Cops from the local town (Wiesbaden) put out a bulletin this afternoon.....six attempts were made this morning (Wed) to call up older Germans in the city and some person tried the "woeful grandson" trick. All six episodes met with failure because the folks knew of the scam.
The way that the "woeful grandson" trick works is simple. Someone calls up a older guy or gal, and tells them that Junior is in serious trouble and he needs ten to twenty thousand Euro to get him out of trouble. This can't wait....it needs to happen in an hour or less.....so there's no time for discussions or thinking.
This typically means a trip to the bank, if the old guy or gal buys into the story.
Locally, banks have been briefed to ask questions if any senior citizen walks in and asks for a significant amount of cash. The odds of the trick working? Almost zero.
If the idiots running the scam would just keep the scam to 300 Euro, then it'd be simple for a person to walk up to an ATM machine and withdraw that amount without arising suspicion of the bank clerks. For some reason, they are all geared toward big scams and want to pursue the ten thousand Euro goal.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Awaiting the Tiger of Sabrodt Scenario
Once upon a time (these essays always start this way).....in a faraway land (Hoyerswerda to be precise)......a hunter or to be more precise....a forester was out in the wooded area and came across the "Tiger of Sabrodt".
I know.....it's an exotic title and probably worthy of a 300-page book....but I need to keep this simple.
There in the rurals of Saxony.......the Tiger of Sabrodt is a title that had been given to a wolf noted in the local region. For weeks and months....the Tiger of Sabrodt had been noted killing livestock and farm animals in the Hoyerswerde region. The Prussian government.....existing at that point of time in 1904....had a department to handle these type problems. So they set up a bounty for the killing of the wolf.
The bounty? I know you'd be curious. It was 100 Reich-marks. In this time-period....it would have meant in relationship to the dollar of about twenty-five dollars in 1905, which is a fair amount of money if you take into account the value of money at the time.
The hunter's name? That's gotten lost over time and probably doesn't matter. He was probably a pipe-smoker, a quiet guy who carried a small bottle of schnapps in his back pocket, and generally hit whatever he aimed his rifle at. The numbers over the wolf? He was quoted as weighing around 90 pounds and was a sizable wolf (1.6 meters long).
The thing is.....the Tiger of Sabrodt was the last known wolf in Germany. In that last week or two that he roamed.....his legendary status had grown. Every single expert on wolves vowed that there were no more wolves left anywhere in Germany.....so the gut feeling and news media spin on this....was that it was NOT a wolf. What then? An escaped tiger, from a circus.
Yeah, I know.....it's a hokey story and a definite twist to reality, but it's 1904 and whatever the newspaper prints is absolute fact as far as people are concerned. You have accept this as part of the situation as well....it was bad enough that people thought it was a wolf, but now you'd suggest it was a tiger? That went from a three-star bad situation to a definite four-star really bad situation.
So across eastern Germany at the time, in this period of nine years prior to WW I.....the Tiger of Sabrodt was putting fear into the hearts of locals. People kept a watchful eye over their children and everyone felt dread over their little world and it's lack of safety.
After the hunter killed the wolf.....the Tiger of Sabrodt.....he was stuffed and put on display at the local castle museum (where he is still shown today).
Why do I tell this story? Well....the topic of wolves has crept back into German society again. This week, some school over in Saxony decided to cancel a kid's hiking trip into the local woods because of fear of wolves seen in the local area.
The wolf experts tend to say there's nothing much to worry about. Wolves tend to stay away from civilized areas.
Course, the odd piece to this story is that farmers have come to local authorities and complained that they've had animals killed by the wolves. They'd like for the government to do "something". They are careful about how to word the request....but they'd like for some hunter to fix their problem.
How many folks have been dragged off into the woods by wolves? Well....here's the thing. As recent as 2010 (in Alaska).....a female teacher was jogging alone and was grabbed by wolves and dragged off (killed by the wolves). So, you can't really pretend that they are this lovable and sweet creature.
My humble guess is that we will go through a period of ten years where environmentalists and wolf-friendly groups try hard to keep the public focused on preserving the wolf population. Then one day out in some smaller village where two little kids are walking from one village to another.....one gets grabbed by pack of wolves and the other kid escapes. Within a week.....things kinda change from the 'good wolf' script.....to the 'bad wolf' script, and some hunter gets permission to hunt down the pack.
So, I come to the end point presently of this little tale. Roughly 111 years ago.....a wolf came to get a legendary name and title.....being the last hunted wolf in Germany. And history has the strange luck of repeating itself in some cases. Hopefully, we can get a good decent name for this new wolf.
I know.....it's an exotic title and probably worthy of a 300-page book....but I need to keep this simple.
There in the rurals of Saxony.......the Tiger of Sabrodt is a title that had been given to a wolf noted in the local region. For weeks and months....the Tiger of Sabrodt had been noted killing livestock and farm animals in the Hoyerswerde region. The Prussian government.....existing at that point of time in 1904....had a department to handle these type problems. So they set up a bounty for the killing of the wolf.
The bounty? I know you'd be curious. It was 100 Reich-marks. In this time-period....it would have meant in relationship to the dollar of about twenty-five dollars in 1905, which is a fair amount of money if you take into account the value of money at the time.
The hunter's name? That's gotten lost over time and probably doesn't matter. He was probably a pipe-smoker, a quiet guy who carried a small bottle of schnapps in his back pocket, and generally hit whatever he aimed his rifle at. The numbers over the wolf? He was quoted as weighing around 90 pounds and was a sizable wolf (1.6 meters long).
The thing is.....the Tiger of Sabrodt was the last known wolf in Germany. In that last week or two that he roamed.....his legendary status had grown. Every single expert on wolves vowed that there were no more wolves left anywhere in Germany.....so the gut feeling and news media spin on this....was that it was NOT a wolf. What then? An escaped tiger, from a circus.
Yeah, I know.....it's a hokey story and a definite twist to reality, but it's 1904 and whatever the newspaper prints is absolute fact as far as people are concerned. You have accept this as part of the situation as well....it was bad enough that people thought it was a wolf, but now you'd suggest it was a tiger? That went from a three-star bad situation to a definite four-star really bad situation.
So across eastern Germany at the time, in this period of nine years prior to WW I.....the Tiger of Sabrodt was putting fear into the hearts of locals. People kept a watchful eye over their children and everyone felt dread over their little world and it's lack of safety.
After the hunter killed the wolf.....the Tiger of Sabrodt.....he was stuffed and put on display at the local castle museum (where he is still shown today).
Why do I tell this story? Well....the topic of wolves has crept back into German society again. This week, some school over in Saxony decided to cancel a kid's hiking trip into the local woods because of fear of wolves seen in the local area.
The wolf experts tend to say there's nothing much to worry about. Wolves tend to stay away from civilized areas.
Course, the odd piece to this story is that farmers have come to local authorities and complained that they've had animals killed by the wolves. They'd like for the government to do "something". They are careful about how to word the request....but they'd like for some hunter to fix their problem.
How many folks have been dragged off into the woods by wolves? Well....here's the thing. As recent as 2010 (in Alaska).....a female teacher was jogging alone and was grabbed by wolves and dragged off (killed by the wolves). So, you can't really pretend that they are this lovable and sweet creature.
My humble guess is that we will go through a period of ten years where environmentalists and wolf-friendly groups try hard to keep the public focused on preserving the wolf population. Then one day out in some smaller village where two little kids are walking from one village to another.....one gets grabbed by pack of wolves and the other kid escapes. Within a week.....things kinda change from the 'good wolf' script.....to the 'bad wolf' script, and some hunter gets permission to hunt down the pack.
So, I come to the end point presently of this little tale. Roughly 111 years ago.....a wolf came to get a legendary name and title.....being the last hunted wolf in Germany. And history has the strange luck of repeating itself in some cases. Hopefully, we can get a good decent name for this new wolf.
Beggars
If you walked around any significant urban area in Germany back in the 1980s....you rarely saw begging. I could have walked around Frankfurt or Wiesbaden in 1984 and maybe seen one or two beggars in an entire day. Well....here in 2015....on an average morning or afternoon walk in Wiesbaden.....I'll probably come across fifteen to twenty beggars. Cops kinda motivate people to stay out of the train station and mall areas....but the shopping district is open territory.
The trigger of the mess? Some Germans will say that once the wall came down in the late 1980s.....everyone started to notice street begging picking up. These weren't Germans.....they were East Europeans or from Arabic countries.
I noticed in regional news this morning that Salzburg (Austria) has written up a ban on begging....to start shortly. Within the city limits of Salzburg...at least in shopping districts.....it's a no-go area for begging. There's even talk that cemeteries will be put on some special no-go list for beggars.
After WW II.....no matter where you went in Germany.....there were jobs. Most were full-time....some were part-time....but anybody could find work and avoid the particular nature of begging. If you count in Hartz IV welfare and social help......no German stands out on the street and begs. Things are different though with the significant number of non-native Germans or immigrants.
If you asked most Germans about the beggars.....they will respond that they don't give money to them and they don't buy the 'sob-story' image given. Germans, in essence, are absolutely born into being natural-skeptics. It might not have been that way in the 1930s, but they've kinda wised up, asked questions, and are a tougher breed of character today than they were forty years ago. It's hard to find some sympathetic side of a German for these beggar characters.
Living with the beggars? As each year goes by and you start to see more and more beggars.....I think some German cities will eventually get around to making some tough rules as the Austrians did with Salzburg. If you remove the beggars from the most active market areas.....where they've got potential....and put them into limited locations for begging capital.....they will eventually get the message.
The trigger of the mess? Some Germans will say that once the wall came down in the late 1980s.....everyone started to notice street begging picking up. These weren't Germans.....they were East Europeans or from Arabic countries.
I noticed in regional news this morning that Salzburg (Austria) has written up a ban on begging....to start shortly. Within the city limits of Salzburg...at least in shopping districts.....it's a no-go area for begging. There's even talk that cemeteries will be put on some special no-go list for beggars.
After WW II.....no matter where you went in Germany.....there were jobs. Most were full-time....some were part-time....but anybody could find work and avoid the particular nature of begging. If you count in Hartz IV welfare and social help......no German stands out on the street and begs. Things are different though with the significant number of non-native Germans or immigrants.
If you asked most Germans about the beggars.....they will respond that they don't give money to them and they don't buy the 'sob-story' image given. Germans, in essence, are absolutely born into being natural-skeptics. It might not have been that way in the 1930s, but they've kinda wised up, asked questions, and are a tougher breed of character today than they were forty years ago. It's hard to find some sympathetic side of a German for these beggar characters.
Living with the beggars? As each year goes by and you start to see more and more beggars.....I think some German cities will eventually get around to making some tough rules as the Austrians did with Salzburg. If you remove the beggars from the most active market areas.....where they've got potential....and put them into limited locations for begging capital.....they will eventually get the message.
Monday, April 20, 2015
TV Review: Mord Mit Aussicht
There's a German show which has been around for three seasons....Mord Mit Aussicht....Murder With a View......which might be worth watching.
The best description would be a female version of T J Hooker getting reassigned to Mayberry, and finding herself in the middle of a potential murder/missing person case on each show.....then discovering by the end that it just didn't turn into a real murder or missing persons case.
It's a small-town situation in the rural west of Germany, where a Koln cop has been reassigned to a town with no real crime.....mostly because of her eager behavior to crack cases. She arrives to find it's a three-cop town and she supervises two Barney-type characters.
Netflix added the series for their German/American customers.
It was a series that started with low viewers.....blamed partly on the network and the timeslot.
The network flipped the show around, and then over a period of six months.....it picked up viewers. At some point in 2013....it got up to around seventeen percent of the market.
Total episodes? Thirty-nine were produced.....each is roughly fifty minutes long with no commercial breaks.
The best description would be a female version of T J Hooker getting reassigned to Mayberry, and finding herself in the middle of a potential murder/missing person case on each show.....then discovering by the end that it just didn't turn into a real murder or missing persons case.
It's a small-town situation in the rural west of Germany, where a Koln cop has been reassigned to a town with no real crime.....mostly because of her eager behavior to crack cases. She arrives to find it's a three-cop town and she supervises two Barney-type characters.
Netflix added the series for their German/American customers.
It was a series that started with low viewers.....blamed partly on the network and the timeslot.
The network flipped the show around, and then over a period of six months.....it picked up viewers. At some point in 2013....it got up to around seventeen percent of the market.
Total episodes? Thirty-nine were produced.....each is roughly fifty minutes long with no commercial breaks.
Refugees, Boats, Rafts, and Reality
Over the last couple of years....refugees making their way into Europe have become a billion-dollar industry. Governments used to be fairly tough on people sneaking in and it wasn't a guaranteed that they would accept you. Somewhere over the past year or two....things shifted.
What people saw in the Middle East and Africa....was this golden opportunity. Higher acceptance of refugee status turning into residency and more boats utilized to get you within 'striking' distance of some southern European border.....usually Italy.
So, gangs or men of opportunity (whichever you'd prefer to identify these individuals).....got into the business of buying barely seaworthly boats or rubber rafts, and establishing a bribery system. Bring in a hundred desperate people.....make them pay at least 500 Euro each, and you walk away with 50,000 Euro per act.
The European countries? They hyped up rescue operations by the Italians to help save these poor souls on the rubber rafts or marginal boats. Every week, you'd have the state-run networks in Germany hyping up the positive nature of saving this boat of sixty people and that raft with forty people. It was a wonderful humanitarian thing that the Italians were doing and thus saving all these poor human beings.
The translation back into the countries of origin? Continue on.....get the money....make your way to the Libyan coast, and buy your way onto some rubber raft to escape to the 'promised-land'.
This past week......two interesting things happened.
First, it was noted that on one such rubber raft.....a number of Islamic guys forced a number of Christian guys to jump overboard and drown. The story isn't tied down yet and the number of deaths involved appears to be around five to ten. The Islamic guys who made it? Rescued by the Italians once again? They were bound for court action and there will be some type of murder charge prepared for some of them.
Shocker for the German public? Yeah.....it opens a discussion over who is on the desperation list and maybe there ought to be some more debate about this whole refugee business.
But we come to episode number two, which is just as interesting. A boat capsized and went under.....maybe 900-to-1,000 refugees onboard? The number drifts up and down depending on who tells the story.
Why not just open a air bridge and fly 50,000 refugees a week into Europe and dump them on various countries? Well...no, that's not exactly going to be acceptable by the bulk of European societies. As long as you 'bleed' them across.....100 here.....400 there.....800 next week.....that's acceptable. Bulk refugee situations and into the tens of thousands per week? That would scare the crap out of most societies in Europe.
The intellectural guys will gear up for German public debate and talk about the noble causes here, and why saving the refugees is of the highest priority. The comical side of this is that their forum support goes in favor of a billion-dollar rubber-boat movement empire. You could go to China and buy three-hundred of these sixty-passenger rubber rafts.....get an old fishing boat to pull your 'customers' out of some Libyan port, and simply get them half way to Italy.....dumping them there and walking away with $30,000 in profit for a single day of work. In a month.....a once-a-day operation could get you $900,000.
Long term.....neither the intellectuals or the political parties of Germany can really predict where this goes and how mass open immigration doors being open will be the cornerstone of a future Germany. If you were recruiting refugees with science degrees or significant backgrounds for future jobs.....maybe it'd make sense. But presently, there's just not any real strategy here.
More debate? Probably, but I don't see it changing much of anything. The rubber raft industry is a guaranteed bet and worth investing into.....as far as I see the future..
What people saw in the Middle East and Africa....was this golden opportunity. Higher acceptance of refugee status turning into residency and more boats utilized to get you within 'striking' distance of some southern European border.....usually Italy.
So, gangs or men of opportunity (whichever you'd prefer to identify these individuals).....got into the business of buying barely seaworthly boats or rubber rafts, and establishing a bribery system. Bring in a hundred desperate people.....make them pay at least 500 Euro each, and you walk away with 50,000 Euro per act.
The European countries? They hyped up rescue operations by the Italians to help save these poor souls on the rubber rafts or marginal boats. Every week, you'd have the state-run networks in Germany hyping up the positive nature of saving this boat of sixty people and that raft with forty people. It was a wonderful humanitarian thing that the Italians were doing and thus saving all these poor human beings.
The translation back into the countries of origin? Continue on.....get the money....make your way to the Libyan coast, and buy your way onto some rubber raft to escape to the 'promised-land'.
This past week......two interesting things happened.
First, it was noted that on one such rubber raft.....a number of Islamic guys forced a number of Christian guys to jump overboard and drown. The story isn't tied down yet and the number of deaths involved appears to be around five to ten. The Islamic guys who made it? Rescued by the Italians once again? They were bound for court action and there will be some type of murder charge prepared for some of them.
Shocker for the German public? Yeah.....it opens a discussion over who is on the desperation list and maybe there ought to be some more debate about this whole refugee business.
But we come to episode number two, which is just as interesting. A boat capsized and went under.....maybe 900-to-1,000 refugees onboard? The number drifts up and down depending on who tells the story.
Why not just open a air bridge and fly 50,000 refugees a week into Europe and dump them on various countries? Well...no, that's not exactly going to be acceptable by the bulk of European societies. As long as you 'bleed' them across.....100 here.....400 there.....800 next week.....that's acceptable. Bulk refugee situations and into the tens of thousands per week? That would scare the crap out of most societies in Europe.
The intellectural guys will gear up for German public debate and talk about the noble causes here, and why saving the refugees is of the highest priority. The comical side of this is that their forum support goes in favor of a billion-dollar rubber-boat movement empire. You could go to China and buy three-hundred of these sixty-passenger rubber rafts.....get an old fishing boat to pull your 'customers' out of some Libyan port, and simply get them half way to Italy.....dumping them there and walking away with $30,000 in profit for a single day of work. In a month.....a once-a-day operation could get you $900,000.
Long term.....neither the intellectuals or the political parties of Germany can really predict where this goes and how mass open immigration doors being open will be the cornerstone of a future Germany. If you were recruiting refugees with science degrees or significant backgrounds for future jobs.....maybe it'd make sense. But presently, there's just not any real strategy here.
More debate? Probably, but I don't see it changing much of anything. The rubber raft industry is a guaranteed bet and worth investing into.....as far as I see the future..
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Kaiser Brucke
You can actually walk over the hundred-year old bridge.....there'a pedestrian area on the one side of the bridge for walkers and bikers.
Looking for it? If you find the Schiersteiner Bridge on the map at one end of town....this is a half-mile east of the bridge.
Million-dollar view from the bridge and you actually cross over to Wiesbaden.....turn right....go up to the next bridge (30-minute walk) and cross back over to Mainz, then walk for thirty minutes and return to the same point where you started from.
One note, NO....you can't climb down the stairs to the island in the middle of the bridge (DAS IS VERBOTTEN). Yes, there's a stairway on both sides of the river and bikes are ok for use on the bridge.
A Long Term Mainz Project
The Mainz harbor project is one of those type projects.
If you gaze at a map.....about a mile east of the Schiersteiner Bridge area.....there's the old harbor which is under renovation.
The plan, which is years away from completion....will eventually put around 1,400 apartments along the riverfront, and probably attract somewhere around 4,000 potential jobs (at least they say that, but maybe it's just small operations moving from one side of the city to the other side).
Right now....other than one of the original warehouse buildings standing.....the rest of the area is flat and under structural changes. A decade from now? This will be a highly active part of town, with buses and a probable trolley-car operation.
Why the Hitler Topic is a 'Dead' Topic with Germans
Americans might have the curious nature, family stories going back to WW II, or just a continual trend to watch over old movies and want to engage on Nazi Germany, the 1930s, or Adolph Hitler. The odds of engaging with an German on these type of topics? Zero.
So, you settle back and just act puzzled.
Nothing personal, but look over the situation.
Germans came out of the war with a fairly marginal life situation. Husbands, brothers, uncles, sons and other family members died on a significant scale. Bombing took place throughout Germany and most every urban area had causalities. The simple little war that was ushered by Hitler and his staff.....had major consequences. None of them were really held responsible for what they did. They might have gotten brought into Nuremberg for some court action and death/prison sentences......but it really didn't pay back what was lost.
The Marshall Plan? It was an enormous effort which did start to take place in 1947, and probably rebuilt every single building destroyed within one generation. By the mid-1960s.....most people would have stood up and said they were shocked over the new image.
The economic promises of the Nationalist Socialists Party? Whatever positive trend people felt was going on from 1932 on.....was mostly bogus and built on a great deal of IOU paper money. It took around two decades for economic experts to sit through the history and actions taken.....to figure out why things were that screwed up.
German youth got yearly seminars over the Nazi era and what happened to the Jews. It's safe to say that most came to a realization after the 1970s.....they were the guilty party and they weren't to blame for the political choices in the 1930s. As much as intellectualism blossomed in the 1960s.....a large segment of society just got tired of the guilt factor.
Since the wall came down in 1989.....you can assess that most East Germans had a bigger disconnect from the guilt trip.....thinking it was mostly West Germans at fault.
The youth of today? Most know little to nothing about wall business, and have a limited historical view of Germany in the 1930s. Opening a chat forum or discussion over Hitler? It's like topic number seven-hundred-and-eighty-eight on the list of topics that most Germans would engage upon. Most would prefer the topics of bikini styles, Alf episodes, or fashion fads before engaging on Hitler. I'm not just talking about eighteen-year-old kids.....this goes on up the line to twenty and thirty year old folks as well. Maybe if you hang around some pub where eighty-year old guys stand.....you might find a couple who still have some sense about the war and events relating to it. Otherwise, it's a doomed topic.
And a word of caution.....if you think this is an 'ok' topic to drag up.....be prepared for the German to want to discuss the American treatment of Native Indians, the years leading up to the Civil War, and the Vietnam War. They've had plenty of opportunities to watch documentary pieces and get the bullet-listings on how to condemn American policy. They might want to discuss some events and lead you around in a circle as well.
So, play it safe.....stick with soccer rules, beer, famous castles, trampy German singers, the Frankfurt airport, cheesecake styles, and Tatort murder episodes.
So, you settle back and just act puzzled.
Nothing personal, but look over the situation.
Germans came out of the war with a fairly marginal life situation. Husbands, brothers, uncles, sons and other family members died on a significant scale. Bombing took place throughout Germany and most every urban area had causalities. The simple little war that was ushered by Hitler and his staff.....had major consequences. None of them were really held responsible for what they did. They might have gotten brought into Nuremberg for some court action and death/prison sentences......but it really didn't pay back what was lost.
The Marshall Plan? It was an enormous effort which did start to take place in 1947, and probably rebuilt every single building destroyed within one generation. By the mid-1960s.....most people would have stood up and said they were shocked over the new image.
The economic promises of the Nationalist Socialists Party? Whatever positive trend people felt was going on from 1932 on.....was mostly bogus and built on a great deal of IOU paper money. It took around two decades for economic experts to sit through the history and actions taken.....to figure out why things were that screwed up.
German youth got yearly seminars over the Nazi era and what happened to the Jews. It's safe to say that most came to a realization after the 1970s.....they were the guilty party and they weren't to blame for the political choices in the 1930s. As much as intellectualism blossomed in the 1960s.....a large segment of society just got tired of the guilt factor.
Since the wall came down in 1989.....you can assess that most East Germans had a bigger disconnect from the guilt trip.....thinking it was mostly West Germans at fault.
The youth of today? Most know little to nothing about wall business, and have a limited historical view of Germany in the 1930s. Opening a chat forum or discussion over Hitler? It's like topic number seven-hundred-and-eighty-eight on the list of topics that most Germans would engage upon. Most would prefer the topics of bikini styles, Alf episodes, or fashion fads before engaging on Hitler. I'm not just talking about eighteen-year-old kids.....this goes on up the line to twenty and thirty year old folks as well. Maybe if you hang around some pub where eighty-year old guys stand.....you might find a couple who still have some sense about the war and events relating to it. Otherwise, it's a doomed topic.
And a word of caution.....if you think this is an 'ok' topic to drag up.....be prepared for the German to want to discuss the American treatment of Native Indians, the years leading up to the Civil War, and the Vietnam War. They've had plenty of opportunities to watch documentary pieces and get the bullet-listings on how to condemn American policy. They might want to discuss some events and lead you around in a circle as well.
So, play it safe.....stick with soccer rules, beer, famous castles, trampy German singers, the Frankfurt airport, cheesecake styles, and Tatort murder episodes.
The Bahn Strike Again?
Early on Friday, the union in negotiations with the German railway folks (the Bahn) gave notice that they've reached a breaking point, and gave a deadline of last Friday to come offer some substantial effort to break the stalled talks. Nothing happened.
So, on Monday.....the GDL folks (the union) will meet and discuss the next strike. Around two months ago.....things had simmered down a bit when the union talked of an extended strike (maybe four days or more).
There are three things on the table. The pay-raise? No issue. The Bahn folks kinda agreed with the numbers and other than the timing of the pay-raise, they both appear to be on the same table. The time-off or work-hours part to the deal? Both parties indicated that they'd reached some agreement back six months ago on this topic. So, we come to the third issue....where the union (GDL) wants to take a secondary group under their wing and incorporate them into the union (the support staff is the mentioned unit). The Bahn say no, period, no exceptions to agreement on this part of the deal.
My belief is that the GDL folks will meet on Monday and put the anticipated strike date up, with a vote by membership on Tuesday. Since they have to give at least twenty-four hours notice....I suspect it'll be a week or two in the future when it occurs.
Public perception in Germany over the union and this re-occurring strike theme? Fairly negative. I'd say that six out of ten working Germans are against the union in a strong way. If you use the Bahn daily for your transportation to the office or industry......you don't want disruption. The autobahn network.....as brilliant as it is designed....isn't prepared in any major urban area of Germany to suddenly get twenty-five percent more traffic overnight. I'd also take a guess that more than half-a-million Germans exist without a car.....so mass transit got around to being fairly important in their lives.
The general impression that one might get from average Germans is that something is wrong here, but neither side will ever get to an end-point without some judge ordering them to accept a compromise.
So, on Monday.....the GDL folks (the union) will meet and discuss the next strike. Around two months ago.....things had simmered down a bit when the union talked of an extended strike (maybe four days or more).
There are three things on the table. The pay-raise? No issue. The Bahn folks kinda agreed with the numbers and other than the timing of the pay-raise, they both appear to be on the same table. The time-off or work-hours part to the deal? Both parties indicated that they'd reached some agreement back six months ago on this topic. So, we come to the third issue....where the union (GDL) wants to take a secondary group under their wing and incorporate them into the union (the support staff is the mentioned unit). The Bahn say no, period, no exceptions to agreement on this part of the deal.
My belief is that the GDL folks will meet on Monday and put the anticipated strike date up, with a vote by membership on Tuesday. Since they have to give at least twenty-four hours notice....I suspect it'll be a week or two in the future when it occurs.
Public perception in Germany over the union and this re-occurring strike theme? Fairly negative. I'd say that six out of ten working Germans are against the union in a strong way. If you use the Bahn daily for your transportation to the office or industry......you don't want disruption. The autobahn network.....as brilliant as it is designed....isn't prepared in any major urban area of Germany to suddenly get twenty-five percent more traffic overnight. I'd also take a guess that more than half-a-million Germans exist without a car.....so mass transit got around to being fairly important in their lives.
The general impression that one might get from average Germans is that something is wrong here, but neither side will ever get to an end-point without some judge ordering them to accept a compromise.
Explaining TTIP
Most Americans have not heard of TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). For that matter, I'd say that ninety-percent of Germans know little to nothing about TTIP.
What is TTIP? Well.....there are two huge trading blocks in the world besides China. There is the US and there's the EU (instead of grabbing single countries like France or Germany....it makes sense to palatalize Europe into one solid block.
Both the US and Europe have worked hard to keep each out of their own markets. This strategy has been going on since the 1950s. The US car industry played every single card to prevent European-manufactured cars from entering.....with various gimmicks worked magic. The Germans did the same thing. My 1997 Dodge Dakota truck could only be German-tagged if I messed around with removing the original light and got a German-approved light (roughly 250 dollars of work/material)....making the appearance look tramped-up but passing their stupid rules.
Eventually, a decade ago as the EU arrived and took charge over individual governments in Europe....there was a way now to build a single list of import rules and perhaps build a friendly trading situation.
So, TTIP is this series of meetings where they sit and discuss cheese, pork, booze, beer, cars, motorcycles, whiskey, stockings, toys, candles, butcher knives, cat food, glasses, mattresses, peanuts, coffee, and milk. The idea is that somehow....you might reach an agreement where X amount of products might be legally and quickly brought into both markets.
Naturally, there are companies fighting this tooth and nail. There are union groups fighting this. There are anti-capitalists fighting this. They fight in both the US and Europe over this.
The grand fear is that standards now accepted as 'normal' will dissolve....like in the production of food, use of labor, and environmental standards achieved over the past decades.
Polling within Germany has taken place and the trend currently shows for each two Germans against the TTIP idea.....there's only one German in favor of it. But the knowledge of the three Germans to start with? It's questionable.
This weekend, several thousand anti-TTIP folks showed up in German cities and did a somewhat organized protest. Fair weather helped, and the social media scene carried the message out to various movements....getting to the place where the news media could assess success or failure of the Saturday action.
The problem with the German crowd? Most who say they are anti-TTIP.....harp on the coming negatives. If you ask them what products they build or manufacture....there's a puzzling look on their face. Then you ask how they did when things relaxed in the 1970s and they were now selling their products to Austria, Italy or the Netherlands? Did they relax their production standards, change their use of labor, or accept problems to their environmental standards? No.
You see....if you make or build something of a quality nature, and people want it.....then you don't ask questions about customers. If you manufacture chocolate bunnies......you really don't care who the hell eats the chocolate bunnies except they eat them in abundance, order in bulk, and you profit with the sale of each chocolate bunny.
If you distill German booze of an exceptional quality....you really don't care who drinks the booze or to what degree.....just that they drink in abundance, order in bulk and you profit in some way from the whole transaction.
If you made German sex-toys....you really don't care about the living standards of your customer, their lifestyle or such.....just that they buy your toys in abundance, order in bulk, and you profit in some way from the sale.
I see the TTIP crowd as fairly naive. They don't know their business....they don't know how to grow it.....they don't know their customers....and they distrust business operations even more than government people.
The odds of both the US and EU negotiations people for TTIP screwing up or harming each other? I'm assuming that both are working hard to screw over each other.....getting more specialized German pork into the US, than cheap US pork coming into Germany. I'm also assuming that the Germans are trying hard to get their stupid chocolate Kinder Eggs with toys inside approved for US sales, while they sit and agree to allow Hersey's chocolate to be brought in bulk form into Germany.
You can bet that somewhere in time.....maybe in 2015 or 2016.....TTIP will finally wrap up and become reality. Your local US grocery will suddenly feature forty products that come out of mostly Italy or France. Your booze distributor will suddenly have a dozen German beers or distilled beverages. And some German shop will suddenly feature cheap American-made chocolate. Only time will tell if any of this is a wise business move or simply a product line doomed for failure.
What is TTIP? Well.....there are two huge trading blocks in the world besides China. There is the US and there's the EU (instead of grabbing single countries like France or Germany....it makes sense to palatalize Europe into one solid block.
Both the US and Europe have worked hard to keep each out of their own markets. This strategy has been going on since the 1950s. The US car industry played every single card to prevent European-manufactured cars from entering.....with various gimmicks worked magic. The Germans did the same thing. My 1997 Dodge Dakota truck could only be German-tagged if I messed around with removing the original light and got a German-approved light (roughly 250 dollars of work/material)....making the appearance look tramped-up but passing their stupid rules.
Eventually, a decade ago as the EU arrived and took charge over individual governments in Europe....there was a way now to build a single list of import rules and perhaps build a friendly trading situation.
So, TTIP is this series of meetings where they sit and discuss cheese, pork, booze, beer, cars, motorcycles, whiskey, stockings, toys, candles, butcher knives, cat food, glasses, mattresses, peanuts, coffee, and milk. The idea is that somehow....you might reach an agreement where X amount of products might be legally and quickly brought into both markets.
Naturally, there are companies fighting this tooth and nail. There are union groups fighting this. There are anti-capitalists fighting this. They fight in both the US and Europe over this.
The grand fear is that standards now accepted as 'normal' will dissolve....like in the production of food, use of labor, and environmental standards achieved over the past decades.
Polling within Germany has taken place and the trend currently shows for each two Germans against the TTIP idea.....there's only one German in favor of it. But the knowledge of the three Germans to start with? It's questionable.
This weekend, several thousand anti-TTIP folks showed up in German cities and did a somewhat organized protest. Fair weather helped, and the social media scene carried the message out to various movements....getting to the place where the news media could assess success or failure of the Saturday action.
The problem with the German crowd? Most who say they are anti-TTIP.....harp on the coming negatives. If you ask them what products they build or manufacture....there's a puzzling look on their face. Then you ask how they did when things relaxed in the 1970s and they were now selling their products to Austria, Italy or the Netherlands? Did they relax their production standards, change their use of labor, or accept problems to their environmental standards? No.
You see....if you make or build something of a quality nature, and people want it.....then you don't ask questions about customers. If you manufacture chocolate bunnies......you really don't care who the hell eats the chocolate bunnies except they eat them in abundance, order in bulk, and you profit with the sale of each chocolate bunny.
If you distill German booze of an exceptional quality....you really don't care who drinks the booze or to what degree.....just that they drink in abundance, order in bulk and you profit in some way from the whole transaction.
If you made German sex-toys....you really don't care about the living standards of your customer, their lifestyle or such.....just that they buy your toys in abundance, order in bulk, and you profit in some way from the sale.
I see the TTIP crowd as fairly naive. They don't know their business....they don't know how to grow it.....they don't know their customers....and they distrust business operations even more than government people.
The odds of both the US and EU negotiations people for TTIP screwing up or harming each other? I'm assuming that both are working hard to screw over each other.....getting more specialized German pork into the US, than cheap US pork coming into Germany. I'm also assuming that the Germans are trying hard to get their stupid chocolate Kinder Eggs with toys inside approved for US sales, while they sit and agree to allow Hersey's chocolate to be brought in bulk form into Germany.
You can bet that somewhere in time.....maybe in 2015 or 2016.....TTIP will finally wrap up and become reality. Your local US grocery will suddenly feature forty products that come out of mostly Italy or France. Your booze distributor will suddenly have a dozen German beers or distilled beverages. And some German shop will suddenly feature cheap American-made chocolate. Only time will tell if any of this is a wise business move or simply a product line doomed for failure.
Radio in Germany
An American has a certain perception about radio and the offerings they see in America. The 'template' that you might put together.....works in the US, but simply doesn't fit within Germany.
AM radio has more or less 'died' in Germany. I'm take a guess that quality of transmissions and limited advertising became a big issue.
So what has survived on is FM, digital and satellite radio (the Astra 19.2 E Satellite).
Off my TV dish, my preference is the satellite-delivery system (the quality is better). The negative is that there's just one single English vehicle (the BBC network) of the 140-odd stations that arrive via the satellite.
Among all the FM, digital and satellite choices....you can subdivide the networks along state-sponsored and commercially operated sides. Because of the TV/Radio/Media tax.....state-run radio has a ample budget and able to function just as well as the commercial side.
The general themes? From my own prospective, I'd say roughly sixty percent of the stations (both commercial/state-run) revolve around new age rock, pop, and 'oldies'.
There are a handful of Christian theme commercial stations around Germany.
Around twenty-percent of the stations are hooked up with schlager singers (less popular than pop/rock but still attracts a lot of attention).
Then you come to talk radio. Few if any of the commercial radio stations get into talk radio. I think the big reason is simply lack of interest within the German public. From the state-run side.....there's probably around fifteen talk radio stations based around Germany. One might compare them to the NPR theme, with science, education, and world topics. Heated discussions simply don't occur....nor do these stations attract that many listeners.
Rush Limbaugh-type characters appearing? No. The market simply doesn't exist. You look around at people in their work-place or business, and you tend to note only soft music in the background. People walking around and quoting talk-show hosts? No. It's not regarded as 'news' and it's not going to sell on the German market. Why no strong political market via the radio? I think the major issue is a multi-party system which allows everyone to drift over to their brand or style of politics. If you want X.....you can find X. Instead of trying to convert people or sell people on something as you might find with a two-party system.....you find people mostly happy with whatever they fell into line with, and they don't have much of a desire to get hyped up.
Business news hyped over the radio? No. There are two TV networks which cover the business world and most people with any investment or business curiosity will slide toward them. The German avoidance of risky bets or stock playing is the cause of the limited audience.
The aliens-have-arrived, conspiracy thrills, and gossip type radio programs? They don't sell because the typical German doesn't buy into this stuff as anything except marginal entertainment. I wouldn't say that intellectural wit has interrupted the expansion but Germans tend to ask a few more questions before getting hyped up. Maybe it's the two thousand years of history working in their favor.
Sports radio? Virtually non-existent. Soccer might be the only sport left where radio coverage is played out to some minor degree. Everyone expects the broadcast on TV....if you are covering sport cycling, Grand Prix auto racing, winter sky episodes, or tennis. Most state-run regional networks will cover the 2nd league for German soccer, while the big networks will cover the 1st league. Intensive sport chatter via radio talk hosts? It'll never happen.
Community-type radio stations? There are a handful of these.....run by individual towns or communities. Most are in highly rural areas and it's strictly a volunteer situation for hosts or operators.
The present growth area? Digital radio is about the only thing left where something big might occur. Retailers and broadcasters are sitting there and trying to scheme up a creative way that might attract listeners and gain more potential bang-for-the-buck. It's hard to say if there is some magic left that would rebuild a large crowd.
As for how Germans use this wonderful technology? If you stand there and observe society in Germany.....it's three basic themes. First, on the way or return to work.....as some entertainment or news delivery type device. Second, background noise while cleaning the house or working in the warehouse. Third, delivery device for the latest tunes for the teen crowd.
Bottom line? If I were going to look fifty years ahead.....I'd take a guess that FM radio will cease to exist, and digital radio (via Smart-phones) will be the single radio entity left.
AM radio has more or less 'died' in Germany. I'm take a guess that quality of transmissions and limited advertising became a big issue.
So what has survived on is FM, digital and satellite radio (the Astra 19.2 E Satellite).
Off my TV dish, my preference is the satellite-delivery system (the quality is better). The negative is that there's just one single English vehicle (the BBC network) of the 140-odd stations that arrive via the satellite.
Among all the FM, digital and satellite choices....you can subdivide the networks along state-sponsored and commercially operated sides. Because of the TV/Radio/Media tax.....state-run radio has a ample budget and able to function just as well as the commercial side.
The general themes? From my own prospective, I'd say roughly sixty percent of the stations (both commercial/state-run) revolve around new age rock, pop, and 'oldies'.
There are a handful of Christian theme commercial stations around Germany.
Around twenty-percent of the stations are hooked up with schlager singers (less popular than pop/rock but still attracts a lot of attention).
Then you come to talk radio. Few if any of the commercial radio stations get into talk radio. I think the big reason is simply lack of interest within the German public. From the state-run side.....there's probably around fifteen talk radio stations based around Germany. One might compare them to the NPR theme, with science, education, and world topics. Heated discussions simply don't occur....nor do these stations attract that many listeners.
Rush Limbaugh-type characters appearing? No. The market simply doesn't exist. You look around at people in their work-place or business, and you tend to note only soft music in the background. People walking around and quoting talk-show hosts? No. It's not regarded as 'news' and it's not going to sell on the German market. Why no strong political market via the radio? I think the major issue is a multi-party system which allows everyone to drift over to their brand or style of politics. If you want X.....you can find X. Instead of trying to convert people or sell people on something as you might find with a two-party system.....you find people mostly happy with whatever they fell into line with, and they don't have much of a desire to get hyped up.
Business news hyped over the radio? No. There are two TV networks which cover the business world and most people with any investment or business curiosity will slide toward them. The German avoidance of risky bets or stock playing is the cause of the limited audience.
The aliens-have-arrived, conspiracy thrills, and gossip type radio programs? They don't sell because the typical German doesn't buy into this stuff as anything except marginal entertainment. I wouldn't say that intellectural wit has interrupted the expansion but Germans tend to ask a few more questions before getting hyped up. Maybe it's the two thousand years of history working in their favor.
Sports radio? Virtually non-existent. Soccer might be the only sport left where radio coverage is played out to some minor degree. Everyone expects the broadcast on TV....if you are covering sport cycling, Grand Prix auto racing, winter sky episodes, or tennis. Most state-run regional networks will cover the 2nd league for German soccer, while the big networks will cover the 1st league. Intensive sport chatter via radio talk hosts? It'll never happen.
Community-type radio stations? There are a handful of these.....run by individual towns or communities. Most are in highly rural areas and it's strictly a volunteer situation for hosts or operators.
The present growth area? Digital radio is about the only thing left where something big might occur. Retailers and broadcasters are sitting there and trying to scheme up a creative way that might attract listeners and gain more potential bang-for-the-buck. It's hard to say if there is some magic left that would rebuild a large crowd.
As for how Germans use this wonderful technology? If you stand there and observe society in Germany.....it's three basic themes. First, on the way or return to work.....as some entertainment or news delivery type device. Second, background noise while cleaning the house or working in the warehouse. Third, delivery device for the latest tunes for the teen crowd.
Bottom line? If I were going to look fifty years ahead.....I'd take a guess that FM radio will cease to exist, and digital radio (via Smart-phones) will be the single radio entity left.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
The News About the News
At 8PM each night.....on ARD (Channel One, the state-run network), there's the fifteen minute news segment. For the vast number of Germans, this is the primary method of which they get their national news. Generally, out of eighty million folks, there's five and a half million Germans who watch this segment nightly.
For an American viewing it (I tend to watch it most nights out of the week......there's several observations I can make).
I like the fact that it's a nicely compacted news piece and fits into fifteen minutes with no commercials. I like the 60-second weather segment at the close of each show, which is a five-star graphics piece and fairly accurate (at least for the next twenty-four hours). I like how they shuffle the presentation folks around so there is no regular guy each night (there's probably six different people that they use during the average month). And I like the basic style of news......never more than sixty seconds on one topic unless it's a big story with lots of angles.
Negatives? If you wanted more info on something.....you'd have to wait around till 9:45PM for the more extended news segment. Political dynamics getting a lot of spread? Well, yeah....I'd say a quarter of each segment is tied down to one political party or some political topic. Segments on one-star type news events? That's a major negative to me and noticeable at least five or six times a week.
Well....someone finally sat down and asked the German public about their impression. There were some kind words, and a fair amount of criticism.
Almost a third of the German public thinks there's too many speeches by political players that get hyped up on the 8PM news. Almost the same number of people think it's too much negativity being spread onto the newscast as well. A quarter of the German population thinks that very little on Germany gets reported. Somewhere around ten percent of the folks watching the news felt that it was all too complicated for them to grasp the significance. Finally, some folks complained of the musical score used for the nightly news is annoying.
I looked over these criticisms.
The musical thing is amusing....it's the same music used for the past two decades. Everyone from the BBC to the US networks.....all use some type of musical piece as an introduction. I don't think much about it.....it's simply an identification of their 'brand'.
The complicated complaint? Some topics are simply bound to a complicated angle and you'd have to take twenty minutes to explain the whole picture to some people. I'd generally regard the 8PM news piece as built for a eighth-grade student and most folks ought to grasp the situation.
As for German news? Yeah.....it's a noticeable thing. Out of an entire week.....if you take out sports and weather.....I doubt if more than twenty-percent of the nightly piece has news on Germany. Murders are rarely portrayed.....same for bank robberies....and you'd have to watch your regional network to get anything within your own state (that's a separate time-period).
Negativity? Yes, it's always been there and part of the skeptical nature of this team of news people. You can pick any topic and guess the positive or negative angle which the story will be told. President Obama used to always get a positive angle, and the last year or two....it's flipped to a negative angle. The FIFA soccer folks used to always get a positive angle, and it's flipped to a negative angle now.
The political dynamics? In an average week of 105 minutes of news.....I'd take a guess that 35 minutes will be involving some German political party or some episode from the Bundestag. I admit, there's some important legislation going on and sometimes....there's a good fight erupting (the autobahn toll fee was the most recent episode). There's also one-star political chatter used to fill up a news piece......just to give you some alternate position.
Maybe the ARD team will take the criticism and do some things slightly different. The thing is that most Germans don't really want a CNN or Fox News type twenty-four hour news coverage deal. And there's really not enough going on to make such a network possible in Germany.
For an American viewing it (I tend to watch it most nights out of the week......there's several observations I can make).
I like the fact that it's a nicely compacted news piece and fits into fifteen minutes with no commercials. I like the 60-second weather segment at the close of each show, which is a five-star graphics piece and fairly accurate (at least for the next twenty-four hours). I like how they shuffle the presentation folks around so there is no regular guy each night (there's probably six different people that they use during the average month). And I like the basic style of news......never more than sixty seconds on one topic unless it's a big story with lots of angles.
Negatives? If you wanted more info on something.....you'd have to wait around till 9:45PM for the more extended news segment. Political dynamics getting a lot of spread? Well, yeah....I'd say a quarter of each segment is tied down to one political party or some political topic. Segments on one-star type news events? That's a major negative to me and noticeable at least five or six times a week.
Well....someone finally sat down and asked the German public about their impression. There were some kind words, and a fair amount of criticism.
Almost a third of the German public thinks there's too many speeches by political players that get hyped up on the 8PM news. Almost the same number of people think it's too much negativity being spread onto the newscast as well. A quarter of the German population thinks that very little on Germany gets reported. Somewhere around ten percent of the folks watching the news felt that it was all too complicated for them to grasp the significance. Finally, some folks complained of the musical score used for the nightly news is annoying.
I looked over these criticisms.
The musical thing is amusing....it's the same music used for the past two decades. Everyone from the BBC to the US networks.....all use some type of musical piece as an introduction. I don't think much about it.....it's simply an identification of their 'brand'.
The complicated complaint? Some topics are simply bound to a complicated angle and you'd have to take twenty minutes to explain the whole picture to some people. I'd generally regard the 8PM news piece as built for a eighth-grade student and most folks ought to grasp the situation.
As for German news? Yeah.....it's a noticeable thing. Out of an entire week.....if you take out sports and weather.....I doubt if more than twenty-percent of the nightly piece has news on Germany. Murders are rarely portrayed.....same for bank robberies....and you'd have to watch your regional network to get anything within your own state (that's a separate time-period).
Negativity? Yes, it's always been there and part of the skeptical nature of this team of news people. You can pick any topic and guess the positive or negative angle which the story will be told. President Obama used to always get a positive angle, and the last year or two....it's flipped to a negative angle. The FIFA soccer folks used to always get a positive angle, and it's flipped to a negative angle now.
The political dynamics? In an average week of 105 minutes of news.....I'd take a guess that 35 minutes will be involving some German political party or some episode from the Bundestag. I admit, there's some important legislation going on and sometimes....there's a good fight erupting (the autobahn toll fee was the most recent episode). There's also one-star political chatter used to fill up a news piece......just to give you some alternate position.
Maybe the ARD team will take the criticism and do some things slightly different. The thing is that most Germans don't really want a CNN or Fox News type twenty-four hour news coverage deal. And there's really not enough going on to make such a network possible in Germany.
The "112" Rule
There's a discussion going on in Hessen (my local German state) over an impending rule being added to the legal system.....after the riots in Frankfurt from the last month. The riots occurred primarily from the ECB (European Central Bank) grand opening at the big impressive building along the river.
The "112" rule?
It's a protective clause which would basically state that if you inflict harm to the police, the fire department, a volunteer fire department member, a civil protection member, or a rescue member.....you could be subjected on up to ten years in a state prison.
Shocker?
Naturally, the police union is supportive of the change. The pace of this? It's going to be discussed in early May by the legislative council and it's possible that they legalize the "112" rule within a matter of weeks, so you might see it effective by late fall.
How would the harm clause fall into play? Let's say there's a soccer match and a thousand hooligans show up to make the situation fairly unsafe after the game ends. The authorities realize the impact and bring 1,500 policemen. As things progress.....a riot starts up and at least ninety cops end up injured. Cops arrest two hundred of the riot hooligans and with video from the incident.....they get a summons to appear in court within thirty days. The prosecutor could review the actions and eventually decide that a hundred of the rioters need extended time....like one year in prison, with the other hundred getting sixty to ninety days of prison. All of the two hundred lose their jobs and end up unemployed and eventually on Hartz IV (German welfare). The public starts to note what happened here and people tend to stop hooligan behavior.
I'm guessing some folks will take this to the Constitutional Court and claim it's unfair.....but it's a weird argument saying you have the right to inflict harm on some human being. I would imagine the court just sitting there and waiting for you to identify such a right and where it comes from. The right to hooliganism? It just doesn't exist.
The key player to the "112" rule? I think with video as the chief evidence.....a prosecution team will be able to take down dozens to hundreds of riot enthusiasts in the future. It'll be curious to see how this unfolds and how it'll be challenged in court.
The "112" rule?
It's a protective clause which would basically state that if you inflict harm to the police, the fire department, a volunteer fire department member, a civil protection member, or a rescue member.....you could be subjected on up to ten years in a state prison.
Shocker?
Naturally, the police union is supportive of the change. The pace of this? It's going to be discussed in early May by the legislative council and it's possible that they legalize the "112" rule within a matter of weeks, so you might see it effective by late fall.
How would the harm clause fall into play? Let's say there's a soccer match and a thousand hooligans show up to make the situation fairly unsafe after the game ends. The authorities realize the impact and bring 1,500 policemen. As things progress.....a riot starts up and at least ninety cops end up injured. Cops arrest two hundred of the riot hooligans and with video from the incident.....they get a summons to appear in court within thirty days. The prosecutor could review the actions and eventually decide that a hundred of the rioters need extended time....like one year in prison, with the other hundred getting sixty to ninety days of prison. All of the two hundred lose their jobs and end up unemployed and eventually on Hartz IV (German welfare). The public starts to note what happened here and people tend to stop hooligan behavior.
I'm guessing some folks will take this to the Constitutional Court and claim it's unfair.....but it's a weird argument saying you have the right to inflict harm on some human being. I would imagine the court just sitting there and waiting for you to identify such a right and where it comes from. The right to hooliganism? It just doesn't exist.
The key player to the "112" rule? I think with video as the chief evidence.....a prosecution team will be able to take down dozens to hundreds of riot enthusiasts in the future. It'll be curious to see how this unfolds and how it'll be challenged in court.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
The Three-Accident Boar
I live a couple of miles outside of Wiesbaden.....up in the hills, and in an area where it's heavily forested. Naturally, this includes some wild boars.
Last night, around 10PM, on the main road above the village and going toward Wiesbaden.....darkness had descended. Folks tend to drive around 100 kph (roughly 65 mph) on this road.
Somewhere out of the woods....walked this one wild boar. This gal driving around this stretch barely saw him at the last second, and 'bumped' him.....in a fairly severe way. She stopped enough to just severely injure him.....not messing up her car as you might expect. So she's kinda dazed and knows the situation.....backing up a bit to view the situation....as you might expect someone to do.
Just about this time....from her rear....another car comes up rather fast. A BMW. He's probably intent on passing the lady and her stopped car. He doesn't see the boar laying in the road until the very last second. At this point, he runs off the road.....into the ditch. I get the impression that he missed the boar entirely.
Then car number three approaches and doesn't grasp the issue with car number one, car number two, or the wounded boar in the road. He hits the boar with some impact....disabling his vehicle.....and definitely killing the boar.
Cops get called. I get the impression that two tow trucks were involved. On the statistical board, it'll be listed as three separate accidents, and one dead boar.
Last night, around 10PM, on the main road above the village and going toward Wiesbaden.....darkness had descended. Folks tend to drive around 100 kph (roughly 65 mph) on this road.
Somewhere out of the woods....walked this one wild boar. This gal driving around this stretch barely saw him at the last second, and 'bumped' him.....in a fairly severe way. She stopped enough to just severely injure him.....not messing up her car as you might expect. So she's kinda dazed and knows the situation.....backing up a bit to view the situation....as you might expect someone to do.
Just about this time....from her rear....another car comes up rather fast. A BMW. He's probably intent on passing the lady and her stopped car. He doesn't see the boar laying in the road until the very last second. At this point, he runs off the road.....into the ditch. I get the impression that he missed the boar entirely.
Then car number three approaches and doesn't grasp the issue with car number one, car number two, or the wounded boar in the road. He hits the boar with some impact....disabling his vehicle.....and definitely killing the boar.
Cops get called. I get the impression that two tow trucks were involved. On the statistical board, it'll be listed as three separate accidents, and one dead boar.
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Germania and Rome
Since I'm in retirement status....I've got hours to waste. I know.....there ought to be various productive ways of wasting one's day if retired, but I tend to get into history, culture, and essays.
Today, I spent a couple of hours on Roman law.....which has a dynamic effect on German culture and history today.
For historical purposes.....there are three era of Roman history. Most people don't realize it.....nor does it really influence things except you tend to realize there are three separate periods of history.
The Roman Kingdom (753-509 BC). To be kinda honest.....there are few facts here because no one kept any text or documentation of the period. The locals around Rome organized themselves as a tribe.....went through several localized conflicts with various kings.....and by 509 BC.....ended the king concept and the kingdom. One might perceive this as a lessons learned period and the locals simply had enough of direct law by one individual.
The Roman Republic (509 to 27 BC). The Roman Senate came into being....elected by the locals of Rome, and the Senate would elect two individuals who would act as the leadership of the Republic. In general, one could say that traditions and public safety (military action) were the key factors of the Republic. Within this period.....laws came and went.....to a significant degree. If one was knowledgeable on the current laws of one era......within a decade or two....there were enough changes that you'd be all confused and unable to comprehend what was legal or illegal. In some ways, the nature of reshaping laws was the beginning of the end for Rome's place in the world. Expansion? Yes.....this was the growth period of Rome's effect on the civilized world.....or in some ways.....civilizing what was uncivilized.
It's toward the end of the Roman Republic that Germanic tribes finally introduced themselves to Rome, and became a threat. Had they arrived three hundred years prior....the odds are heavily in the favor of the Germanic tribes conquering Rome and preventing the Republic or Empire from ever occurring.
Finally, the Roman Empire (27 BC to 476 AD). The Republic stalled itself into a one-man show through a series of political conflicts, civil wars, and external wars throughout the expanding Republic. The evolution into a civilized dictatorship was the only method of existing. The Senate still held some political power over Emperors......appointing them as each came to an unfortunate end or simply lacked confidence to control the public sentiment.
Toward the end....there were roughly seventy million within the control of the Roman Empire. Some will say this was between ten and twenty percent of the population on the face of the Earth. To control this sized group.....they needed the largest Army in existence. If you drew up a map of then and now.....you'd say forty modern countries fit within the map of the Roman Empire. Cultures? There are probably a thousand separate tribes or cultures that easily fit within the same map.
From the sense of timing....the Germanic tribes never realized their potential until it was too late to achieve anything in their favor. The German culture today....would be a great deal different and probably lesser.....had the Romans never conquered and established a trend in terms of innovation, science, agriculture, and commerce.
Today, I spent a couple of hours on Roman law.....which has a dynamic effect on German culture and history today.
For historical purposes.....there are three era of Roman history. Most people don't realize it.....nor does it really influence things except you tend to realize there are three separate periods of history.
The Roman Kingdom (753-509 BC). To be kinda honest.....there are few facts here because no one kept any text or documentation of the period. The locals around Rome organized themselves as a tribe.....went through several localized conflicts with various kings.....and by 509 BC.....ended the king concept and the kingdom. One might perceive this as a lessons learned period and the locals simply had enough of direct law by one individual.
The Roman Republic (509 to 27 BC). The Roman Senate came into being....elected by the locals of Rome, and the Senate would elect two individuals who would act as the leadership of the Republic. In general, one could say that traditions and public safety (military action) were the key factors of the Republic. Within this period.....laws came and went.....to a significant degree. If one was knowledgeable on the current laws of one era......within a decade or two....there were enough changes that you'd be all confused and unable to comprehend what was legal or illegal. In some ways, the nature of reshaping laws was the beginning of the end for Rome's place in the world. Expansion? Yes.....this was the growth period of Rome's effect on the civilized world.....or in some ways.....civilizing what was uncivilized.
It's toward the end of the Roman Republic that Germanic tribes finally introduced themselves to Rome, and became a threat. Had they arrived three hundred years prior....the odds are heavily in the favor of the Germanic tribes conquering Rome and preventing the Republic or Empire from ever occurring.
Finally, the Roman Empire (27 BC to 476 AD). The Republic stalled itself into a one-man show through a series of political conflicts, civil wars, and external wars throughout the expanding Republic. The evolution into a civilized dictatorship was the only method of existing. The Senate still held some political power over Emperors......appointing them as each came to an unfortunate end or simply lacked confidence to control the public sentiment.
Toward the end....there were roughly seventy million within the control of the Roman Empire. Some will say this was between ten and twenty percent of the population on the face of the Earth. To control this sized group.....they needed the largest Army in existence. If you drew up a map of then and now.....you'd say forty modern countries fit within the map of the Roman Empire. Cultures? There are probably a thousand separate tribes or cultures that easily fit within the same map.
From the sense of timing....the Germanic tribes never realized their potential until it was too late to achieve anything in their favor. The German culture today....would be a great deal different and probably lesser.....had the Romans never conquered and established a trend in terms of innovation, science, agriculture, and commerce.
Immigration Chatter
There was a business conference held in Berlin yesterday. A number of speeches came up and some political leaders showed up to talk about one sensitive topic on the minds of business operations in Germany.....immigration.
The Interior Ministry chief.....Thomas de Maiziere (CDU) stood up and delivered a carefully worded statement. There's a hint that the government (mostly run by the CDU/CSU and a partnership with the SPD Party.....wants to have some better process of allowing immigrants into Germany. What he suggests is targeted 'advertising'. It's hard to imagine how this 'advertising' would work and how you limit the front door opening for some people but not others.
The SPD? They had a chance to talk at the conference and their suggestion was a point-system. Two months ago, there was some discussion within the SPD of going toward the Canada system....where your work experience and education mattered.....accumulating points....to decide if you were allowed in or simply sent away.
Over the past five years, since the 2008 economic stumble.....Germany has had this big advantage of a robust economy when compared against countries like Italy, Greece, and Spain. To some degree....Germany companies got smart....recruited from these countries and got college graduates of the three countries to come in and work here in Germany. In the case of Greece....it's hit the Greek business structure in terms of future options. Germany got highly trained individuals which they didn't have to pay for the education or training.
The current German immigration program is a difficult program to measure in terms of success or long-term advantages. While on one side, there's a high number of college graduates....on the other side is a segment of the new population which has no real education and at best will be stocking shelves in grocery stores or driving buses.
The general public perception? It's hard to say if the public is buying into any type of success formula here. There are right-wing elements of the German public who question the logic and wisdom of the current program. There are left-wing elements of the public which simply see more votes in the coming elections for certain political parties. Crime is on the increase, but you can't attribute that to immigration issues. Funding issues in individual states are being noticed as immigration forced issues cost state funds and aren't readily covered by the federal budget.
Maybe these speeches will pick up some business interest and push along some type of better organized agenda....whether 'advertising' or points work in the end. Anything.....is better than nothing.
The Interior Ministry chief.....Thomas de Maiziere (CDU) stood up and delivered a carefully worded statement. There's a hint that the government (mostly run by the CDU/CSU and a partnership with the SPD Party.....wants to have some better process of allowing immigrants into Germany. What he suggests is targeted 'advertising'. It's hard to imagine how this 'advertising' would work and how you limit the front door opening for some people but not others.
The SPD? They had a chance to talk at the conference and their suggestion was a point-system. Two months ago, there was some discussion within the SPD of going toward the Canada system....where your work experience and education mattered.....accumulating points....to decide if you were allowed in or simply sent away.
Over the past five years, since the 2008 economic stumble.....Germany has had this big advantage of a robust economy when compared against countries like Italy, Greece, and Spain. To some degree....Germany companies got smart....recruited from these countries and got college graduates of the three countries to come in and work here in Germany. In the case of Greece....it's hit the Greek business structure in terms of future options. Germany got highly trained individuals which they didn't have to pay for the education or training.
The current German immigration program is a difficult program to measure in terms of success or long-term advantages. While on one side, there's a high number of college graduates....on the other side is a segment of the new population which has no real education and at best will be stocking shelves in grocery stores or driving buses.
The general public perception? It's hard to say if the public is buying into any type of success formula here. There are right-wing elements of the German public who question the logic and wisdom of the current program. There are left-wing elements of the public which simply see more votes in the coming elections for certain political parties. Crime is on the increase, but you can't attribute that to immigration issues. Funding issues in individual states are being noticed as immigration forced issues cost state funds and aren't readily covered by the federal budget.
Maybe these speeches will pick up some business interest and push along some type of better organized agenda....whether 'advertising' or points work in the end. Anything.....is better than nothing.
Google and the EU
As of today, the EU intends to take Google into court for unfair competition practices. The deal?
In practical numbers, Google throughout Europe has ninety-percent of the search business in their pocket. Doesn't matter which country you talk about.....it's generally the same throughout most. For the EU.....it means that no start-up operation anywhere in Europe has a chance to crack the business shell open.
There are three aspects to the coming event.
First, the EU knows Google is making a ton of money.....so there's got to be a unfair practice phase to this and some cash flow (pay-off) to the EU. The current thought is that a billion dollars will be sufficient. Several journalists have suggested the amount is what the EU will seek because they know the profit margins of Google's business. What the EU does with the billion dollars? That might be a curious question to ask.
Second, the EU wants some type of deal on what shows up when you type in a word or phrase. Google currently has their people in the middle and ranks the outcome of search via their own strategy. The EU wants part of that control.
Third, the EU wants some door open for other companies to enter the search engine business. Presently, I don't think any start-up group in France, Germany or central Europe.....intends to put man-hours or funding toward this type of research. Why bother? If you can't break into the system and get a decent cut of maybe twenty-percent of your own country's search business.....it won't be profitable enough to make it worth your time.
Amount of time dragging Google through the court business? Figure a minimum of a year and it might even go two years. Google will shuffle around some funds and eventually pay off the EU bureaucrats and everyone will proudly show up on camera to say they've punished the 'evil giant', and they accepted the check for one billion. Then a week later, they will shuffle the money out to pay for a weasel museum in Belgium, four bridges in Poland, a new opera house in Vienna, a prison in Spain, a new soccer stadium in Ireland, and a new cable car deal in Bavaria. The signs for each ought to feature their existence being possible only because of Google and it's damn search engine.
Perhaps it's finally time for Google to let the EU know what the whole thing is about. Toss in a ninety-nine second pause in analyzing the word and the potential solutions. While in this waiting period.....play the EU national tune and put five pictures of the top EU bureaucrats. Let the public know.....no matter if in Spain, Germany or Austria.....that the EU is managing everything and these individual countries and individual political figures really don't matter anymore. After a couple of weeks....the EU guys will get some heat from their own countries and start to question the wisdom of knocking Google down a notch.
In practical numbers, Google throughout Europe has ninety-percent of the search business in their pocket. Doesn't matter which country you talk about.....it's generally the same throughout most. For the EU.....it means that no start-up operation anywhere in Europe has a chance to crack the business shell open.
There are three aspects to the coming event.
First, the EU knows Google is making a ton of money.....so there's got to be a unfair practice phase to this and some cash flow (pay-off) to the EU. The current thought is that a billion dollars will be sufficient. Several journalists have suggested the amount is what the EU will seek because they know the profit margins of Google's business. What the EU does with the billion dollars? That might be a curious question to ask.
Second, the EU wants some type of deal on what shows up when you type in a word or phrase. Google currently has their people in the middle and ranks the outcome of search via their own strategy. The EU wants part of that control.
Third, the EU wants some door open for other companies to enter the search engine business. Presently, I don't think any start-up group in France, Germany or central Europe.....intends to put man-hours or funding toward this type of research. Why bother? If you can't break into the system and get a decent cut of maybe twenty-percent of your own country's search business.....it won't be profitable enough to make it worth your time.
Amount of time dragging Google through the court business? Figure a minimum of a year and it might even go two years. Google will shuffle around some funds and eventually pay off the EU bureaucrats and everyone will proudly show up on camera to say they've punished the 'evil giant', and they accepted the check for one billion. Then a week later, they will shuffle the money out to pay for a weasel museum in Belgium, four bridges in Poland, a new opera house in Vienna, a prison in Spain, a new soccer stadium in Ireland, and a new cable car deal in Bavaria. The signs for each ought to feature their existence being possible only because of Google and it's damn search engine.
Perhaps it's finally time for Google to let the EU know what the whole thing is about. Toss in a ninety-nine second pause in analyzing the word and the potential solutions. While in this waiting period.....play the EU national tune and put five pictures of the top EU bureaucrats. Let the public know.....no matter if in Spain, Germany or Austria.....that the EU is managing everything and these individual countries and individual political figures really don't matter anymore. After a couple of weeks....the EU guys will get some heat from their own countries and start to question the wisdom of knocking Google down a notch.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Tribes, Germania, and Romans
It's hard for a person in today's atmosphere to walk into a discussion over Germany and the Roman Empire. The difficulty is that we all seem to want to view Germany from today's prospective, and simply skip out on the tribal concept that existed two thousand years ago.
In the period of 200 BC....what we view as Germany today.....was a wide-open area of trees, forests, and tribes. In the same fashion that we view ancient America and the tribal network that operated there two thousand years ago.....the tribal concept is best to use when viewing 'old' Germany.
Around 110 BC.....some Germanic tribes 'introduced' themsleves to Rome. The Cimbri and Teutones are groups which historians are a bit confused over today, and facts are limited. The Cimbri tribe appeared to be more of a pirate group who were never concreted to one particular area. The Teutones are referred to as Celtic in nature and come originally out of Jutland (Denmark or North Germany today).
Around 105 BC, the Battle of Arausio occurred in South France. For battle historians....this is one of the major battles in history. For the Romans.....a major defeat (roughly 80,000 troops die). For the Cimbri and Teutones.....this is the five-star moment.
Four years later....another battle in north Italy was a complete disaster for the Cimbri and Teutone tribes. After this point, Rome expands into the Germanic lands to a three-prong approach to handling tribes.
Oddly, you tend to see the same US three-prong approach to dealing with Indian tribes in the 1700s/1800s.
The three-pronged approach? Military expeditions, trade, and gifts.
To counter the tribal threats.....a "zone" was established. You pencil in most of Bavaria today, and edge the line up to just above Mainz, and then head westward toward Amsterdam. This is the area that the Romans would set up forts and ensure protection over their trade routes.
The trade side of the relationship? No matter where Romans when....trade was a major part of their civilization. If you came into the Mainz region.....grapes and wine were the chief element of trade. Other areas of Germany offered salt, glass, iron and lead. Spain offered gold, silver, tin and copper.
When you went past the Roman line of protection for trade in north Germany and toward the east.....you were mostly dealing for cattle, horses, and slaves.
The gift approach? It's similar to the American approach with Indian tribes. You'd walk into a tribal area with some gifts for the leadership....alcohol was always a top gift in ample proportions. You'd establish some type of relationship for safe passage or for trade,
The Cimbri and Trutone tribes both ended up giving up the pirate and continual movement attitude.....focusing more on a stable lifestyle eventually where trade was important.
By 476 AD.....Rome and it's empire had come to an end. The tribal environment had shifted over to a commercial trade situation and built their own forts. The trade trails (Limes)? They expanded out. Without the Roman soldiers, the trade routes were not exactly safe, but if you traveled in numbers.....that was the best choice for self-protection.
Oddly today, with EU regulations in place and the Euro currency....we've rebuilt the stabilization nature of the old Roman Empire, which has been dead for 1,500-odd years.
In the period of 200 BC....what we view as Germany today.....was a wide-open area of trees, forests, and tribes. In the same fashion that we view ancient America and the tribal network that operated there two thousand years ago.....the tribal concept is best to use when viewing 'old' Germany.
Around 110 BC.....some Germanic tribes 'introduced' themsleves to Rome. The Cimbri and Teutones are groups which historians are a bit confused over today, and facts are limited. The Cimbri tribe appeared to be more of a pirate group who were never concreted to one particular area. The Teutones are referred to as Celtic in nature and come originally out of Jutland (Denmark or North Germany today).
Around 105 BC, the Battle of Arausio occurred in South France. For battle historians....this is one of the major battles in history. For the Romans.....a major defeat (roughly 80,000 troops die). For the Cimbri and Teutones.....this is the five-star moment.
Four years later....another battle in north Italy was a complete disaster for the Cimbri and Teutone tribes. After this point, Rome expands into the Germanic lands to a three-prong approach to handling tribes.
Oddly, you tend to see the same US three-prong approach to dealing with Indian tribes in the 1700s/1800s.
The three-pronged approach? Military expeditions, trade, and gifts.
To counter the tribal threats.....a "zone" was established. You pencil in most of Bavaria today, and edge the line up to just above Mainz, and then head westward toward Amsterdam. This is the area that the Romans would set up forts and ensure protection over their trade routes.
The trade side of the relationship? No matter where Romans when....trade was a major part of their civilization. If you came into the Mainz region.....grapes and wine were the chief element of trade. Other areas of Germany offered salt, glass, iron and lead. Spain offered gold, silver, tin and copper.
When you went past the Roman line of protection for trade in north Germany and toward the east.....you were mostly dealing for cattle, horses, and slaves.
The gift approach? It's similar to the American approach with Indian tribes. You'd walk into a tribal area with some gifts for the leadership....alcohol was always a top gift in ample proportions. You'd establish some type of relationship for safe passage or for trade,
The Cimbri and Trutone tribes both ended up giving up the pirate and continual movement attitude.....focusing more on a stable lifestyle eventually where trade was important.
By 476 AD.....Rome and it's empire had come to an end. The tribal environment had shifted over to a commercial trade situation and built their own forts. The trade trails (Limes)? They expanded out. Without the Roman soldiers, the trade routes were not exactly safe, but if you traveled in numbers.....that was the best choice for self-protection.
Oddly today, with EU regulations in place and the Euro currency....we've rebuilt the stabilization nature of the old Roman Empire, which has been dead for 1,500-odd years.
Asternweg
Last Saturday night, VOX (one of our commercial networks in Germany).....ran a rather odd documentary around 8:15PM. "Asternweg: A Street Corner".
Normally, at best....VOX might collect around five to six percent of the German audience for this time slot. For Asternweg, they got around eight percent....a hefty jump.
Asternweg is a documentary covering a suburb of Kaiserslautern. The best description you could use? It's a four-star ghetto....where you attach yourself and never leave. It's where the drunks and marginal life folks in Kaiserslautern live. It's where their kids grow up and continue to live in the same neighborhood. It's not fiction.....it's real life.
I sat and watched a clip of the show last night. In the beginning....you feel sorry for these folks, but you reach a point where you realize that anyone could pack up and leave.....yet they just don't seem to have any interest in doing so.
A four-hour documentary piece.....which apparently interested a large segment of German society.
For twelve-odd years I lived in K-town.....I knew of the neighborhood and had driven by on a couple of occasions. It reminds an American of marginal home projects in urban America....folks sitting on the street and guys openly drinking beer throughout the afternoon and evening. People in this stage of life live off welfare and don't have any expectations anymore.
A one-time documentary? It would appear so. But oddly, people are curious about this kind of stuff.
Normally, at best....VOX might collect around five to six percent of the German audience for this time slot. For Asternweg, they got around eight percent....a hefty jump.
Asternweg is a documentary covering a suburb of Kaiserslautern. The best description you could use? It's a four-star ghetto....where you attach yourself and never leave. It's where the drunks and marginal life folks in Kaiserslautern live. It's where their kids grow up and continue to live in the same neighborhood. It's not fiction.....it's real life.
I sat and watched a clip of the show last night. In the beginning....you feel sorry for these folks, but you reach a point where you realize that anyone could pack up and leave.....yet they just don't seem to have any interest in doing so.
A four-hour documentary piece.....which apparently interested a large segment of German society.
For twelve-odd years I lived in K-town.....I knew of the neighborhood and had driven by on a couple of occasions. It reminds an American of marginal home projects in urban America....folks sitting on the street and guys openly drinking beer throughout the afternoon and evening. People in this stage of life live off welfare and don't have any expectations anymore.
A one-time documentary? It would appear so. But oddly, people are curious about this kind of stuff.
Monday, April 13, 2015
Immigration Woes Again?
Over the past year, I've come to notice a fair amount of frustration among smaller towns, communities and individual states....on the topic of immigrants. The general handling of immigrants have been 'dumped' downward....with minimal leadership, direction or funding. All of this was possible and acceptable until the last three or four years....with an escalation of immigrants coming and being given permission to stay (by the federal authorities, not the state authorities).
A couple of months ago....the government of the CDU/SPD parties decided to hand out roughly half-a-billion Euro for individual states for a two-year period (which in essence means 250 million Euro a year between the sixteen states). There's another half-billion which is loan money (no cost to the states but they'd have to pay the money back within a certain period of time). No one has said anything positive about the half-billion Euro in loan money, and I have doubts that anyone will take up the idea unless they get desperate.
The problems since the Euro offering? Well....communities are saying that the states got the beginning parts of the money, BUT have yet to hand it down to individual communities.
The call for a conference between the communities, the states (all sixteen), and the federal authorities out of Berlin? Well.....yeah. The players seem to agree that a conference will occur....probably by late August. No one says much over the topics and I doubt that the conference lasts more than two days max.
The pain here is that each immigration center that you open, and the various benefits that the federal authorities in Germany say must be offered to each immigrant.....doesn't come from any federal bucket. Each immigration center.....each language or integration class....each welcome deal with hundreds of Euro per month for food and clothing? It has to come out of community funding. The communities and states kinda assumed some risk here....hoping that they'd get this funding back sooner or later.
The current accusation? Well....some communities are saying that the states who got money handed to them so far.....are merely talking of more integration/language classes....not covering shelter, food or hand-outs.
When you sit down and look at the vouchers that cities give for the integration/language classes....for a family of four....it gets up around 10,000 Euro for the various classes necessary. Just for a simplistic ten week German language class, you could be talking about 700-odd Euro. That would get you to end of stage one where you had a fair usage of German....but you'd probably have to take a secondary course along the way, and maybe even a third class. The government or integration classes....their cost would add up as well.
I'm just an American observing this whole thing. In the US.....most immigrants just arrive....assimilate.....and pick up the English language 'accidentally'. Forty years ago....urban areas would have offered classes and that was the primary method of instructing people on civics and English. That might be still happening to some degree, but the bulk just skip that step unless you are a kid in the American school system.
All of this integration stuff....no matter how you dictate it or assemble the process.....has some price-tag attached. The federal authorities have simply looking the other way and pretending it's not their mess and they won't be blamed for screw-ups. The village, town, city and state folks have finally figured this out, and they want the blame for the current policy shifted around.
What happens at this brief conference in late summer? If the small town enthusiasts show up with minimal homework and almost no statistical data.....it'll all just simmer over and drop like a rock. The media might spend one brief day covering the conference and just move on. But if a couple of these guys do their homework and blast away at both the SPD and CDU, and engage Merkel at a harsh level for incompetence on immigration.....maybe the program will change.
A couple of months ago....the government of the CDU/SPD parties decided to hand out roughly half-a-billion Euro for individual states for a two-year period (which in essence means 250 million Euro a year between the sixteen states). There's another half-billion which is loan money (no cost to the states but they'd have to pay the money back within a certain period of time). No one has said anything positive about the half-billion Euro in loan money, and I have doubts that anyone will take up the idea unless they get desperate.
The problems since the Euro offering? Well....communities are saying that the states got the beginning parts of the money, BUT have yet to hand it down to individual communities.
The call for a conference between the communities, the states (all sixteen), and the federal authorities out of Berlin? Well.....yeah. The players seem to agree that a conference will occur....probably by late August. No one says much over the topics and I doubt that the conference lasts more than two days max.
The pain here is that each immigration center that you open, and the various benefits that the federal authorities in Germany say must be offered to each immigrant.....doesn't come from any federal bucket. Each immigration center.....each language or integration class....each welcome deal with hundreds of Euro per month for food and clothing? It has to come out of community funding. The communities and states kinda assumed some risk here....hoping that they'd get this funding back sooner or later.
The current accusation? Well....some communities are saying that the states who got money handed to them so far.....are merely talking of more integration/language classes....not covering shelter, food or hand-outs.
When you sit down and look at the vouchers that cities give for the integration/language classes....for a family of four....it gets up around 10,000 Euro for the various classes necessary. Just for a simplistic ten week German language class, you could be talking about 700-odd Euro. That would get you to end of stage one where you had a fair usage of German....but you'd probably have to take a secondary course along the way, and maybe even a third class. The government or integration classes....their cost would add up as well.
I'm just an American observing this whole thing. In the US.....most immigrants just arrive....assimilate.....and pick up the English language 'accidentally'. Forty years ago....urban areas would have offered classes and that was the primary method of instructing people on civics and English. That might be still happening to some degree, but the bulk just skip that step unless you are a kid in the American school system.
All of this integration stuff....no matter how you dictate it or assemble the process.....has some price-tag attached. The federal authorities have simply looking the other way and pretending it's not their mess and they won't be blamed for screw-ups. The village, town, city and state folks have finally figured this out, and they want the blame for the current policy shifted around.
What happens at this brief conference in late summer? If the small town enthusiasts show up with minimal homework and almost no statistical data.....it'll all just simmer over and drop like a rock. The media might spend one brief day covering the conference and just move on. But if a couple of these guys do their homework and blast away at both the SPD and CDU, and engage Merkel at a harsh level for incompetence on immigration.....maybe the program will change.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
A Hitler Poll
A university in Canada (Wilfrid Laurier University) sponsored a study. The suggestion was....would you have a problem if you were sitting there in the 1920s....knowing the consequences of Hitler's accomplishments....go after him and kill him?
Roughly 6,000 people participated in the questions asked, and eventually.....an odd thing came up in the conclusion.
Men and women think differently. For women, it was much tougher to make an emotional decision on killing Hitler. Men.....less so.
In the world of ethics....there are consequences. You evaluate the consequences....reach a priority system....to accept the next round of consequences. The difference here is that you know the basic facts to consequence number one. You don't know the consequences to the changed act.
If you remove Hitler in 1922 (by simply killing him on the streets of Munich one night)....what do you set up for the next round of events? Without Hitler as the national speaker....the Nationalist Socialists are still a very minor player in 1932, and the weak but operational government continues on track. The Jews are safe, at least through the mid-40s. The big 1936 Olympics occur.....without the Hitler background.
Avoiding the Nazi episode entirely? Who knows? Another dynamic speaker in the 1940s, with the introduction of the mass media, radio and movies? A Nazi apparatus now developing with the depression over and more science/technology possible? Nuke weapon usage over New York City or Washington D.C. by the world war occurring in 1951 instead of 1942? The Soviet Union in less of a position to prevent the invasion of western USSR?
The study ends up concluding that women put more thought into the process, and weren't that willing to kill Hitler to prevent WW II. Right or wrong? Neither....it's simply the study.
If you knew the outcome of killing Hitler.....maybe it'd make it all easier to make such a decision. But you can't be sure of the consequences. You might end up creating a bigger mess rather than stopping a world war.
Roughly 6,000 people participated in the questions asked, and eventually.....an odd thing came up in the conclusion.
Men and women think differently. For women, it was much tougher to make an emotional decision on killing Hitler. Men.....less so.
In the world of ethics....there are consequences. You evaluate the consequences....reach a priority system....to accept the next round of consequences. The difference here is that you know the basic facts to consequence number one. You don't know the consequences to the changed act.
If you remove Hitler in 1922 (by simply killing him on the streets of Munich one night)....what do you set up for the next round of events? Without Hitler as the national speaker....the Nationalist Socialists are still a very minor player in 1932, and the weak but operational government continues on track. The Jews are safe, at least through the mid-40s. The big 1936 Olympics occur.....without the Hitler background.
Avoiding the Nazi episode entirely? Who knows? Another dynamic speaker in the 1940s, with the introduction of the mass media, radio and movies? A Nazi apparatus now developing with the depression over and more science/technology possible? Nuke weapon usage over New York City or Washington D.C. by the world war occurring in 1951 instead of 1942? The Soviet Union in less of a position to prevent the invasion of western USSR?
The study ends up concluding that women put more thought into the process, and weren't that willing to kill Hitler to prevent WW II. Right or wrong? Neither....it's simply the study.
If you knew the outcome of killing Hitler.....maybe it'd make it all easier to make such a decision. But you can't be sure of the consequences. You might end up creating a bigger mess rather than stopping a world war.
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Saalburg in Roman Times
This is an area of roughly fifteen acres. There are two berms on the exterior that you'd have to cross to get to the stone fort itself. With a height of twelve-odd feet....it'd be difficult to get over the fence. The four gates? They open to each direction and are heavily fortified.
Man-hours involved? I'd take a guess if this was 90 AD....if you had 250 workers with some construction experts managing them....it'd take around three years to put up the four fort walls and the buildings within the fort.
The stones required? This is one of those odd subjects. You'd have to have capable stone cutters who did this work and were fairly competent at this. You probably wouldn't find these type of cutters within the region....so these were Roman civilians who were brought up for the job.
From the project management prospective....it was a four-star job and required continual monitoring. Toss in the fact that attacks might occur at any time, and a supply situation required some effort....it was not an easy situation.
A year or two at such a fort? To have sat there in 96 AD and done two years of service might have been fairly boring. You can imagine some Roman troop being organized in Italy and forty young guys going through some basic training.....then marching for six to eight weeks through the Alps and southern Germany.....to reach some fort north of Frankfurt. In a heavily wooded region, then reaching a 'carved' area with few if any trees, and then finding this fort to be your home for the next couple of years ahead.....it's a bit of a shocker.
The reaction of the local Germans? There's not much to say their dislike or hatred of the Romans. Eventually, between the mini-wars and problems back in Rome....this forward basing idea came to an end.
Saalburg today is a museum of sorts. It's there to remind Germans of this period around 1,900 years ago.
The G-36 Story
The German Bundeswehr (Army) has a basic rifle for it's troops....the Heckler and Koch G36. It's kinda like the US version of the M-16....same basic character....a slightly different look.
It was designed in the mid-1990s and the Germans bought around 177,000 such rifles. Today, they still have around 167,000 of the rifle around.
It's gotten into the German news lately for an odd reason. Around two years ago, some German Army personnel in Afghanistan started to notice that in sustained battles, with a lot of firing.....the barrel got hot and accuracy decreased (so they say). Reports went out and people discussed the matter, and the German news media have attached themselves to the topic. The slant is that the CDU is responsible for this problem, and the G36 will have to be 'dumped'.
I sat and read a good bit over the weapon. There were extensive tests with the gun in the 1990s, and no issue ever got noted in the tests. Normally....you'd fire in three situations. You'd fire one round at a time, which is what the experts tend to advocate. Or you might fire a three-round sequence if you felt it was a dire situation. Or you might just cut loose and rapid-fire the whole thirty-round clip in a couple of seconds.
The last scenario is one where you might expect weapons to overheat. Toss in 110-degree temperatures.....a two-hour fire-fight....rapid-fire an entire clip over and over.....and your barrel might overheat. It'd happen with just about any brand of rifle made today.
The Germans went back and found that early in the deployment of their folks into Afghanistan....this problem didn't happen. You don't hear that in the German news media....but it might be a curious thing to know.
So I read on and there's a long discussion about bullets used for the G36. The belief is that the newer bullets are thinner on the copper-jackets.....thus able to create more heat as the round is fired.
Heckler and Koch? They feel that they've been insulted to some degree by the German news media. They made the best gun possible and tested it extensively.....so they aren't buying into the fault being on them.
I checked.....there's around forty different countries which use the G36. Even the Baltimore City Police Department uses it. It's hard to find anyone who complains about the gun. This overheating story? I would suspect the copper-jacket bullet might be the root cause.....but you'd have to do extensive tests to prove this point. It wouldn't take more than a week with a couple of guys firing and some science guys keeping track of data.....to prove the point. Oddly, you just don't see the Bundeswehr moving ahead and doing something like this.
In short, it's a political topic.....not a gun topic.
It was designed in the mid-1990s and the Germans bought around 177,000 such rifles. Today, they still have around 167,000 of the rifle around.
It's gotten into the German news lately for an odd reason. Around two years ago, some German Army personnel in Afghanistan started to notice that in sustained battles, with a lot of firing.....the barrel got hot and accuracy decreased (so they say). Reports went out and people discussed the matter, and the German news media have attached themselves to the topic. The slant is that the CDU is responsible for this problem, and the G36 will have to be 'dumped'.
I sat and read a good bit over the weapon. There were extensive tests with the gun in the 1990s, and no issue ever got noted in the tests. Normally....you'd fire in three situations. You'd fire one round at a time, which is what the experts tend to advocate. Or you might fire a three-round sequence if you felt it was a dire situation. Or you might just cut loose and rapid-fire the whole thirty-round clip in a couple of seconds.
The last scenario is one where you might expect weapons to overheat. Toss in 110-degree temperatures.....a two-hour fire-fight....rapid-fire an entire clip over and over.....and your barrel might overheat. It'd happen with just about any brand of rifle made today.
The Germans went back and found that early in the deployment of their folks into Afghanistan....this problem didn't happen. You don't hear that in the German news media....but it might be a curious thing to know.
So I read on and there's a long discussion about bullets used for the G36. The belief is that the newer bullets are thinner on the copper-jackets.....thus able to create more heat as the round is fired.
Heckler and Koch? They feel that they've been insulted to some degree by the German news media. They made the best gun possible and tested it extensively.....so they aren't buying into the fault being on them.
I checked.....there's around forty different countries which use the G36. Even the Baltimore City Police Department uses it. It's hard to find anyone who complains about the gun. This overheating story? I would suspect the copper-jacket bullet might be the root cause.....but you'd have to do extensive tests to prove this point. It wouldn't take more than a week with a couple of guys firing and some science guys keeping track of data.....to prove the point. Oddly, you just don't see the Bundeswehr moving ahead and doing something like this.
In short, it's a political topic.....not a gun topic.
Friday, April 10, 2015
Saalburg
Around an hour's drive northeast of Wiesbaden is Saalburg (near Bad Homburg). It's an old Roman fort which is worth checking out.
It is fairly near the Hessen Park (maybe ten minutes away). My general advice....if you are going up for one.....go early enough to check out both the Roman fort (2.5 hours required) and the Hessen Park (four hours required). I did the Hessen Park six months ago, so this was a separate trip for me.
Saalburg was designed as a Roman fort around 81 AD. The Romans used it primarily to protect the local trade route that went through the area. The historians say somewhere around 160 to 500 Roman troops were there at various times.....with a maximum of 1,500 civilians as part of the population as well.
Saalburg was abandoned around 260 AD when the Romans packed up and left. The fort fell into disrepair and eventually was rediscovered around the 1850s by a Nassau (what came before Hessen) group who had interest in Roman history.
The entry fee is five Euro per adult. Kids are around half that. There's a decent coffee shop/restaurant there.
There's a fair amount of walking and I'd skip it in the winter months. Overall, it's worth a trip if in the Wiesbaden/Mainz area.
It is fairly near the Hessen Park (maybe ten minutes away). My general advice....if you are going up for one.....go early enough to check out both the Roman fort (2.5 hours required) and the Hessen Park (four hours required). I did the Hessen Park six months ago, so this was a separate trip for me.
Saalburg was designed as a Roman fort around 81 AD. The Romans used it primarily to protect the local trade route that went through the area. The historians say somewhere around 160 to 500 Roman troops were there at various times.....with a maximum of 1,500 civilians as part of the population as well.
Saalburg was abandoned around 260 AD when the Romans packed up and left. The fort fell into disrepair and eventually was rediscovered around the 1850s by a Nassau (what came before Hessen) group who had interest in Roman history.
The entry fee is five Euro per adult. Kids are around half that. There's a decent coffee shop/restaurant there.
There's a fair amount of walking and I'd skip it in the winter months. Overall, it's worth a trip if in the Wiesbaden/Mainz area.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Greece, Reparations and the Marshall Plan
In the summer of 1930....the best description of the German economy was "failure". Unemployment was surging and business operations were stalled. Banks were generally on the edge of failure. The public perception for the September election in 1930....was to garner support for the Nazi Party. They would pick up around eighteen percent of the national vote.....mostly as a protest-type vote and in hopes of a recovery for the economy.
By the summer of 1932, the Nazi Party had established enough clout to control national politics in Germany. With the economy still in a marginal status....the plan head involved two massive areas of public expenditures (for the military industry and for the national infrastructure....roads, state buildings and bridges). For the finance office to cover the growing debt....they used revenue taxes and a new gimmick of a national "I-O-U" allotment (Mefo bills, as they are commonly referred to).
The sell to the public from 1932 on....was that socialism was the general solution to the public problems with the economy. Unemployment did gradually resolve itself.....mostly because of public projects and the military industry. So, in the minds of most....the Nazi Party was delivering on their promise.
Somewhere in the mix by 1936....exports from Germany going out had declined by roughly ten-percent. Imports had climbed approximately ten-percent. You can guess the general effect on economy....it was dragging Germany down.
Rationing arrived in 1939, as Germany was marching across various neighbor countries. If it hadn't been for the military situation.....most of the public would have asked why rationing was necessary and if there wasn't more to the economic woes than publicly stated by the government.
In the spring of 1941....both Germany and Italy arrived in Greece. Some Greeks may try to deny Italian involvement.....but the Italians were there as well. In fact, the original invasion of Greece was around October of 1940.....six months prior....where the Italians found the Greeks capable of defending against a marginal Italian force. With the Germans assisting....there were no issues.
Military-wise.....roughly forty thousand within the region of Athens died of starvation, and somewhere in the range of another fifty thousand Greeks died in conflict with the Italians or Germans.
Somewhere in the middle of this invasion....the Germans arrive to the Greek National Bank and want a loan. Oddly, this is written out, with zero-percent interest on the document, and Germans walk away with the bulk of the bank's money. It should be noted.....this was not robbery....documentation exists and the amount agreed upon.
When the Greeks today talk of the loan, it's a factual piece of information. You can sum the loan up to around eleven billion Euro in today's money.....with zero-percent interest figured into the scheme.
When the war finished, Germany and Japan were both finished off economically. American historians went back and reviewed the lessons learned from WW I. The Germans had huge reparations owed to England and France. It unsettled the recovery of Germans from 1919....to the election period of 1930. Fascism grew out of the reparation story. In order to prevent that.....the US enacted what would be called the Marshall Plan. If anyone in Europe had a reparations angle....they'd come to the US and avoid engaging Germany into another mess. The US....would pay for everyone's reparations.
I know.....it's hard to believe and no one really talks about this angle to the Marshall Plan....but it was about preventing WW III or the recovery of the German fascism agenda. Between this.....the division of Germany, and the US troops staying in Germany....things would be ironed out and prevent something stupid from happening.
What did the Greeks get from the Marshall Plan? Roughly 3.5 billion dollars between 1947 and 1951 (in today's dollars). Did the Greeks of 1947 understand this deal? Yes. Are these gentlemen all dead today? Yes. Do any of the political figures of Greece today grasp the Marshall Plan? It's difficult to say if any of the top twenty Greek leaders can give a simple eight-line explanation to the Marshall Plan and it's effect on the Greek economy.
Around 1960, the German government came back and offered a settlement on each Greek killed and damages caused. The Greeks accepted that deal. Do any of the Greek leaders remember that arrangement? Probably not. Did any of the victim money go to actual families in Greece? Probably not.
Did any Communist country in Europe get Marshall Plan funding? No...that was a key feature of the Soviet monopoly over eastern Europe.
One of the odd features of the German recovery after WW I (if you even desire to refer to it as a "recovery")....was by 1925......Germany had gone on a turbo 'binge' of borrowing money. They were deep into debt within a few years. This was all done because the government was stuck with an economy that was stalled and unable to recover. Flooding the market with borrowed money, they gave the public and business the impression of a full recovery in process.....WHEN it wasn't recovering.
In some ways....Greece since 2008 has done the exact same thing as Germany after WW I. Greece might have been already walking in the borrowed money scheme back twenty and thirty years ago.....but since 2008.....they've gone to various levels beyond anything that the Germans schemed up in 1925.
The reparations game here? What happened after the Trojan War (1194 BC)? What happened after the Greece-Punic War in 600 BC? What happened after the Greece-Persia War (499 BC)? What happened in the Social War of 357 AD? What happened in 334 with Alexander the Great and his Greek Army invading various neighbors? What happened in the Greek Civil Wars of 1823 (phase one and phase two)? The sad truth is that Greece has had over sixty various wars or campaigns over the past four-thousand years. Greece ought to be paying for reparations of various wars to their neighbors, if they take this reparations game serious.
By the summer of 1932, the Nazi Party had established enough clout to control national politics in Germany. With the economy still in a marginal status....the plan head involved two massive areas of public expenditures (for the military industry and for the national infrastructure....roads, state buildings and bridges). For the finance office to cover the growing debt....they used revenue taxes and a new gimmick of a national "I-O-U" allotment (Mefo bills, as they are commonly referred to).
The sell to the public from 1932 on....was that socialism was the general solution to the public problems with the economy. Unemployment did gradually resolve itself.....mostly because of public projects and the military industry. So, in the minds of most....the Nazi Party was delivering on their promise.
Somewhere in the mix by 1936....exports from Germany going out had declined by roughly ten-percent. Imports had climbed approximately ten-percent. You can guess the general effect on economy....it was dragging Germany down.
Rationing arrived in 1939, as Germany was marching across various neighbor countries. If it hadn't been for the military situation.....most of the public would have asked why rationing was necessary and if there wasn't more to the economic woes than publicly stated by the government.
In the spring of 1941....both Germany and Italy arrived in Greece. Some Greeks may try to deny Italian involvement.....but the Italians were there as well. In fact, the original invasion of Greece was around October of 1940.....six months prior....where the Italians found the Greeks capable of defending against a marginal Italian force. With the Germans assisting....there were no issues.
Military-wise.....roughly forty thousand within the region of Athens died of starvation, and somewhere in the range of another fifty thousand Greeks died in conflict with the Italians or Germans.
Somewhere in the middle of this invasion....the Germans arrive to the Greek National Bank and want a loan. Oddly, this is written out, with zero-percent interest on the document, and Germans walk away with the bulk of the bank's money. It should be noted.....this was not robbery....documentation exists and the amount agreed upon.
When the Greeks today talk of the loan, it's a factual piece of information. You can sum the loan up to around eleven billion Euro in today's money.....with zero-percent interest figured into the scheme.
When the war finished, Germany and Japan were both finished off economically. American historians went back and reviewed the lessons learned from WW I. The Germans had huge reparations owed to England and France. It unsettled the recovery of Germans from 1919....to the election period of 1930. Fascism grew out of the reparation story. In order to prevent that.....the US enacted what would be called the Marshall Plan. If anyone in Europe had a reparations angle....they'd come to the US and avoid engaging Germany into another mess. The US....would pay for everyone's reparations.
I know.....it's hard to believe and no one really talks about this angle to the Marshall Plan....but it was about preventing WW III or the recovery of the German fascism agenda. Between this.....the division of Germany, and the US troops staying in Germany....things would be ironed out and prevent something stupid from happening.
What did the Greeks get from the Marshall Plan? Roughly 3.5 billion dollars between 1947 and 1951 (in today's dollars). Did the Greeks of 1947 understand this deal? Yes. Are these gentlemen all dead today? Yes. Do any of the political figures of Greece today grasp the Marshall Plan? It's difficult to say if any of the top twenty Greek leaders can give a simple eight-line explanation to the Marshall Plan and it's effect on the Greek economy.
Around 1960, the German government came back and offered a settlement on each Greek killed and damages caused. The Greeks accepted that deal. Do any of the Greek leaders remember that arrangement? Probably not. Did any of the victim money go to actual families in Greece? Probably not.
Did any Communist country in Europe get Marshall Plan funding? No...that was a key feature of the Soviet monopoly over eastern Europe.
One of the odd features of the German recovery after WW I (if you even desire to refer to it as a "recovery")....was by 1925......Germany had gone on a turbo 'binge' of borrowing money. They were deep into debt within a few years. This was all done because the government was stuck with an economy that was stalled and unable to recover. Flooding the market with borrowed money, they gave the public and business the impression of a full recovery in process.....WHEN it wasn't recovering.
In some ways....Greece since 2008 has done the exact same thing as Germany after WW I. Greece might have been already walking in the borrowed money scheme back twenty and thirty years ago.....but since 2008.....they've gone to various levels beyond anything that the Germans schemed up in 1925.
The reparations game here? What happened after the Trojan War (1194 BC)? What happened after the Greece-Punic War in 600 BC? What happened after the Greece-Persia War (499 BC)? What happened in the Social War of 357 AD? What happened in 334 with Alexander the Great and his Greek Army invading various neighbors? What happened in the Greek Civil Wars of 1823 (phase one and phase two)? The sad truth is that Greece has had over sixty various wars or campaigns over the past four-thousand years. Greece ought to be paying for reparations of various wars to their neighbors, if they take this reparations game serious.
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Greece After a Long Weekend
There are three curious events from Greece out of Monday's theater of political chat.
First, Greece had political meetings engaged til after midnight, and came out to say that they wanted a committee formed on who-to-blame for the current economic crisis.
They didn't say who exactly would be on the committee or how they'd use the information later (charges or just more talk). One might speculate that it's an attempt to just make sure the "right people" get blamed and the "right people" get a free ticket around the blame game. You pay members of the blame-committee some type of bribe, and you barely get mentioned. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but that's typically the goal and strategy to get on a great blame-committee position.
Second, the Greeks have finally come to the mythical and magic number on German reparations. It's roughly 287.7 billion (give or take) Euro.
A guy would ponder upon the magic number and how it works. Greece says that 10.3 billion Euro relate to the loan that Germany forced Greece to perform in WW II.....which the documents signed indicated that it was a "loan" and there was no interest to gather on the loan.
The rest of the 287.7 billion? The rest would be a settlement to the families of victims and to cover buildings, structures and bridges destroyed during the war.
The likely nature of Germany to pay this back? There's a serious question over the loan, and I could see some possible German deal for the 10.3 billion (maybe spread over a number of months or years). Naturally, the bulk of Germans won't be happy with this, and it might affect some political careers for those pressing for the deal. I don't think Chancellor Merkel will be a keen supporter of the idea, but she has barely three years left.
The rest of this money? Germany paid a settlement back in the 1950s/1960s for the damages to private citizens and families.....so it's odd that this topic would come up again. As for the destruction of public property.....it might be curious if there's a full listing of such destroyed or damaged property. I would question if such a list exists.....and if this damages amount was just a round estimated number with no concrete evidence.
Third? There's this hint to another election. Some folks have become disenchanted with the actions of the present leadership and suggest that it's time already to replace these guys. The odds of an election? Right now, I'd give it a ten-percent chance. In three months.....things might deteriorate and I might push it up to fifty-fifty. The group of parties that control the government stood there and made promises to the public on how they'd perform. If they don't honor the promises.....there's enough hostilities to drag this off to a new election.
Frankly, I'd have doubts that another election would do much except make things more confused and just convince the EU to dump Greece as soon as possible.
Screwed up? I'd sum the weekend events as being more of 'theater' than 'nation-building'. If I were on the present political party in charge.....I wouldn't waste much time on planning statues to our success in life or politics.
First, Greece had political meetings engaged til after midnight, and came out to say that they wanted a committee formed on who-to-blame for the current economic crisis.
They didn't say who exactly would be on the committee or how they'd use the information later (charges or just more talk). One might speculate that it's an attempt to just make sure the "right people" get blamed and the "right people" get a free ticket around the blame game. You pay members of the blame-committee some type of bribe, and you barely get mentioned. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but that's typically the goal and strategy to get on a great blame-committee position.
Second, the Greeks have finally come to the mythical and magic number on German reparations. It's roughly 287.7 billion (give or take) Euro.
A guy would ponder upon the magic number and how it works. Greece says that 10.3 billion Euro relate to the loan that Germany forced Greece to perform in WW II.....which the documents signed indicated that it was a "loan" and there was no interest to gather on the loan.
The rest of the 287.7 billion? The rest would be a settlement to the families of victims and to cover buildings, structures and bridges destroyed during the war.
The likely nature of Germany to pay this back? There's a serious question over the loan, and I could see some possible German deal for the 10.3 billion (maybe spread over a number of months or years). Naturally, the bulk of Germans won't be happy with this, and it might affect some political careers for those pressing for the deal. I don't think Chancellor Merkel will be a keen supporter of the idea, but she has barely three years left.
The rest of this money? Germany paid a settlement back in the 1950s/1960s for the damages to private citizens and families.....so it's odd that this topic would come up again. As for the destruction of public property.....it might be curious if there's a full listing of such destroyed or damaged property. I would question if such a list exists.....and if this damages amount was just a round estimated number with no concrete evidence.
Third? There's this hint to another election. Some folks have become disenchanted with the actions of the present leadership and suggest that it's time already to replace these guys. The odds of an election? Right now, I'd give it a ten-percent chance. In three months.....things might deteriorate and I might push it up to fifty-fifty. The group of parties that control the government stood there and made promises to the public on how they'd perform. If they don't honor the promises.....there's enough hostilities to drag this off to a new election.
Frankly, I'd have doubts that another election would do much except make things more confused and just convince the EU to dump Greece as soon as possible.
Screwed up? I'd sum the weekend events as being more of 'theater' than 'nation-building'. If I were on the present political party in charge.....I wouldn't waste much time on planning statues to our success in life or politics.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
The Thing About Bridge Repair
Here in the local area of Wiesbaden....the Schierstein Bridge repair is almost complete. I wrote on this about six weeks ago.
There's a major new bridge construction project is underway right next to the old Schierstein Bridge (completed in 1962). A new replacement bridge would be done around 2019.
Somewhere in the construction phase on 11 Feb 2015.....some construction guy allowed equipment underneath the old bridge to bump a column.....which triggered a crack in the old bridge and shut down traffic over the bridge for weeks.
With 90,000 cars using the bridge daily.....this shut-down turned into a massive and frustrating episode.
This week, they confirmed the repair is almost done, and testing complete. Then they uttered the open comment with an exception.
Only cars or vehicles with 3.5 tons or less will be allowed across the bridge. No vehicle will exceed 40 kph (half of the original speed limit). There will be a weighing device laid out on both ends.....with some type of swing arm. It's referred to as "weight-in-motion".....where they will assess your car's weight, then determine if you can pass over the bridge. If you fail.....an arm goes down and you must exit the road and go by some other route.
A naturally smart guy would think over this process. A lower speed limit.....some scale measuring weight.....a "fixed" bridge which isn't really fixed? A temp solution? No. They've been very careful how they announced this weight-in-motion scale and the 40 kph speed limit. This is permanent, until the new bridge is finished.
Traffic issues? Yeah. There's no way that the previous 90,000 vehicles can use this bridge. Traffic jams and stau's will be abundant.
I'm only guessing here, but this is the only 'fix' that the engineers could come up with.....in a short amount of time. So, patiently.....people will simply have to sit and wait for 2019 to roll around....and some new bridge to replace the old bridge.
There's a major new bridge construction project is underway right next to the old Schierstein Bridge (completed in 1962). A new replacement bridge would be done around 2019.
Somewhere in the construction phase on 11 Feb 2015.....some construction guy allowed equipment underneath the old bridge to bump a column.....which triggered a crack in the old bridge and shut down traffic over the bridge for weeks.
With 90,000 cars using the bridge daily.....this shut-down turned into a massive and frustrating episode.
This week, they confirmed the repair is almost done, and testing complete. Then they uttered the open comment with an exception.
Only cars or vehicles with 3.5 tons or less will be allowed across the bridge. No vehicle will exceed 40 kph (half of the original speed limit). There will be a weighing device laid out on both ends.....with some type of swing arm. It's referred to as "weight-in-motion".....where they will assess your car's weight, then determine if you can pass over the bridge. If you fail.....an arm goes down and you must exit the road and go by some other route.
A naturally smart guy would think over this process. A lower speed limit.....some scale measuring weight.....a "fixed" bridge which isn't really fixed? A temp solution? No. They've been very careful how they announced this weight-in-motion scale and the 40 kph speed limit. This is permanent, until the new bridge is finished.
Traffic issues? Yeah. There's no way that the previous 90,000 vehicles can use this bridge. Traffic jams and stau's will be abundant.
I'm only guessing here, but this is the only 'fix' that the engineers could come up with.....in a short amount of time. So, patiently.....people will simply have to sit and wait for 2019 to roll around....and some new bridge to replace the old bridge.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Banking in Iceland
In a normal country....the financial stability of civilization is built upon three simple ideas.
First....money is printed and coins are minted by the federal apparatus of the country. They determine the size and build some security mechanism into the money so it can't be counterfeited. This is the job of the government.
Second....the government will create a financial box of tools where they can manipulate the economy to some degree. Pure capitalism no longer exists in any country on the face of this Earth.....it's a hybrid system where rules and balances are in place to help or hinder growth.
Third and final....money is generated by commercial banks and loaned to the central bank of the country.....to push a line-of-credit out to the public. This will create mortgages for private home owners, credit card usage opportunities, loans for business operations, and car loans. These react with interest payments which pay the banks and ensure their growth.
This week, in Iceland.....a dramatic suggestion was put forth and will be strongly evaluated by the Icelandic government.
They are suggesting to remove private commercial banks from the three-step recipe, and making the state mechanism (the central bank)....the sole individual who can generate funds for the public.
This has stirred up a number of banking folks and finance journalists. But there's some history here.
Iceland went back and reviewed banking history since the mid-1800s. What they found was that about every fifteen years....some type of banking bubble or crisis occurred. There's been roughly twenty occasions where things didn't run correctly, and six of the crisis periods were fairly rough on the public....especially the 2008 episode.
The odd factor to all twenty crisis episodes? Commercial banks and speculation by investors.
All of this research led folks to this one problem.....the central bank is not capable of controlling speculation and risky behavior on credit usage. In each case.....some less.....some more....the state ended up stepping in and having to correct the faults and cover losses. If you remove the commercial banks from this money control situation....they are basically there to act as a deposit point for accounts (you put your money in and you take your money out). Under this concept, they would be the middle-man between lenders and credit-usage customers.
This leads onto a dozen-odd questions which weren't really asked or answered in this report to the Icelandic government.
Would there be a tougher set of rules for mortgage situations.....where the government laid down absolute rules on down-payments for homes? Would some political party be able to step in and act like corrupted hedge funds....screwing up the process instead of commercial banks? Would this really stop the cycle business of every decade or two of a crisis period?
All of this makes for boring reading for most folks.....but it generates some conversation. Most folks have no background in banking and wouldn't touch this subject. Iceland has seen a hefty fall over the past seven years and they seem to be wanting a better solution than you'd normally get.
It helps to have a population of roughly 300,000. Fewer people lead to a situation where changes are more creative. This type of solution in the US? Impossible to get through Congress because of lobbyists and banking enthusiasts.
Bottom line? Something might occur in Iceland and over the next twenty years suggest a better way of handling an economy.....yet be untouchable by most other countries.
First....money is printed and coins are minted by the federal apparatus of the country. They determine the size and build some security mechanism into the money so it can't be counterfeited. This is the job of the government.
Second....the government will create a financial box of tools where they can manipulate the economy to some degree. Pure capitalism no longer exists in any country on the face of this Earth.....it's a hybrid system where rules and balances are in place to help or hinder growth.
Third and final....money is generated by commercial banks and loaned to the central bank of the country.....to push a line-of-credit out to the public. This will create mortgages for private home owners, credit card usage opportunities, loans for business operations, and car loans. These react with interest payments which pay the banks and ensure their growth.
This week, in Iceland.....a dramatic suggestion was put forth and will be strongly evaluated by the Icelandic government.
They are suggesting to remove private commercial banks from the three-step recipe, and making the state mechanism (the central bank)....the sole individual who can generate funds for the public.
This has stirred up a number of banking folks and finance journalists. But there's some history here.
Iceland went back and reviewed banking history since the mid-1800s. What they found was that about every fifteen years....some type of banking bubble or crisis occurred. There's been roughly twenty occasions where things didn't run correctly, and six of the crisis periods were fairly rough on the public....especially the 2008 episode.
The odd factor to all twenty crisis episodes? Commercial banks and speculation by investors.
All of this research led folks to this one problem.....the central bank is not capable of controlling speculation and risky behavior on credit usage. In each case.....some less.....some more....the state ended up stepping in and having to correct the faults and cover losses. If you remove the commercial banks from this money control situation....they are basically there to act as a deposit point for accounts (you put your money in and you take your money out). Under this concept, they would be the middle-man between lenders and credit-usage customers.
This leads onto a dozen-odd questions which weren't really asked or answered in this report to the Icelandic government.
Would there be a tougher set of rules for mortgage situations.....where the government laid down absolute rules on down-payments for homes? Would some political party be able to step in and act like corrupted hedge funds....screwing up the process instead of commercial banks? Would this really stop the cycle business of every decade or two of a crisis period?
All of this makes for boring reading for most folks.....but it generates some conversation. Most folks have no background in banking and wouldn't touch this subject. Iceland has seen a hefty fall over the past seven years and they seem to be wanting a better solution than you'd normally get.
It helps to have a population of roughly 300,000. Fewer people lead to a situation where changes are more creative. This type of solution in the US? Impossible to get through Congress because of lobbyists and banking enthusiasts.
Bottom line? Something might occur in Iceland and over the next twenty years suggest a better way of handling an economy.....yet be untouchable by most other countries.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Another Fake Cop Episode
Over the past thirty months that I've been in the Wiesbaden area....we've probably had at least twenty fake cop robberies within the city.
It's generally rich upper-class tourists that the guy or guys will appear in front of....acting as cops....suggesting that a recent fake Euro bill episode has occurred in the city and they just want to check the billfold or purse of the victim. Minutes later after the fake cops leave....the victim realizes they robbed him or her.
This time? A Kuwaiti guy near one of the upper-class hotels in town. One guy on the street acted as a recent arrival and was asking about recommendations for local hotels when two guys in civilian clothing identified themselves as cops (probably flashing a badge or ID of some type). The two fake cops and the other dude.....convince the visitor of the fake Euro bill thing, and the rest is history.
It's an odd strategy of a couple of common thieves. You stage yourself in the tourist district of Wiesbaden. You look only for foreigners because most Germans won't buy the story. You flash a badge and have the appears of a cop. No one has said much about the language used, but you get the impression that the fake cops speak in English to some degree. The amount usually taken? Most of the reports indicate several hundred Euro....never into the thousands. Does it happen more often? Maybe they run a guy or gal through this and only take a hundred here or a hundred there....but you can't be sure about because no one reports it.
Worth the hassle if caught? Well....the thing is....the odds seem to be in the favor of the fake cops. The same guys? The Wiesbaden cops won't say that....which leads one to think it's a group of folks who just do it for 'nickels and dimes'. An odd episode, if you ask me.
It's generally rich upper-class tourists that the guy or guys will appear in front of....acting as cops....suggesting that a recent fake Euro bill episode has occurred in the city and they just want to check the billfold or purse of the victim. Minutes later after the fake cops leave....the victim realizes they robbed him or her.
This time? A Kuwaiti guy near one of the upper-class hotels in town. One guy on the street acted as a recent arrival and was asking about recommendations for local hotels when two guys in civilian clothing identified themselves as cops (probably flashing a badge or ID of some type). The two fake cops and the other dude.....convince the visitor of the fake Euro bill thing, and the rest is history.
It's an odd strategy of a couple of common thieves. You stage yourself in the tourist district of Wiesbaden. You look only for foreigners because most Germans won't buy the story. You flash a badge and have the appears of a cop. No one has said much about the language used, but you get the impression that the fake cops speak in English to some degree. The amount usually taken? Most of the reports indicate several hundred Euro....never into the thousands. Does it happen more often? Maybe they run a guy or gal through this and only take a hundred here or a hundred there....but you can't be sure about because no one reports it.
Worth the hassle if caught? Well....the thing is....the odds seem to be in the favor of the fake cops. The same guys? The Wiesbaden cops won't say that....which leads one to think it's a group of folks who just do it for 'nickels and dimes'. An odd episode, if you ask me.
The "Day of Truth"
It's a nifty phrase. The day of truth.
Here in Hessen, with the episode of 10 February when the construction folks did 'something' to dislodge the Schiersteiner Bridge and shut it down completely.....there's been this massive repair job underway.
It's been a shocker for the public who simply assumed that the three bridges in the local area of Mainz and Wiesbaden were sufficient and never anticipated that you'd have one bridge entirely shut down.
Today will be a test of the repair work and a determination will be made if they can reopen sometime next week.
Roughly 90,000 cars normally would cross the Schiersteiner Bridge on a daily basis. They've all had to reroute to another alternate deal. The cost to business operations? Probably several million a day.
To be honest....what they say is that the test ought to be positive and there's a 95-to-96 percent of success. Frankly, that isn't the best kind of goal to have. A failure with this test? This could set the whole thing back another four weeks minimum.
Here in Hessen, with the episode of 10 February when the construction folks did 'something' to dislodge the Schiersteiner Bridge and shut it down completely.....there's been this massive repair job underway.
It's been a shocker for the public who simply assumed that the three bridges in the local area of Mainz and Wiesbaden were sufficient and never anticipated that you'd have one bridge entirely shut down.
Today will be a test of the repair work and a determination will be made if they can reopen sometime next week.
Roughly 90,000 cars normally would cross the Schiersteiner Bridge on a daily basis. They've all had to reroute to another alternate deal. The cost to business operations? Probably several million a day.
To be honest....what they say is that the test ought to be positive and there's a 95-to-96 percent of success. Frankly, that isn't the best kind of goal to have. A failure with this test? This could set the whole thing back another four weeks minimum.
Nazis, Ku Klux Klan and Intrigue
It's one of those odd stories out of Germany that will require more evidence.
An effort was made about a decade ago to start a Ku Klux Klan operation in Germany. The original group of people curious in joining? German cops. So the story goes.
For a long time, it was simply known that only two cops had gotten into the situation. Yesterday.....the news media says that at least twenty German cops were interested and might have joined.
The Interior Ministry has admitted this new twist to the story and an investigation will start up.
But there's another second part to the story. From the two cops who were in the original effort.....one was the supervisor of a dead Heilbronn cop from 2007 (Michele Kiesewetter was the female cop killed, with a shot to the head) on 25 April 2007. A second cop was accompanying her in the parking garage, and he was critically injured with a shot to the head as well.....but survived.
Two separate shooters in the Heilbronn episode? Well....two separate guns were used (a Russian-made TT-33 and a Polish-made VIS-35). So you'd get the impression that guys were in the garage and confronted the two cops.
Oddly enough....DNA evidence led folks to the "Phantom Killer"....a bogus unknown killer who'd whacked around a dozen folks over a three-year period. Around two years after the shooting, the cops woke up and realized that their DNA swabs were contaminated and there never was a Phantom Killer (most likely the DNA of some gal at the swab factory in Austria).
A connection between the Ku Klux Klan deal and the dead cop? At this point, NO. However, it's just odd that the one of the two names that they are sure about with having joined the Klan....was the supervisor of Kiesewetter (the dead female cop).
Here's the other odd thing about this story. The recent German court action against the NSU (the Nazi murders of some Turks from a decade ago).....has hinted that there might be a connection between the Nazis (NSU) and the Ku Klux Klan. Yeah, this gets to a pretty weird point, with only stories and no real proof. But they are digging into this and you can't predict where this will go.
An effort was made about a decade ago to start a Ku Klux Klan operation in Germany. The original group of people curious in joining? German cops. So the story goes.
For a long time, it was simply known that only two cops had gotten into the situation. Yesterday.....the news media says that at least twenty German cops were interested and might have joined.
The Interior Ministry has admitted this new twist to the story and an investigation will start up.
But there's another second part to the story. From the two cops who were in the original effort.....one was the supervisor of a dead Heilbronn cop from 2007 (Michele Kiesewetter was the female cop killed, with a shot to the head) on 25 April 2007. A second cop was accompanying her in the parking garage, and he was critically injured with a shot to the head as well.....but survived.
Two separate shooters in the Heilbronn episode? Well....two separate guns were used (a Russian-made TT-33 and a Polish-made VIS-35). So you'd get the impression that guys were in the garage and confronted the two cops.
Oddly enough....DNA evidence led folks to the "Phantom Killer"....a bogus unknown killer who'd whacked around a dozen folks over a three-year period. Around two years after the shooting, the cops woke up and realized that their DNA swabs were contaminated and there never was a Phantom Killer (most likely the DNA of some gal at the swab factory in Austria).
A connection between the Ku Klux Klan deal and the dead cop? At this point, NO. However, it's just odd that the one of the two names that they are sure about with having joined the Klan....was the supervisor of Kiesewetter (the dead female cop).
Here's the other odd thing about this story. The recent German court action against the NSU (the Nazi murders of some Turks from a decade ago).....has hinted that there might be a connection between the Nazis (NSU) and the Ku Klux Klan. Yeah, this gets to a pretty weird point, with only stories and no real proof. But they are digging into this and you can't predict where this will go.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
New Meat Rule in Germany
There's a new rule in effect here in Germany, as of today. The rule says....when you go to the grocery or butcher....there's to be a notice on the packing to indicate where the animal was grown, and slaughtered. Deli meats are exempt from the rule.
The deal?
Germans over the past decade have had to face several crisis episodes where horse-meat got mixed into regular meat supply....it's best not to ask how this occurred. Then they figured out that some corrupt companies were buying up beef and pork in countries like Romania or Bulgaria.....then transporting them into Germany.....pretending that the butchered meat was German meat.
How difficult will this make the process of proper identification? You can imagine some company buy tons and tons of pork....now having to be careful that they always buy it from the same farming area....so that they stay legit.
Could you still sneak around the deal? Well.....yeah. You run a truck from Bulgaria to Bavaria with hogs.....unloading them at Farmer Schmidt's place and they sit around for a week before Farmer Schmidt sells them to the butcher company....so they are German hogs for all practical purposes.
What this will do for a brief period is push beef and pork prices up....then some corrupt guys will figure out the work-around and get into the business again.
The deal?
Germans over the past decade have had to face several crisis episodes where horse-meat got mixed into regular meat supply....it's best not to ask how this occurred. Then they figured out that some corrupt companies were buying up beef and pork in countries like Romania or Bulgaria.....then transporting them into Germany.....pretending that the butchered meat was German meat.
How difficult will this make the process of proper identification? You can imagine some company buy tons and tons of pork....now having to be careful that they always buy it from the same farming area....so that they stay legit.
Could you still sneak around the deal? Well.....yeah. You run a truck from Bulgaria to Bavaria with hogs.....unloading them at Farmer Schmidt's place and they sit around for a week before Farmer Schmidt sells them to the butcher company....so they are German hogs for all practical purposes.
What this will do for a brief period is push beef and pork prices up....then some corrupt guys will figure out the work-around and get into the business again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)