and they paid tens of billions to upgrade the DDR state and it's sixteen million people.
German historians dust off the binders and talk of the glorious changes that came.
German construction companies get weepy-eyed over the change.....knowing they made billions off the infrastructure built over the years.
People living in the eastern sectors of Germany today? They mostly talk over high unemployment rates and limited opportunities. Maybe it's a wonderful new land today, with the local grocery featuring twenty different types of decaf coffee. But then you start to look for a decent job, with respectful pay.....and it's just not there.
So, when you look across the landscape, part of the nation is celebrating, and part are quietly sitting there with no hyped-up feelings. And one group is thinking a wall ought to go back up.
School Fine Story
Here in Hessen (from the north part of the German state), a legal case has wrapped up that went to the Constitutional Court.
The issue? A family with nine kids.....decided to home-school their kids. Hessen law goes to an extreme, if you are the parent, and you've gone to this strategy of schooling...with potentially up to six months in county jail and a fair-sized fine. I should note....that's the far end of the spectrum and usually reserved for parents who just look the other way for fifty days of missed school.
As the journalists have laid out the story....the older of the kids had done local in-school situations, and appear to have been taken out of certain classes, which is legal by the standards. Any class which would conflict with a religious group....like an ethics class or religious class.....can be skipped with written notes ahead of time. Math and science? No.....unstoppable.
A regional court had heard the case back in the spring of 2013....deciding the parents were guilty but wanting to limit punishment to 140-days of missed school, times five Euro a day. Less than a thousand Euro.
The Constitution Court came to agree with the regional court. End of discussion.
Americans often get the wrong perception on how this works, and why home-schooling just isn't approved within German society.
It's entirely possible that you and your wife finish up basic school by the eighth grade....do three years of apprentice schooling (which means half the day is occupational training and the other half split between seven subjects on a "lite" basis). The graduation occurs and a certificate is awarded.
More than fifty percent of German society falls into this category. If you measured an German kid against an American kid.....the German kid is usually a year ahead by the eighth grade (my humble opinion). At that point though....things get kinda maxed out.
I would humbly agree....a university graduate of the US, or Germany....might be an adequate teacher. The odds of finding some an acceptable law where such a person might be a home-school situation? Zero. It'd be deemed unfair to the rest of the citizens in the country.
So, you can imagine opening up the door for some German parents who get this 'itch' to home-school but they really aren't of the same quality or capability that you'd expect. Toss in the fact that most all German school classes are religious-free (math, science, language, English, etc).....and it's not worth an argument.
On a yearly basis.....there's at least one or two episodes like this....where some German parents take up the idea of home-schooling and find state folks not willing to compromise. You have two general choices.....go to the local public school system, or pick various private school operations (the Catholic Church offers options, and along commercial operations).
The issue? A family with nine kids.....decided to home-school their kids. Hessen law goes to an extreme, if you are the parent, and you've gone to this strategy of schooling...with potentially up to six months in county jail and a fair-sized fine. I should note....that's the far end of the spectrum and usually reserved for parents who just look the other way for fifty days of missed school.
As the journalists have laid out the story....the older of the kids had done local in-school situations, and appear to have been taken out of certain classes, which is legal by the standards. Any class which would conflict with a religious group....like an ethics class or religious class.....can be skipped with written notes ahead of time. Math and science? No.....unstoppable.
A regional court had heard the case back in the spring of 2013....deciding the parents were guilty but wanting to limit punishment to 140-days of missed school, times five Euro a day. Less than a thousand Euro.
The Constitution Court came to agree with the regional court. End of discussion.
Americans often get the wrong perception on how this works, and why home-schooling just isn't approved within German society.
It's entirely possible that you and your wife finish up basic school by the eighth grade....do three years of apprentice schooling (which means half the day is occupational training and the other half split between seven subjects on a "lite" basis). The graduation occurs and a certificate is awarded.
More than fifty percent of German society falls into this category. If you measured an German kid against an American kid.....the German kid is usually a year ahead by the eighth grade (my humble opinion). At that point though....things get kinda maxed out.
I would humbly agree....a university graduate of the US, or Germany....might be an adequate teacher. The odds of finding some an acceptable law where such a person might be a home-school situation? Zero. It'd be deemed unfair to the rest of the citizens in the country.
So, you can imagine opening up the door for some German parents who get this 'itch' to home-school but they really aren't of the same quality or capability that you'd expect. Toss in the fact that most all German school classes are religious-free (math, science, language, English, etc).....and it's not worth an argument.
On a yearly basis.....there's at least one or two episodes like this....where some German parents take up the idea of home-schooling and find state folks not willing to compromise. You have two general choices.....go to the local public school system, or pick various private school operations (the Catholic Church offers options, and along commercial operations).
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