There's a great piece this morning from Deutsche Welle on the German news media. The Forta Institute conducted a poll with roughly a thousand Germans.....on the news media and what the public thinks. The results were a bit shocking for some folks....forty-four percent think that the German news media lies or leads readers to untruthful situations.
It's a fairly high number....meaning that just barely two-thirds of the German nation feel trustworthy of the news media.
Deutsche Welle goes through and does a four-star job analyzing the trend and how this is becoming a problem with the public perception.
There's another comment within the report that links to the Ludwig Erhard Foundation. They've looked at the differences between various European countries with news journalists, and come to this one odd identification of German news media people...."They are zealots for a cause, and they fight for something, instead of reporting on it."
I sat and thought about this....particularly in relation with Channel One (ARD) and Channel Two (ZDF). Both public-run and each having a slightly different flavor of journalism. Both have a lot of reporters who are simply diehards for some belief and will go into some public forum with their shield and sword to defend this belief. Rather than lay out observations and facts, and let people just analyze to come to their own conclusion....the popular trend is to bring people strictly to one end or conclusion.
Near the end of the commentary....Deutsche Welle goes and makes the connection to the internet, and how the public now has a tool to compare news, commentary and perception. If someone has a doubt over what they've heard on Channel One....they need only spend five minutes reviewing optional news sites and find that there are a dozen other facts in a particular story told by Channel One.....which would lead you to another conclusion, but the reporter from Channel One sought to leave those facts out.
The real problem is that society has reached a point where news is fed to them....twenty-four hours a day....in various ways....and rather than this being some centralized tone or just plain facts.....it becomes some persuasive discussion to get you feeling one certain way. It's not really news anymore....it's something else.
At the present rate, in twenty years....I expect most news moderators and reporters to be replaced by some AI (artificial intelligence) computer system. There'll be no need for living and breathing reporters because the computer has figured out how to tell the same slanted story, costing less on overhead, and getting the same woeful result in the end. It won't matter if you get lied to by a live reporter, or a computer....it'll be all the same stuff.
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Friday, October 30, 2015
Dogg is Dead?
Denis or Deso Dogg or Denis-Deso-Abu....take your pick. The Americans say he's dead.
I've written a blog or two on Denis or Dogg. It's a five star movie script sitting there on the guy.
Denis was the product of a German mother and a Ghana guy. Nothing is ever known of the Ghana guy other than he packed up and left at some point.
Mom married some American officer, and Denis really never took a likening to the guy. Troubled times, etc.
Denis ends up in his teens as a delinquent. Around 1995, Denis is around twenty....selling drugs on the side and discovers rap music. He has some talent....at least in consideration there just isn't a lot of rapsters in Germany.
Seven years will pass....Denis does Ok at rap and Ok at selling drugs.
Then he hits the big time with a contract and puts out one big album. Oddly, about this same time....he gets noticed for drugs, and goes off to jail for a while. For roughly a year.....Denis is known in the rap music world.
In jail, Denis gets introduced to Islam. He emerges and says he's a changed man. In truth, he can't really rediscover his potential.
By 2009, Denis has gotten into some weapons issues with the cops, and that takes some effort to explain.
By 2012, Denis has decided to run off to the Syrian civil war. He's this DJ-rap star who does musical pieces for ISIS.
By 2013, some folks in the CIA have figured that Denis is a four-star womanizer and has hooked up this woman that Denis is all stuck upon. Denis introduces her to various ISIS folks and they talk up the whole operation. At some point in mid to late 2014.....she has to leave because there are some suspicions about her past.
By earlier this year....Denis has problems with his ISIS relationships. What the US government will say is that he's dead and gone now.
Me? I'm skeptical.
It would not surprise me the CIA decided to deal with Denis and offer some deal....talk big-time and we just make you dead in name only. Maybe I'm wrong, but there's just something odd about this whole story.
As for a five-star story for a movie? This is it. Denis or Dogg.....is probably the best made-for-movie script to ever come out of Germany.
I've written a blog or two on Denis or Dogg. It's a five star movie script sitting there on the guy.
Denis was the product of a German mother and a Ghana guy. Nothing is ever known of the Ghana guy other than he packed up and left at some point.
Mom married some American officer, and Denis really never took a likening to the guy. Troubled times, etc.
Denis ends up in his teens as a delinquent. Around 1995, Denis is around twenty....selling drugs on the side and discovers rap music. He has some talent....at least in consideration there just isn't a lot of rapsters in Germany.
Seven years will pass....Denis does Ok at rap and Ok at selling drugs.
Then he hits the big time with a contract and puts out one big album. Oddly, about this same time....he gets noticed for drugs, and goes off to jail for a while. For roughly a year.....Denis is known in the rap music world.
In jail, Denis gets introduced to Islam. He emerges and says he's a changed man. In truth, he can't really rediscover his potential.
By 2009, Denis has gotten into some weapons issues with the cops, and that takes some effort to explain.
By 2012, Denis has decided to run off to the Syrian civil war. He's this DJ-rap star who does musical pieces for ISIS.
By 2013, some folks in the CIA have figured that Denis is a four-star womanizer and has hooked up this woman that Denis is all stuck upon. Denis introduces her to various ISIS folks and they talk up the whole operation. At some point in mid to late 2014.....she has to leave because there are some suspicions about her past.
By earlier this year....Denis has problems with his ISIS relationships. What the US government will say is that he's dead and gone now.
Me? I'm skeptical.
It would not surprise me the CIA decided to deal with Denis and offer some deal....talk big-time and we just make you dead in name only. Maybe I'm wrong, but there's just something odd about this whole story.
As for a five-star story for a movie? This is it. Denis or Dogg.....is probably the best made-for-movie script to ever come out of Germany.
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Niqab Talk Essay
I sat and watched some interview off a public German network last night.....a twenty-minute segment which dealt mostly with this French Muslim gal. In France, you see, there's this law that forbids the facial covering....the Islamic Niqab. It's a national law....with no waivers or such. The French public demanded it.....the politicians gave some simple wording into the law, and so far....no national court has prevented it's implementation.
So the video segment last night was the woeful tale of this very enthusiastic Islamic gal, who'd really like to show her determination and support of the Niqab....wearing it in public and being a full-up Muslim. To show her determination....she walked around some French street....wearing the Niqab and the French crew showed the whole thing. No cops around.....no one ran up to challenge her.....so it was part of the 'act' of the interview folks.
Then they (the interview crew) brought in this gal's sister.....who was Muslim. They didn't really make it that clear if she was heavily influenced a decade prior like her sister.....or her current interpretation of the Koran.....but the sister was now 'westernized'.
'Westernized' tends to mean that she dressed French.....showed no indication of being Muslim....and was employed. She was successful in life and enjoyed every single thing that French society had offered, including employment and a chance to be whoever she wanted to be.
They brought the two sisters together and they each discussed their direction in life. They obviously weren't going to ever agree on lifestyles ever again.
If you walk around the streets of Germany....Niqabs-clad women exist. I'd say roughly that five to ten-percent of the adult female Islamic crowd have gone this direction. From the Turkish population in Germany....it's probably almost zero-percent who go to the Niqab culture. You can go back twenty and even forty years ago....the Turkish population either went full westernized (German) or dressed by Turkish standards to be conservative in nature....maybe with a scarf over their head in a public setting. I can remember walking around Frankfurt in 1978 and the Niqab style facial covering was absolutely non-existent. Even when I returned in 1984....you could go anywhere in Frankfurt and not see facial coverings.
Somewhere in the early 1990s as I returned for the third time to Germany....I came to notice this one day when visiting the Wiesbaden central shopping district. One single woman....dressed in black and wearing a Niqab. Today, if you go to the same shopping district....on a typical afternoon, you'd probably come to notice forty to sixty such women. None....I assume....are Turkish.
German acceptance or non-acceptance goes from one extreme to another. Some Germans just stand there and stare....muttering some ultra-soft negative comment. Others just accept it and see it as part of the new German environment....the multi-culti theme in full effect.
I think somewhere down the line....as a few husbands of Niqab women have met some unfortunate accident and passed on....there will be some reality facing these unique women and a very uncertain future. In the old country.....the clan or family would have picked things up and ensured some new marriage. I'm not that sure of how it'd work in Germany, and it'd be a harsh economic situation to face as some Niqab-clad widow and showing up in the Arbeitsagetur (the work office) to find something to gain employment. Potential German employers looking at some Nigab potential employee and mostly just shake their heads. Maybe some German government operation will find some sympathy and look over the facial covering to offer a government job.
My suspicion is that election trends over the next year or two....will eventually show more German enthusiasm to counter the trend, and the French-style law might end up being applied in some German state, and being challenged in court.
The German Basic Law (their Constitution) doesn't have anything to preserve or defend such practices. You do have freedom of religion, but it's not exactly written to such an extent to say clothing or style of clothing is part of that particular freedom. You also have the freedom to find happiness, but applying it to clothing styles or facial coverings.....hasn't been done before. Jews might stand up and tell you in 1930 that they had religious freedom in Germany, and discovered two or three years later that their freedoms were non-existent.
On top of all of that....I'm also guessing that some female German comedian will eventually test the waters one day and wear some Batman-style Nigab as part of her act, and get a bunch of people all disturbed and upset. That intellectual argument involving extreme humor....might test the waters and drag this out into public debate.
So, if you were looking for a really stupid public argument to erupt and get most Germans involved in something that doesn't concern them.....this is way up on the charts.
So the video segment last night was the woeful tale of this very enthusiastic Islamic gal, who'd really like to show her determination and support of the Niqab....wearing it in public and being a full-up Muslim. To show her determination....she walked around some French street....wearing the Niqab and the French crew showed the whole thing. No cops around.....no one ran up to challenge her.....so it was part of the 'act' of the interview folks.
Then they (the interview crew) brought in this gal's sister.....who was Muslim. They didn't really make it that clear if she was heavily influenced a decade prior like her sister.....or her current interpretation of the Koran.....but the sister was now 'westernized'.
'Westernized' tends to mean that she dressed French.....showed no indication of being Muslim....and was employed. She was successful in life and enjoyed every single thing that French society had offered, including employment and a chance to be whoever she wanted to be.
They brought the two sisters together and they each discussed their direction in life. They obviously weren't going to ever agree on lifestyles ever again.
If you walk around the streets of Germany....Niqabs-clad women exist. I'd say roughly that five to ten-percent of the adult female Islamic crowd have gone this direction. From the Turkish population in Germany....it's probably almost zero-percent who go to the Niqab culture. You can go back twenty and even forty years ago....the Turkish population either went full westernized (German) or dressed by Turkish standards to be conservative in nature....maybe with a scarf over their head in a public setting. I can remember walking around Frankfurt in 1978 and the Niqab style facial covering was absolutely non-existent. Even when I returned in 1984....you could go anywhere in Frankfurt and not see facial coverings.
Somewhere in the early 1990s as I returned for the third time to Germany....I came to notice this one day when visiting the Wiesbaden central shopping district. One single woman....dressed in black and wearing a Niqab. Today, if you go to the same shopping district....on a typical afternoon, you'd probably come to notice forty to sixty such women. None....I assume....are Turkish.
German acceptance or non-acceptance goes from one extreme to another. Some Germans just stand there and stare....muttering some ultra-soft negative comment. Others just accept it and see it as part of the new German environment....the multi-culti theme in full effect.
I think somewhere down the line....as a few husbands of Niqab women have met some unfortunate accident and passed on....there will be some reality facing these unique women and a very uncertain future. In the old country.....the clan or family would have picked things up and ensured some new marriage. I'm not that sure of how it'd work in Germany, and it'd be a harsh economic situation to face as some Niqab-clad widow and showing up in the Arbeitsagetur (the work office) to find something to gain employment. Potential German employers looking at some Nigab potential employee and mostly just shake their heads. Maybe some German government operation will find some sympathy and look over the facial covering to offer a government job.
My suspicion is that election trends over the next year or two....will eventually show more German enthusiasm to counter the trend, and the French-style law might end up being applied in some German state, and being challenged in court.
The German Basic Law (their Constitution) doesn't have anything to preserve or defend such practices. You do have freedom of religion, but it's not exactly written to such an extent to say clothing or style of clothing is part of that particular freedom. You also have the freedom to find happiness, but applying it to clothing styles or facial coverings.....hasn't been done before. Jews might stand up and tell you in 1930 that they had religious freedom in Germany, and discovered two or three years later that their freedoms were non-existent.
On top of all of that....I'm also guessing that some female German comedian will eventually test the waters one day and wear some Batman-style Nigab as part of her act, and get a bunch of people all disturbed and upset. That intellectual argument involving extreme humor....might test the waters and drag this out into public debate.
So, if you were looking for a really stupid public argument to erupt and get most Germans involved in something that doesn't concern them.....this is way up on the charts.
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
The Payment-in-Kind Story
Over the past week....the new German national rules have fallen into place over refugees and asylum-seekers, and there appears to be some hesitation by individuals states on how the rules will be implemented.
This got brought up this morning via ARD.
One of the big problems over the past year or two was the 'pocket-money' that was handed out to each individual who was in a waiting situation for their visa. You are set to get roughly five Euro a day.....adding up to 145 Euro on average per month. It's not exactly a big chunk of money.
The German government feeds and shelters you. They generally provide laundry facilities and clothing. So the money is intended for little things.....like newspapers, phone-cards, sodas, beer, railway tickets, candy, condoms, cigarettes, chewing gum, etc.
If you went to any German.....they'd tell you that 145 Euro a month wouldn't cut it for themselves. By the time you figure up a cup of coffee, a pack of smokes per day (5.5 Euro), a newspaper, and maybe a late-afternoon candy bar....they've spent ten Euro a day easily. Even German teens will tell you that they'd need 150 Euro a month minimum....for the various things in their lives.
What was complained about prior to the rule changes was that guys were pocketing the money....not spending it.....and sending it back to their homeland. So the Germans got into the middle of this and wanted things 'fixed'.
So, now....you are supposed to get payment-in-kind....which mean no more cash. For each state, this means some type of bureaucratic device has to be created and used....similar in some ways to 'chits' (WW II period) where a voucher was given to you to buy X number of things.
Stores might not have an issue with vouchers....but the device is not practical for buying bus or train tickers. Berlin (the state) is discussing the idea of a special ticket just for refugees....costing thirty Euro a month and it'd just be deducted from your pocket-money sum.
Based on commentary....I'd say most German states are discussing how it'd work and it's another case where the Berlin leadership invented something that won't work nationally....but looks good on paper.
As for really limiting the refugees with how the money might be spent? No. If some 18-year-old Syrian guy wants to buy four cases of beer for the month with his money....he can still do so. If some 40-year-old Nigerian gal wants to buy three cartons of smokes with her monthly money....she can do so. The only limits I can see is virtually no brothel operation will accept 'payment-in-kind', and accumulating the money to save up....into the next month.....probably won't work with the way this is designed.
So, when you hear commentary within your German state over this refugee pocket money.....it's a Berlin-directed thing and your state leadership is frustrated over how to make it work.
This got brought up this morning via ARD.
One of the big problems over the past year or two was the 'pocket-money' that was handed out to each individual who was in a waiting situation for their visa. You are set to get roughly five Euro a day.....adding up to 145 Euro on average per month. It's not exactly a big chunk of money.
The German government feeds and shelters you. They generally provide laundry facilities and clothing. So the money is intended for little things.....like newspapers, phone-cards, sodas, beer, railway tickets, candy, condoms, cigarettes, chewing gum, etc.
If you went to any German.....they'd tell you that 145 Euro a month wouldn't cut it for themselves. By the time you figure up a cup of coffee, a pack of smokes per day (5.5 Euro), a newspaper, and maybe a late-afternoon candy bar....they've spent ten Euro a day easily. Even German teens will tell you that they'd need 150 Euro a month minimum....for the various things in their lives.
What was complained about prior to the rule changes was that guys were pocketing the money....not spending it.....and sending it back to their homeland. So the Germans got into the middle of this and wanted things 'fixed'.
So, now....you are supposed to get payment-in-kind....which mean no more cash. For each state, this means some type of bureaucratic device has to be created and used....similar in some ways to 'chits' (WW II period) where a voucher was given to you to buy X number of things.
Stores might not have an issue with vouchers....but the device is not practical for buying bus or train tickers. Berlin (the state) is discussing the idea of a special ticket just for refugees....costing thirty Euro a month and it'd just be deducted from your pocket-money sum.
Based on commentary....I'd say most German states are discussing how it'd work and it's another case where the Berlin leadership invented something that won't work nationally....but looks good on paper.
As for really limiting the refugees with how the money might be spent? No. If some 18-year-old Syrian guy wants to buy four cases of beer for the month with his money....he can still do so. If some 40-year-old Nigerian gal wants to buy three cartons of smokes with her monthly money....she can do so. The only limits I can see is virtually no brothel operation will accept 'payment-in-kind', and accumulating the money to save up....into the next month.....probably won't work with the way this is designed.
So, when you hear commentary within your German state over this refugee pocket money.....it's a Berlin-directed thing and your state leadership is frustrated over how to make it work.
The German 'Crazy' Factor
There is a curious little article in Focus this morning....over Germans and high rates of mental illness. DAK (a German health insurance company) had the Berlin IGES Institute run some data from DAK's database. What they had was information over 2.6 million people that DAK insures within Germany.
So, they came to this odd conclusion....one in every twenty Germans are on sick leave because of mental illness. They can even show a trend that the rate continues to escalate each and every year.
The highest area of worry? Depression. Since the late 1990s.....the number of sick days for mental problems have tripled.
Some health experts tried to explain this, and their logic was.....it' isn't that more people suffer from mental illness or mental illness is increasing.....it's because doctors are better trained to recognize this and provide adequate care to help the individual recover from the problem.
I sat and looked over issue. Anxiety, panic attacks, depression, bi-polar, impulse and addiction disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, PTSD, stress syndromes, Factitious disorders, sexual disorders, etc. In the 1970s.....they all probably existed but I doubt if doctors ever diagnosed more than ten percent of those affected. It's probably true.....we have enough specialists around in Germany today who can probably take in ten people with issues, and within a couple of sessions....reach some conclusion and ID the exact problem.....giving them some counseling or help.
Should the one in twenty number worry us? One in twenty Germans might be a little crazy or a bit stressed out? Here's the thing.....you as a company might have an environment that draws such people and maybe you've got forty employees.....of which you got eight such employees (creating a much higher pool of 'crazies' than the ice cream shop around the corner which has nine employees and no 'crazies'). Could you accomplish your work schedule with high number of mentally ill people? I'm not that sure.
One of the issues which a company has to occasionally face in Germany is the Kur. For a non-German....the Kur is basically a prescribed rest at a 'rest and recuperation' facility....typically a hotel out in some pleasant country environment where you check in for four weeks and go through a daily regime of counter-stress seminars, sports-related hours (walking, swimming, biking, etc), mediation-theme forums, and discussion groups.
Typically, when you show burn-out in Germany or serious stress issues....the Kur is generally prescribed fix to all problems. The cost? It comes out of the hefty monthly money that you and your company pay into your health insurance. A repeatable deal? Over a fifty year period....you could go several times.
Based on comments of some Germans.....generally you can only go once every three years. The effect? The German opinion goes from one extreme to another. Some Germans think just one session changes their lives entirely and jump-starts them into a different world. Some Germans think the whole Kur package is mostly about drinking and cavorting for four weeks....free. There are Germans who've never been to the Kur and laugh when it gets brought up. And there are Germans who've been several times in their life and expect to do another one or two before they retire.
The way to look at this entire report? If you are a non-German and hanging around Germans.....then start to notice nervous ticks or odd habits, or perhaps a bit of craziness.....well, there's not much to worry about because it's the one in twenty situation. Perhaps with the right health insurance and right doctors.....we non-Germans would also be diagnosed correctly and reach the one-in-twenty status as well. On the positive side.....at least it's just a one in twenty issue and not a one in ten issue.
So, they came to this odd conclusion....one in every twenty Germans are on sick leave because of mental illness. They can even show a trend that the rate continues to escalate each and every year.
The highest area of worry? Depression. Since the late 1990s.....the number of sick days for mental problems have tripled.
Some health experts tried to explain this, and their logic was.....it' isn't that more people suffer from mental illness or mental illness is increasing.....it's because doctors are better trained to recognize this and provide adequate care to help the individual recover from the problem.
I sat and looked over issue. Anxiety, panic attacks, depression, bi-polar, impulse and addiction disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, PTSD, stress syndromes, Factitious disorders, sexual disorders, etc. In the 1970s.....they all probably existed but I doubt if doctors ever diagnosed more than ten percent of those affected. It's probably true.....we have enough specialists around in Germany today who can probably take in ten people with issues, and within a couple of sessions....reach some conclusion and ID the exact problem.....giving them some counseling or help.
Should the one in twenty number worry us? One in twenty Germans might be a little crazy or a bit stressed out? Here's the thing.....you as a company might have an environment that draws such people and maybe you've got forty employees.....of which you got eight such employees (creating a much higher pool of 'crazies' than the ice cream shop around the corner which has nine employees and no 'crazies'). Could you accomplish your work schedule with high number of mentally ill people? I'm not that sure.
One of the issues which a company has to occasionally face in Germany is the Kur. For a non-German....the Kur is basically a prescribed rest at a 'rest and recuperation' facility....typically a hotel out in some pleasant country environment where you check in for four weeks and go through a daily regime of counter-stress seminars, sports-related hours (walking, swimming, biking, etc), mediation-theme forums, and discussion groups.
Typically, when you show burn-out in Germany or serious stress issues....the Kur is generally prescribed fix to all problems. The cost? It comes out of the hefty monthly money that you and your company pay into your health insurance. A repeatable deal? Over a fifty year period....you could go several times.
Based on comments of some Germans.....generally you can only go once every three years. The effect? The German opinion goes from one extreme to another. Some Germans think just one session changes their lives entirely and jump-starts them into a different world. Some Germans think the whole Kur package is mostly about drinking and cavorting for four weeks....free. There are Germans who've never been to the Kur and laugh when it gets brought up. And there are Germans who've been several times in their life and expect to do another one or two before they retire.
The way to look at this entire report? If you are a non-German and hanging around Germans.....then start to notice nervous ticks or odd habits, or perhaps a bit of craziness.....well, there's not much to worry about because it's the one in twenty situation. Perhaps with the right health insurance and right doctors.....we non-Germans would also be diagnosed correctly and reach the one-in-twenty status as well. On the positive side.....at least it's just a one in twenty issue and not a one in ten issue.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
This Refugee Medical Story
I don't typically read the Express (out of the UK)....it's a daily newspaper which sensationalizes some stories. I should emphasize.....'some' in this story.
The Express has come across this German female anesthetist who did a massive dump on the German healthcare system and the current refugee crisis. The anonymous telling of this story? Well, that's a minor problem and I'm often skeptical when a news service wants to cite anonymous sources. Maybe it's 100-percent true....maybe it's only 50-percent true.
There are several pieces to the article.
First, she cites that a fair number of Muslim asylum-seekers are not cooperative with the German healthcare system when offered treatment by female nurses or doctors. This complicates things because the German healthcare system has a very large proportion of ladies in the profession.
Second, she cites that as the doctor hands them a prescription and they finally get to the pharmacy....they learn that the drug costs money and they simply don't have the funds for such medicine. This.....occurring with kids who are a major importance to the Muslim-family unit....results in some hostile and angry discussions.
Third, she notes that cops are now routinely part of the security situation of hospitals since the crisis started....because of potential threats made upon medical staffs.
Fourth, she mentions the various infectious diseases which are apparent with the new arrivals.....to include Tuberculous....something that Germans aren't used to.
Finally, she gets onto the short topic of limited medical services that were built for a healthy population, and that the increasing number of medical problems brought into the clinics and hospitals are overwhelming their ability to provide first-rate care.
This might interest some German journalists to ask questions of the German medical profession....but I'm guessing that the answers will be such....that you can't really tell this story without it being negative in some fashion.
As for this Muslim attitude of male doctors for male patients? From thirty to forty years ago in the US, I can remember older guys having a problem when their new doctor turned out to be a female. There's some period in the 1980s when you really started to note more and more female doctors coming out of the medical schools. In some cases, a guy might just say it in plain words....he had a 'man-problem' and needed a male doctor. In this type of case....there was some understanding and the system worked with the guy as much as they could.
The problem I see.....if you look across at the German healthcare system today....there are roughly 357,000 doctors (more if you count inactive or retired doctors) for a population of 80-million. There aren't any real number statistics for male and female doctors. What you do find are numerous articles talking about a much higher ratio of female medical students to male students over the past decade. And you also find a number of reports over doctors in Germany who've given up on the system and left the country....which creates a difficult recruitment environment for the German health services.
The reality here is that whatever drove you to cross a half-dozen borders....walk for forty-odd days...and bet your whole life on some acceptance in Germany.....well, it's got some twists and turns involved. You will have to accept German rules, German social behavior (meaning alcohol is acceptable), German dress attire (women dressing in a provocative way), German laws (they've got a law for just about everything you could imagine), and German harshness (being German is never easy, even for a German). If you wake up from some immigration dream and suddenly discover the big picture of reality in Germany.....then you'd reflect upon the options (living in the Assad world or messing with ISIS thugs). Getting used to female nurses and doctors might not be such a bad deal....if you think about the other options.
The Express has come across this German female anesthetist who did a massive dump on the German healthcare system and the current refugee crisis. The anonymous telling of this story? Well, that's a minor problem and I'm often skeptical when a news service wants to cite anonymous sources. Maybe it's 100-percent true....maybe it's only 50-percent true.
There are several pieces to the article.
First, she cites that a fair number of Muslim asylum-seekers are not cooperative with the German healthcare system when offered treatment by female nurses or doctors. This complicates things because the German healthcare system has a very large proportion of ladies in the profession.
Second, she cites that as the doctor hands them a prescription and they finally get to the pharmacy....they learn that the drug costs money and they simply don't have the funds for such medicine. This.....occurring with kids who are a major importance to the Muslim-family unit....results in some hostile and angry discussions.
Third, she notes that cops are now routinely part of the security situation of hospitals since the crisis started....because of potential threats made upon medical staffs.
Fourth, she mentions the various infectious diseases which are apparent with the new arrivals.....to include Tuberculous....something that Germans aren't used to.
Finally, she gets onto the short topic of limited medical services that were built for a healthy population, and that the increasing number of medical problems brought into the clinics and hospitals are overwhelming their ability to provide first-rate care.
This might interest some German journalists to ask questions of the German medical profession....but I'm guessing that the answers will be such....that you can't really tell this story without it being negative in some fashion.
As for this Muslim attitude of male doctors for male patients? From thirty to forty years ago in the US, I can remember older guys having a problem when their new doctor turned out to be a female. There's some period in the 1980s when you really started to note more and more female doctors coming out of the medical schools. In some cases, a guy might just say it in plain words....he had a 'man-problem' and needed a male doctor. In this type of case....there was some understanding and the system worked with the guy as much as they could.
The problem I see.....if you look across at the German healthcare system today....there are roughly 357,000 doctors (more if you count inactive or retired doctors) for a population of 80-million. There aren't any real number statistics for male and female doctors. What you do find are numerous articles talking about a much higher ratio of female medical students to male students over the past decade. And you also find a number of reports over doctors in Germany who've given up on the system and left the country....which creates a difficult recruitment environment for the German health services.
The reality here is that whatever drove you to cross a half-dozen borders....walk for forty-odd days...and bet your whole life on some acceptance in Germany.....well, it's got some twists and turns involved. You will have to accept German rules, German social behavior (meaning alcohol is acceptable), German dress attire (women dressing in a provocative way), German laws (they've got a law for just about everything you could imagine), and German harshness (being German is never easy, even for a German). If you wake up from some immigration dream and suddenly discover the big picture of reality in Germany.....then you'd reflect upon the options (living in the Assad world or messing with ISIS thugs). Getting used to female nurses and doctors might not be such a bad deal....if you think about the other options.
The 'Paper-Hanger' Status
There's a code-word-like phrase that people will use when referring to Adolph Hitler in some fashion....the 'paper-hanger' phrase.
Well.....in a curious way, it comes off comments of a Catholic Cardinal from Chicago.....George Mundelein.
Cardinal Mundelein ends up giving a pep-talk or speech to his graduating group of a seminary. So, he's chosen recent German events. The speech was given on 18 May 1937. The phrase gets used by some journalists, and was used more as a insult than anything else.
The Cardinal refers to Hitler in the form of the 'paper-hanger'.....suggesting that a mere paper-hanger or wall-paper guy....was now running Germany. In this period (1930s)....when you had the profession of wall-paper hanging....you were at the bottom level of tasks and it was the type of job that any idiot could accomplish. Other than an eye for making things match up....there's no real intelligence required for the job. So the Cardinal is suggesting that Hitler is a dimwit.
If you go back and look at Hitler from 1907 to 1913....he is unemployed and mostly living in shelters and doing day work (house-painting is typically suggested by historians) when he can find it. At some point in the summer of 1913....he gets an inheritance from his father, and on slightly better ground, but still not a real trade or craft that would pay for a regular life.
So the paper-hanger status is hung upon Hitler for this reason....whether logical or factual.....you can't really say.
If you read through the entire history of Hitler, you come to 1932 and ask what his resume said. It's a eight-line resume....not to slam the guy, but it's fairly limited.
He was a 'never-accepted' artist (the Austrian academy didn't see any real qualifications). The only real trade or craft that you can find is the house-painter work. From the Army period.....he did make it to Corporal....with the chief job being courier of messages. After the war, he's the frontman for the Nationalist Socialist Party and gives dynamic speeches. University time? None. Craftsman time? None.
In some ways, the Cardinal was right....Germany signed up and depended on a guy who gave great speeches and got them feeling enthusiastic after losing WW I. While you could slam the Kaiser (Wilhelm II) for having a 8-line resume as well....at least he was given a fair amount of training in his youth and that gave him some potential for the job.
Well.....in a curious way, it comes off comments of a Catholic Cardinal from Chicago.....George Mundelein.
Cardinal Mundelein ends up giving a pep-talk or speech to his graduating group of a seminary. So, he's chosen recent German events. The speech was given on 18 May 1937. The phrase gets used by some journalists, and was used more as a insult than anything else.
The Cardinal refers to Hitler in the form of the 'paper-hanger'.....suggesting that a mere paper-hanger or wall-paper guy....was now running Germany. In this period (1930s)....when you had the profession of wall-paper hanging....you were at the bottom level of tasks and it was the type of job that any idiot could accomplish. Other than an eye for making things match up....there's no real intelligence required for the job. So the Cardinal is suggesting that Hitler is a dimwit.
If you go back and look at Hitler from 1907 to 1913....he is unemployed and mostly living in shelters and doing day work (house-painting is typically suggested by historians) when he can find it. At some point in the summer of 1913....he gets an inheritance from his father, and on slightly better ground, but still not a real trade or craft that would pay for a regular life.
So the paper-hanger status is hung upon Hitler for this reason....whether logical or factual.....you can't really say.
If you read through the entire history of Hitler, you come to 1932 and ask what his resume said. It's a eight-line resume....not to slam the guy, but it's fairly limited.
He was a 'never-accepted' artist (the Austrian academy didn't see any real qualifications). The only real trade or craft that you can find is the house-painter work. From the Army period.....he did make it to Corporal....with the chief job being courier of messages. After the war, he's the frontman for the Nationalist Socialist Party and gives dynamic speeches. University time? None. Craftsman time? None.
In some ways, the Cardinal was right....Germany signed up and depended on a guy who gave great speeches and got them feeling enthusiastic after losing WW I. While you could slam the Kaiser (Wilhelm II) for having a 8-line resume as well....at least he was given a fair amount of training in his youth and that gave him some potential for the job.
The Passport Story
It's an odd story which probably won't get picked up much by national news in Germany. There are refugees and asylum seekers who gone through the process and failed the visa application (for whatever reason). So, it's then time to send the guy out of Germany. Well.....there is this trend which is difficult to explain.....to be sent out of Germany.....you require your passport or identity papers, and in a number of cases....the papers simply aren't there.
The cause? Normally, you'd think that the applicant (the asylum seeker or immigrant) would have tossed the passport or papers....but no, that's been proven as not the case.
So, this is what the Bavarian government can figure out. As each asylum seeker or refugee crosses the border.....they have to get registered with the German authorities. Paperwork is generated, and then one of three different entities will collect the passport or identity paper involved. So, you've got the German Federal Police, or possibly some employee of the local administrative district or the BAMF branch office (the German national immigration office) involved,
Potentially, three different organizations....at various levels....who probably never worked well together and have their own various rules to organization and filing things. So when office X generates a 'must-leave-Germany' form for some guy.....it does no good unless that guy has a passport. You can ask him who took the passport (six months ago) and he'll just look at you and note that a German took it. The guy with the 'must-leave-Germany' form is now screwed unless he does the homework and figures out which office is holding the passport and gets control of it.
Amusing? Having worked around the US military for a large portion of my life.....I can understand the complex nature of the system and how a simple mistake can snowball into a bigger problem. Unless you make standardization a major part of your operation.....things will fail.
Fixing this? I would imagine at the higher levels of the Bavarian state government....there are some frustrated and angry people. They can only control their state police, and maybe the local administrative district personnel. The rest are all federal organizations and independent of each other.....so unless the Berlin crowd steps in and orders some consolidation or better practices....it's hard to see this improving.
How many people affected? Unknown. The news journalists of BR (the Bavarian state-run TV network) simply acknowledge that they've run into this problem and simply are reporting it. No real numbers.
The cause? Normally, you'd think that the applicant (the asylum seeker or immigrant) would have tossed the passport or papers....but no, that's been proven as not the case.
So, this is what the Bavarian government can figure out. As each asylum seeker or refugee crosses the border.....they have to get registered with the German authorities. Paperwork is generated, and then one of three different entities will collect the passport or identity paper involved. So, you've got the German Federal Police, or possibly some employee of the local administrative district or the BAMF branch office (the German national immigration office) involved,
Potentially, three different organizations....at various levels....who probably never worked well together and have their own various rules to organization and filing things. So when office X generates a 'must-leave-Germany' form for some guy.....it does no good unless that guy has a passport. You can ask him who took the passport (six months ago) and he'll just look at you and note that a German took it. The guy with the 'must-leave-Germany' form is now screwed unless he does the homework and figures out which office is holding the passport and gets control of it.
Amusing? Having worked around the US military for a large portion of my life.....I can understand the complex nature of the system and how a simple mistake can snowball into a bigger problem. Unless you make standardization a major part of your operation.....things will fail.
Fixing this? I would imagine at the higher levels of the Bavarian state government....there are some frustrated and angry people. They can only control their state police, and maybe the local administrative district personnel. The rest are all federal organizations and independent of each other.....so unless the Berlin crowd steps in and orders some consolidation or better practices....it's hard to see this improving.
How many people affected? Unknown. The news journalists of BR (the Bavarian state-run TV network) simply acknowledge that they've run into this problem and simply are reporting it. No real numbers.
Monday, October 26, 2015
The Austria Story
It's probably not front-page news, and I doubt if any German journalist will hype up the story....but there is this odd story out of Austria.
For 2015, there's been a record rate of weapons bought for the year. What the government will generally say is that the public perception of increased crime and immigration....have gotten some folks to be a bit worried, and they've purchased guns to make up for this worry.
The Austrian government will admit that roughly 900,000 weapons are stored in Austrian houses....with the population at 8.5 million.....that means one out of every ten weapon hold a weapon.
For 2015 so far? Seventy-thousand firearms have been sold....with two months left to go.
I sat and read up on Austria. They have this nifty rule about shotguns....they don't require a license....so it's fairly easy for someone to go out and buy one.
According to a Focus article, the gun shops have a growing number of women who've shown up and want a training course. All this new enthusiasm for weapons have caused more classes to be put on the schedule.
German trends? Unknown.....the government isn't saying much. I suspect this is a statistic that Germany would prefer not to discuss.
For 2015, there's been a record rate of weapons bought for the year. What the government will generally say is that the public perception of increased crime and immigration....have gotten some folks to be a bit worried, and they've purchased guns to make up for this worry.
The Austrian government will admit that roughly 900,000 weapons are stored in Austrian houses....with the population at 8.5 million.....that means one out of every ten weapon hold a weapon.
For 2015 so far? Seventy-thousand firearms have been sold....with two months left to go.
I sat and read up on Austria. They have this nifty rule about shotguns....they don't require a license....so it's fairly easy for someone to go out and buy one.
According to a Focus article, the gun shops have a growing number of women who've shown up and want a training course. All this new enthusiasm for weapons have caused more classes to be put on the schedule.
German trends? Unknown.....the government isn't saying much. I suspect this is a statistic that Germany would prefer not to discuss.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
The 700
Some Germans think that the refugee shelters are intended as some holding pin or enclosed compound where the incoming refugees to Germany are held until they are approved or disapproved for visa-status. Well, no. The shelters are simply shelters....not 'jail-like' structures.
This comes up as a topic because in recent days in Lower Saxony.....the local authorities have had to admit in public that roughly 700 'participants' (refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, etc)....who were brought into the compound area....are no longer there, and they didn't exactly check out. They just walked out.
What the immigration folks in Lower Saxony say.....at least for the news media....is that a number of these refugees had relatives in the region or in Germany.....and the relatives came by to pick them up. But since they didn't exactly out-process or do any paperwork at the center.....no one knows much of anything.
In this case....the 700 folks will eventually show up in some auslander office (not necessarily in Lower Saxony) and want administrative action.....and the files will be updated. Course, this will start to generate more attention to this episode and more Germans asking stupid questions.
Right now, the political folks and general public of Germany think there's some method of wisdom at work and balancing out the refugees into a statistical division among the sixteen states. If they were to wake up and suddenly feel that the refugees are now moving around the country and getting to different states and creating an imbalance for one or two particular states....well, it'd really turn up the heat on public perception.
As for the 700 folks? Frankly, put yourself into their shoes. You've spent a couple of weeks walking up to Germany.....they've pushed you into some marginal one-star facility with safety as something of concern, and the Germans hint you might be there for six to eight months. What idiot would want to remain there? So, they call up relatives who are already established in Germany....have an apartment or house, and they move in with people they trust. They will wait a week or two and then ask the local auslander office for an update.
The Germans have no law to prevent this, and it's hard to see why you'd want to prevent it. The less in the camps....the better. But then, you'd always wonder.....where exactly are the 700 folks?
This comes up as a topic because in recent days in Lower Saxony.....the local authorities have had to admit in public that roughly 700 'participants' (refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, etc)....who were brought into the compound area....are no longer there, and they didn't exactly check out. They just walked out.
What the immigration folks in Lower Saxony say.....at least for the news media....is that a number of these refugees had relatives in the region or in Germany.....and the relatives came by to pick them up. But since they didn't exactly out-process or do any paperwork at the center.....no one knows much of anything.
In this case....the 700 folks will eventually show up in some auslander office (not necessarily in Lower Saxony) and want administrative action.....and the files will be updated. Course, this will start to generate more attention to this episode and more Germans asking stupid questions.
Right now, the political folks and general public of Germany think there's some method of wisdom at work and balancing out the refugees into a statistical division among the sixteen states. If they were to wake up and suddenly feel that the refugees are now moving around the country and getting to different states and creating an imbalance for one or two particular states....well, it'd really turn up the heat on public perception.
As for the 700 folks? Frankly, put yourself into their shoes. You've spent a couple of weeks walking up to Germany.....they've pushed you into some marginal one-star facility with safety as something of concern, and the Germans hint you might be there for six to eight months. What idiot would want to remain there? So, they call up relatives who are already established in Germany....have an apartment or house, and they move in with people they trust. They will wait a week or two and then ask the local auslander office for an update.
The Germans have no law to prevent this, and it's hard to see why you'd want to prevent it. The less in the camps....the better. But then, you'd always wonder.....where exactly are the 700 folks?
Thursday, October 22, 2015
The Big and Little World
Here is the city itself....then there's the river, and this little tiny town to the north of river (Wiesbaden), and a few odd places before you get to the big pond (the Atlantic), and then across the faraway land.....is America.
Being a Mainzer is a bit different from other cities around the region. They've got a lot of history and a sense of humor about things.
The Real Fear: The Fourth Method
Before the internet came along, there were four basic ways of reviewing something and having an opinion of that review. You could send a letter to your newspaper and hope that they'd publish the letter (it doesn't matter if we talk US or German culture).....newspapers were an outlet where you could express yourself.
The second method was a public setting like a beer-garden or pub. You'd bring up some topic and some folks would listen to you. Some young fellow with a mustache down in Munich in the 1920s found the beer-garden setting to be an excellent situation to express his flavor for socialism and change needed by society.
The third method? This is the method of the news media or chat forums where some moderator would allow you to sit and among a group....you would lay out your complaints or troubled feelings over some public policy or perception of a government failure. Naturally, the moderator was there to help move the discussion along, or to hinder you if you really got things heated up in the discussion.
In the case of the newspaper or the news media.....moderation is the key to their success or failure. They might like to say that public speech is possible....but it's more or less a faulty part of our society to suggest this exists.....it's a fraudulent gimmick and they must keep you within their boundaries.
For Germany....the internet and social media opened up this vast door and allowed the public to walk past newspaper, the news media, and event the beer-garden setting. As much as the intellectual folks in Germany like to claim they are in the right and want to label the opposition as xenophobic or anti-foreigner.....these labels and mass use of the news media as 'cheer-leaders'.....becomes an anchor and limits any movement on a serious topic. The people in the middle of the spectrum just aren't prepared to assume the intellectuals, political players or journalists are infallible anymore. Skeptical views are abundant now in German society.
Sadly, as the government has taken up this immigration and refugee issue months ago....no one stood there to ask about consequences or limiting this to a certain pace. It's like you suddenly woke up in the fall of 2014 in Germany, and noticed that no one in Berlin seemed to have any idea of what was going on, and didn't really seem capable of understanding local perceptions of the growing asylum situation.
The only reaction by mid-summer 2015 was to use the news media and put out a message. Oddly, it just didn't come across as a reliable message and somewhere between thirty and forty percent of German society were skeptical of the message or where this was leading onto.
Even today....when you ask about what this will cost and how it will be paid out to each community/village/city...the answer is not all that acceptable by the actual city money-managers. City administrations are doing what they are ordered to do.....but they kinda wonder how this will be limited.
This idea of getting other EU members to accept people....who may not even want to immigrate into Finland, Ireland, or Poland? It's hard for any journalist do a two-minute talk about this, and convince the German guy sitting in front of his TV and sipping a beer that this will all end peacefully or in a professional way.
Tossing xenophobic or racist labels on people who perceive this all as a failed policy? Basically.....you leave only one method....the fourth method that I mentioned at the beginning of this essay.
Voting.
Yeah, you get a bunch of people all disturbed, angry and frustrated that they seem to be labeled in some fashion xenophobic or given some negative label. So, they use the method that has been around for two thousand-odd years.....they exercise the vote that they have and send people that will represent their state of mind.
The journalists and intellectual crowd may have the news media at their beckon call.....but if things go into the fourth method....you can't really do that much to hinder a vote. Let's face historical fact....thirty-seven percent is really the fear point because if you create a really big mess, that's the historical point where you need to worry about consequences.
The second method was a public setting like a beer-garden or pub. You'd bring up some topic and some folks would listen to you. Some young fellow with a mustache down in Munich in the 1920s found the beer-garden setting to be an excellent situation to express his flavor for socialism and change needed by society.
The third method? This is the method of the news media or chat forums where some moderator would allow you to sit and among a group....you would lay out your complaints or troubled feelings over some public policy or perception of a government failure. Naturally, the moderator was there to help move the discussion along, or to hinder you if you really got things heated up in the discussion.
In the case of the newspaper or the news media.....moderation is the key to their success or failure. They might like to say that public speech is possible....but it's more or less a faulty part of our society to suggest this exists.....it's a fraudulent gimmick and they must keep you within their boundaries.
For Germany....the internet and social media opened up this vast door and allowed the public to walk past newspaper, the news media, and event the beer-garden setting. As much as the intellectual folks in Germany like to claim they are in the right and want to label the opposition as xenophobic or anti-foreigner.....these labels and mass use of the news media as 'cheer-leaders'.....becomes an anchor and limits any movement on a serious topic. The people in the middle of the spectrum just aren't prepared to assume the intellectuals, political players or journalists are infallible anymore. Skeptical views are abundant now in German society.
Sadly, as the government has taken up this immigration and refugee issue months ago....no one stood there to ask about consequences or limiting this to a certain pace. It's like you suddenly woke up in the fall of 2014 in Germany, and noticed that no one in Berlin seemed to have any idea of what was going on, and didn't really seem capable of understanding local perceptions of the growing asylum situation.
The only reaction by mid-summer 2015 was to use the news media and put out a message. Oddly, it just didn't come across as a reliable message and somewhere between thirty and forty percent of German society were skeptical of the message or where this was leading onto.
Even today....when you ask about what this will cost and how it will be paid out to each community/village/city...the answer is not all that acceptable by the actual city money-managers. City administrations are doing what they are ordered to do.....but they kinda wonder how this will be limited.
This idea of getting other EU members to accept people....who may not even want to immigrate into Finland, Ireland, or Poland? It's hard for any journalist do a two-minute talk about this, and convince the German guy sitting in front of his TV and sipping a beer that this will all end peacefully or in a professional way.
Tossing xenophobic or racist labels on people who perceive this all as a failed policy? Basically.....you leave only one method....the fourth method that I mentioned at the beginning of this essay.
Voting.
Yeah, you get a bunch of people all disturbed, angry and frustrated that they seem to be labeled in some fashion xenophobic or given some negative label. So, they use the method that has been around for two thousand-odd years.....they exercise the vote that they have and send people that will represent their state of mind.
The journalists and intellectual crowd may have the news media at their beckon call.....but if things go into the fourth method....you can't really do that much to hinder a vote. Let's face historical fact....thirty-seven percent is really the fear point because if you create a really big mess, that's the historical point where you need to worry about consequences.
Mainz and the Powder Keg Explosion
It's a interesting little footnote on history, when you bring up Mainz and the Powder Tower.
About five minutes walking from the University of Mainz.....heading toward the river....you will come to an area which was a military fort of sorts back two hundred years ago. Around some portion of it....was the powder magazine facility....where they stored kegs of primer for ammo.
Mainz had become a significant military fort during this mid-1800s period for the Bavarians, the Prussians and the Austrians to protect the nation from the 'evil French' (it's hard to say this without laughing but you must remember.....Germans were a different sort of people in the 1800s).
I should note....the 'evil French' from Napoleon's defeat on....were never able to win a battle against the mighty Prussians or Germans.
On 18 November 1857....in the mid-afternoon....the powder magazine exploded.
What is generally written down as fact....is that 57 houses were destroyed and another sixty-odd homes were heavily damaged. Even the windows of the Mainz Cathedral and Quintinskirch were destroyed.....which lay over a mile away from the site.
Local reports indicate that at least 150 Mainz folks were killed and roughly 500 were injured to some degree.
What is an odd feature about this accidental explosion is that a major event had been planned for that afternoon with Bavaria's Grand Duke Ludwig III, Nassau's (Hessen) Duke Adolf I, and the local Landgrave Ferdinand von Hesse-Homburg in attendance. For some unexplained reason.....at the last minute (prior to the explosion)....the entire festival was cancelled. The three gentlemen would have been fairly close to the affected area, and likely would have died in the explosion.
The cause? No one has ever said with any clarity. There is some belief of intention (maybe an act of revenge), and it's possible that someone was smoking near the munitions site. This is in the month of November and it's possible that someone started some fire to get warm and didn't realize what they were doing.
Oddly, what is generally recorded after the explosion.....massive tourism occurred with Germans coming from miles and miles away.....to see the site. This apparently went on for months, until everyone got their fill of the explosion event. The local military, seeing some positive out of tourism.....roped off the area and allowed tourists to roam through the affected area. No one says much of guided tours but I would imagine various military officers came around and did the guided tours....talking up what we'd consider 'Hartz-IV' type entertainment for the German masses.
Remember....in the mid-1800s....around the Mainz region....there just wasn't much to get excited about or entertained by except these occasional fests where beer would flow and circus-like acts would perform.
So, if you were walking around in the part of Mainz....there is a memorial of sorts....minor in nature to those who died on that fateful day. Mainz residents knowing the incident? I think if you questioned a thousand of them....less than ten would have some knowledge of the explosion.
About five minutes walking from the University of Mainz.....heading toward the river....you will come to an area which was a military fort of sorts back two hundred years ago. Around some portion of it....was the powder magazine facility....where they stored kegs of primer for ammo.
Mainz had become a significant military fort during this mid-1800s period for the Bavarians, the Prussians and the Austrians to protect the nation from the 'evil French' (it's hard to say this without laughing but you must remember.....Germans were a different sort of people in the 1800s).
I should note....the 'evil French' from Napoleon's defeat on....were never able to win a battle against the mighty Prussians or Germans.
On 18 November 1857....in the mid-afternoon....the powder magazine exploded.
What is generally written down as fact....is that 57 houses were destroyed and another sixty-odd homes were heavily damaged. Even the windows of the Mainz Cathedral and Quintinskirch were destroyed.....which lay over a mile away from the site.
Local reports indicate that at least 150 Mainz folks were killed and roughly 500 were injured to some degree.
What is an odd feature about this accidental explosion is that a major event had been planned for that afternoon with Bavaria's Grand Duke Ludwig III, Nassau's (Hessen) Duke Adolf I, and the local Landgrave Ferdinand von Hesse-Homburg in attendance. For some unexplained reason.....at the last minute (prior to the explosion)....the entire festival was cancelled. The three gentlemen would have been fairly close to the affected area, and likely would have died in the explosion.
The cause? No one has ever said with any clarity. There is some belief of intention (maybe an act of revenge), and it's possible that someone was smoking near the munitions site. This is in the month of November and it's possible that someone started some fire to get warm and didn't realize what they were doing.
Oddly, what is generally recorded after the explosion.....massive tourism occurred with Germans coming from miles and miles away.....to see the site. This apparently went on for months, until everyone got their fill of the explosion event. The local military, seeing some positive out of tourism.....roped off the area and allowed tourists to roam through the affected area. No one says much of guided tours but I would imagine various military officers came around and did the guided tours....talking up what we'd consider 'Hartz-IV' type entertainment for the German masses.
Remember....in the mid-1800s....around the Mainz region....there just wasn't much to get excited about or entertained by except these occasional fests where beer would flow and circus-like acts would perform.
So, if you were walking around in the part of Mainz....there is a memorial of sorts....minor in nature to those who died on that fateful day. Mainz residents knowing the incident? I think if you questioned a thousand of them....less than ten would have some knowledge of the explosion.
The "Being German" Channel?
A new state-run channel in Germany.....to teach people how to be a German?
Well....the CSU Party (our Bavarian conservatives) came to suggest yesterday that ARD and ZDF (Channel One/Two) need to utilize funding in their reserve account (currently in excess of one billion Euro) and draw up the idea of an integration channel.
What the CSU suggests is that this network would demonstrate German values and introduce Basic Law (the German Constitution) in the form of lessons. They would throw in history, culture, and anything related to the idea of 'being German'.
ARD/ZDF comments? None. I suspect they've received the letter and are reviewing it. From the description, it was a simplified letter and probably didn't go past two pages.
The issues? There are dozens.
Normally, ARD/ZDF will spend months and months on research and development before they proceed on a new network. The mere suggestion that this could be set up and running by summer of next year would shock most of the management people within the state-run network.
The themes? You'd have various parties among the governing board sitting above ARD/ZDF who would want to have input and control over the topics and how this functions. Both the Greens and Linke Party would probably have various problems on the structure of such a network.
A language class via such a network? You'd have to couple the idea with a work book and thus drag a bidding process into the mess.....from the dozen-odd companies which currently market training manuals and work-books for the German language.
From my prospective, it's a great idea with a relatively low cost point.
You could start a simple kid's language course at 6AM for 30 minutes, than add an adult 'quick' language piece at 6:30. Toss in some cooking lectures, how to shop, how to travel via the mass transit system, and toss in some lectures in the day on public responsibility. Run a 90-minute language course in mid-morning and another by early afternoon.
You could take the Sesame Street concept and just expand.
You could package 500 different language modules into a tidy piece....each with German-only introduction and simple exercises.
The Basic Law introduction? You could have hundreds of 20-minute lectures lined up by the university professors around Germany and each centering on one single feature.
It is.....at least in education value.....a remarkable idea. So remarkable.....that I think both ZDF and ARD will freeze and try to spend two or three years developing it. The sad thing is that they probably already have 300 hours of material that relate to the topics required and could easily start this in the spring. If I were them....I'd go hire some young energized team.....all people under the age of thirty.....to manage this. No, I wouldn't base the group out of Berlin....nor out of the current ZDF or ARD studios.....I'd go find a different atmosphere in some town that has a fair amount of foreigners to use as the background of the landscape.
Finally, I'll end with this. The concept might be so interesting....that Germans themselves start to watch different features....like the Basic Law modules, and get interested in their own culture.
Well....the CSU Party (our Bavarian conservatives) came to suggest yesterday that ARD and ZDF (Channel One/Two) need to utilize funding in their reserve account (currently in excess of one billion Euro) and draw up the idea of an integration channel.
What the CSU suggests is that this network would demonstrate German values and introduce Basic Law (the German Constitution) in the form of lessons. They would throw in history, culture, and anything related to the idea of 'being German'.
ARD/ZDF comments? None. I suspect they've received the letter and are reviewing it. From the description, it was a simplified letter and probably didn't go past two pages.
The issues? There are dozens.
Normally, ARD/ZDF will spend months and months on research and development before they proceed on a new network. The mere suggestion that this could be set up and running by summer of next year would shock most of the management people within the state-run network.
The themes? You'd have various parties among the governing board sitting above ARD/ZDF who would want to have input and control over the topics and how this functions. Both the Greens and Linke Party would probably have various problems on the structure of such a network.
A language class via such a network? You'd have to couple the idea with a work book and thus drag a bidding process into the mess.....from the dozen-odd companies which currently market training manuals and work-books for the German language.
From my prospective, it's a great idea with a relatively low cost point.
You could start a simple kid's language course at 6AM for 30 minutes, than add an adult 'quick' language piece at 6:30. Toss in some cooking lectures, how to shop, how to travel via the mass transit system, and toss in some lectures in the day on public responsibility. Run a 90-minute language course in mid-morning and another by early afternoon.
You could take the Sesame Street concept and just expand.
You could package 500 different language modules into a tidy piece....each with German-only introduction and simple exercises.
The Basic Law introduction? You could have hundreds of 20-minute lectures lined up by the university professors around Germany and each centering on one single feature.
It is.....at least in education value.....a remarkable idea. So remarkable.....that I think both ZDF and ARD will freeze and try to spend two or three years developing it. The sad thing is that they probably already have 300 hours of material that relate to the topics required and could easily start this in the spring. If I were them....I'd go hire some young energized team.....all people under the age of thirty.....to manage this. No, I wouldn't base the group out of Berlin....nor out of the current ZDF or ARD studios.....I'd go find a different atmosphere in some town that has a fair amount of foreigners to use as the background of the landscape.
Finally, I'll end with this. The concept might be so interesting....that Germans themselves start to watch different features....like the Basic Law modules, and get interested in their own culture.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
The Big Secret
This morning's Bild (a major German newspaper) spoke of a couple of immigration events underway by the German government. Some are a bit interesting.
There is apparently some type of chat going on between Germany and a couple of unnamed countries. They are working out the return situation of thousands of 'rejected' asylum seekers. What the talk centers on is how the German government will utilize the Bundeswehr (German military) and it's Transall aircraft to transport the rejected applicants to their homeland.
If you look at the past month.....the Balkans has been put on 'safe' country list and if you apply as a citizen from that region....there's almost a zero-percent chance of Germany accepting you. Based on statistics that the Germans have used in public....roughly thirty-percent of the 850,000 to 1.5 million refugees fall under the Balkans group. So you can add up the numbers and come to around 240,000 folks easily being on the 'quick-to-go' list.
I pulled up the statistics of the Transall (C-160). Generally, it's between 61 and 88 people it can carry....depending on the arrangement. Paratrooper-wise.....88. I'm guessing because we could be talking of a 90-minute flight (from Bavaria to the Balkins)....you'd have to have regular seating and thus be nearer to 61 passengers.
You can do the math with ten Transall aircraft at work each morning (610 passengers) and probably and afternoon flight (another 610 passengers)....to come up to around 1,220 people per day. In one month....you might be able to move roughly 32,000 people. There are reported to be 56 total Transall aircraft in service. One might take a guess that they'd try to use forty of them....thus being able to move over 120,000 people in the first month. So....if everything worked well and no legal issues popped up....maybe in two months....they would completed the mission.
Course, you might be thinking and pondering over this....would people just readily accept the deportation and climb onto the C-160 Transall? Well. No.
So, there's also talk that deportation orders for individuals will NOT be announced until the very last minute and thus, there's no way that the guy will walk off or escape from the camp.
This idea might work well on day one. But as you progress to day three and four, and people kinda figure things out, and social media gets heavily used....things will go into a spiral.
You can imagine the news media being manipulated....women crying out and screaming as they get dragged out to some bus going to the local runway, and guys fighting to escape the fenced area. It'll be like some Jewish concentration camp scene out of the 1930s.
The legal machine going into action to protect individuals from deportation? I'd take a guess that hundreds of activists will become part of the image. They might be stupid enough to block roads to the runways or try to sabotage the Bundeswehr aircraft. Legal action will likely take place and try to stall the military plan.
Bild does hint in their article....to a slight degree....that legal minds within the German government are already considering ways to restrict any and all legal objections to might come up over deportations....by the applicants themselves or by the German activists. No one says much over how this would occur and I suspect the German high court will get dragged into the middle of this quickly. But from my observation of the high court....they are rarely ever quick to review and issue orders....so they might issue a stay of a year....just to read the material and study the problem.
What happens as plan deports the Balkans crowd? Well, there are three aspects to this outcome. Camps across Germany will suddenly decrease in size and the cost factor will become less. Some would suggest this is a major positive. Instead of dealing with a 1.5 million number....the political folks can now say it's only three-quarters of that number....making them look better on national TV as they proudly say the plan is working. Finally, you come to this 'label' business....as you bundle up these people (perhaps even in handcuffs to get them to the plane).....there will be comparisons to 1939 and the Jews being hustled off to trains. The Balkans crowd will say they won't behave like orderly Jews and just accept this....they will hinder the deportation every step of the way. Looking bad for the Germans? Well. Yeah.
Why advertise any of this planning, or talk to Bild over the ultra-secret operations being put together? It's hard to figure unless someone dislikes the planning or is hoping to slam Merkel's strategy once again.
After you read through all of this....you just sit there and wonder how this would all work, and in a peaceful fashion. The answer is that it just can't end peacefully, and a lot of disgruntled people will let you know about their hurt feelings.....refugees and Germans.
UPDATE: This afternoon, numerous German papers say that various commercial airlines will be used as well....so it's not just the German Air Force. No cost is being discussed on this.
There is apparently some type of chat going on between Germany and a couple of unnamed countries. They are working out the return situation of thousands of 'rejected' asylum seekers. What the talk centers on is how the German government will utilize the Bundeswehr (German military) and it's Transall aircraft to transport the rejected applicants to their homeland.
If you look at the past month.....the Balkans has been put on 'safe' country list and if you apply as a citizen from that region....there's almost a zero-percent chance of Germany accepting you. Based on statistics that the Germans have used in public....roughly thirty-percent of the 850,000 to 1.5 million refugees fall under the Balkans group. So you can add up the numbers and come to around 240,000 folks easily being on the 'quick-to-go' list.
I pulled up the statistics of the Transall (C-160). Generally, it's between 61 and 88 people it can carry....depending on the arrangement. Paratrooper-wise.....88. I'm guessing because we could be talking of a 90-minute flight (from Bavaria to the Balkins)....you'd have to have regular seating and thus be nearer to 61 passengers.
You can do the math with ten Transall aircraft at work each morning (610 passengers) and probably and afternoon flight (another 610 passengers)....to come up to around 1,220 people per day. In one month....you might be able to move roughly 32,000 people. There are reported to be 56 total Transall aircraft in service. One might take a guess that they'd try to use forty of them....thus being able to move over 120,000 people in the first month. So....if everything worked well and no legal issues popped up....maybe in two months....they would completed the mission.
Course, you might be thinking and pondering over this....would people just readily accept the deportation and climb onto the C-160 Transall? Well. No.
So, there's also talk that deportation orders for individuals will NOT be announced until the very last minute and thus, there's no way that the guy will walk off or escape from the camp.
This idea might work well on day one. But as you progress to day three and four, and people kinda figure things out, and social media gets heavily used....things will go into a spiral.
You can imagine the news media being manipulated....women crying out and screaming as they get dragged out to some bus going to the local runway, and guys fighting to escape the fenced area. It'll be like some Jewish concentration camp scene out of the 1930s.
The legal machine going into action to protect individuals from deportation? I'd take a guess that hundreds of activists will become part of the image. They might be stupid enough to block roads to the runways or try to sabotage the Bundeswehr aircraft. Legal action will likely take place and try to stall the military plan.
Bild does hint in their article....to a slight degree....that legal minds within the German government are already considering ways to restrict any and all legal objections to might come up over deportations....by the applicants themselves or by the German activists. No one says much over how this would occur and I suspect the German high court will get dragged into the middle of this quickly. But from my observation of the high court....they are rarely ever quick to review and issue orders....so they might issue a stay of a year....just to read the material and study the problem.
What happens as plan deports the Balkans crowd? Well, there are three aspects to this outcome. Camps across Germany will suddenly decrease in size and the cost factor will become less. Some would suggest this is a major positive. Instead of dealing with a 1.5 million number....the political folks can now say it's only three-quarters of that number....making them look better on national TV as they proudly say the plan is working. Finally, you come to this 'label' business....as you bundle up these people (perhaps even in handcuffs to get them to the plane).....there will be comparisons to 1939 and the Jews being hustled off to trains. The Balkans crowd will say they won't behave like orderly Jews and just accept this....they will hinder the deportation every step of the way. Looking bad for the Germans? Well. Yeah.
Why advertise any of this planning, or talk to Bild over the ultra-secret operations being put together? It's hard to figure unless someone dislikes the planning or is hoping to slam Merkel's strategy once again.
After you read through all of this....you just sit there and wonder how this would all work, and in a peaceful fashion. The answer is that it just can't end peacefully, and a lot of disgruntled people will let you know about their hurt feelings.....refugees and Germans.
UPDATE: This afternoon, numerous German papers say that various commercial airlines will be used as well....so it's not just the German Air Force. No cost is being discussed on this.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
ARD's Examination of Itself
I skipped watching it last night but ARD ran a fairly long episode in prime-time called 'ARD-Check'....a live show which featured the top-level management folks and a number of participants in the audience....to chat over the current view by the public of public-run TV and the TV tax (media tax, if you prefer).
Several journalists have written up commentary of the piece....saying it was mostly a fair review and laid down the chief purpose of the chat....preparing people for another increase on the yearly fee (roughly 240 Euro a year per household). It won't happen this year or next....but some people expect it within three years to be pushed by the state-run TV folks.
So, they chatted over the money spent, the limited production of quality shows because they only have X-amount of money to spend, and then got around to the topic of why younger viewers have no interest in the state-run TV gimmick. As one young guy from the audience explained.....he doesn't watch their listing of shows any longer.....he has Netflix and downloads what he desires.
This is a trend that I've talked about on numerous occasions about German culture, German youth, and the direction where things are going.
ARD says they need to create another network, on top of the twenty-odd stations they already run.....that emphasizes the 15-to-25 year old age group. How they will bring some kind of format that will be appreciated by the viewers....is unknown. Most people would say that there's just not the money there to support the material that attracts younger viewers, and the lack of enthusiasm to use American-created programming on ARD might be a hindrance.
If you go and ask most German teens.....both Flash and Arrow are magnets for the younger generation of German viewers.
You would think the whole topic of public-run TV would be a rarely discussed topic. But once you cross the line and there's some two-hundred Euro a year that comes out of your pocket.....then most every German has some opinion, and it'll be shared if a discussion starts up. The over-forty crowd thinks generally that state-run TV needs to stay and be part of offerings (probably over sixty-percent will say this). For the under-thirty crowd....it's way down around the twenty-percent level of people who support the idea and don't mind the yearly taxation.
Why they don't just shuffle the media tax into the whole big bucket (income taxes, gas taxes, etc)? Well, there's always been this way that you could declare that you have NO TV or radio.....and thus could avoid paying the tax. In the 1960s or 1970s....there were still ten-percent of the nation that could claim they weren't interested in this TV "fad". Today? No one ever says much over the numbers of people who have no TV or radio. My humble guess is that it's growing slightly because of younger folks having only a laptop instead of an actual TV.
ARD has a tough road ahead, and trying to generate enthusiasm for a rate increase....is a pretty rough thing to accomplish.
Several journalists have written up commentary of the piece....saying it was mostly a fair review and laid down the chief purpose of the chat....preparing people for another increase on the yearly fee (roughly 240 Euro a year per household). It won't happen this year or next....but some people expect it within three years to be pushed by the state-run TV folks.
So, they chatted over the money spent, the limited production of quality shows because they only have X-amount of money to spend, and then got around to the topic of why younger viewers have no interest in the state-run TV gimmick. As one young guy from the audience explained.....he doesn't watch their listing of shows any longer.....he has Netflix and downloads what he desires.
This is a trend that I've talked about on numerous occasions about German culture, German youth, and the direction where things are going.
ARD says they need to create another network, on top of the twenty-odd stations they already run.....that emphasizes the 15-to-25 year old age group. How they will bring some kind of format that will be appreciated by the viewers....is unknown. Most people would say that there's just not the money there to support the material that attracts younger viewers, and the lack of enthusiasm to use American-created programming on ARD might be a hindrance.
If you go and ask most German teens.....both Flash and Arrow are magnets for the younger generation of German viewers.
You would think the whole topic of public-run TV would be a rarely discussed topic. But once you cross the line and there's some two-hundred Euro a year that comes out of your pocket.....then most every German has some opinion, and it'll be shared if a discussion starts up. The over-forty crowd thinks generally that state-run TV needs to stay and be part of offerings (probably over sixty-percent will say this). For the under-thirty crowd....it's way down around the twenty-percent level of people who support the idea and don't mind the yearly taxation.
Why they don't just shuffle the media tax into the whole big bucket (income taxes, gas taxes, etc)? Well, there's always been this way that you could declare that you have NO TV or radio.....and thus could avoid paying the tax. In the 1960s or 1970s....there were still ten-percent of the nation that could claim they weren't interested in this TV "fad". Today? No one ever says much over the numbers of people who have no TV or radio. My humble guess is that it's growing slightly because of younger folks having only a laptop instead of an actual TV.
ARD has a tough road ahead, and trying to generate enthusiasm for a rate increase....is a pretty rough thing to accomplish.
Mainz VHS
The participants? We started with roughly 20 people and ended with 17. It was a group from across the globe....Chile, Argentina, Ireland, Spain, Columbia, etc.
What makes a difference in the language environment is the book and the instructor....as I've come to figure out. The book was geared toward English speakers and listed the English word with the German word.
Finally, there is the building. It's a curious structure.....about three minutes walking from the river. It's next to two churches, and actually attached to one of them. From a historical view, I think it was built in the early 1600s. There is a 'grand-hallway' as you enter. It's the type of place that you could imagine university-type students coming into and getting some pep-talk from the chief priest-instructor in the early hours of the morning.
One of the odd features is that each hallway had a water-basin that probably served the students to wash themselves or use to splash water on their faces to wake up. The basins are non-functional now.Once you walk out of the building....there's a couple of coffee shops and restaurants within two minutes walking....or if you want real variety....the entire old city shopping district is five minutes away.
My general advice is if you are seeking a German language course for a fair price (roughly 250 Euro for five weeks), then this program at Mainz VHS works. Even if you live in the Wiesbaden region....there's more than enough bus traffic or S-Bahn activity to get you there easily. I should note, the class ticket that they give you.....gives you free access to the buses and railway for each day of class....which is a nifty deal if you think about it.
Monday, October 19, 2015
1932, the Nazis, and How an Election Changed a Nation
I sat through hundreds of hours of high school and college history classes. Frankly, they did a mediocre and marginal job of explaining how a civilized society would come to accept and vote the Nationalist Socialists (Nazis) of Germany into power.
Over the years, I spent a fair amount of time reading through the period.....going way beyond the typical textbooks that the educational or intellectual crowd push along to be the basis of your knowledge level.
So, this is simplified and basic story of how people come to accept the political trend of Nationalist Socialists.
Germany never really recovered from WW I. You can argue this from various standpoints....but the small and barely noticed upturn lasted just a couple of years and by 1929....things were falling apart. Unemployment had slipped from a healthy (at least they perceived that) 8.5-percent level.....to roughly 30-percent.
The public was hostile and angry. By summer of 1930....the faction (combined crew) of the Centre Party and the Social Democrats were arguing over the way to remedy the problems and could not function as a workable government.
You see....Germany has this odd rule. You need to have a combined operation of fifty-percent of the Bundestag to run the government. Typically....no one ever gets beyond 40-percent because of the multiple party situation. So, this puts you into a delicate negotiation phase where you win enough but must partner with some second party. If you come to disagree....the collation will fall apart and new elections must occur.
In 1930.....rather than have an entire new election....the President of Germany at the time decided to let the minority parties come to some agreement.....as long as they could put together 50-percent. It might be argued....this was a stupid maneuver but it avoided having another round of elections which might go in a negative fashion against what people expected.
Because of the limited amount of power.....there was guaranteed to be a limited amount of success.
So by 1932....the national election came around and was to prove to be a major question for the public.
No one had done much to fix the economic mess....so the public wanted a change of significance.
Six parties came out of the election: Nationalist Socialists with 37-percent, the SPD with 21-percent, the Communist Party with 14-percent, the Centre Party with 12-percent, DNVP with 6-percent, and the BVP with 3-percent.
Here you have a weakened state from the peace treaty of WW I.....still suffering from the 1929 depression era.....promises made of state-funded projects by the Nazi Party.....and two years of marginal success from 1930-1932 of the Bundestag.
You can talk of various possible fixes that could have occurred after 1929, which would have stabilized the country and avoided looking for significant change. But these never arrived....never were implemented....and the nation went looking for something radically different.
Germans almost never talk of the election of 1932. There are over thirty different political parties in existence at the time. Oddly, again one of those things which are never explained....there are around 279,000 votes which are invalid or unable to be counted or simply "blank".
How many people showed up to vote? Thirty-seven million....out of a potential listed voter count of 44 million Germans eligible to vote. Those seven million who didn't vote? They would have been enough to push the SPD over the top and hinder the Nazis from taking power.
The ingredients that existed in 1932 to create this mess....existing in 2015? You still have numerous political parties in existence today. The national media of Germany will tell you that they are doing everything possible to hinder radicalization of German politics. One might question if the public believes the slant on news by the state-run news media....but then you'd have to gauge just skeptical the public has become over the past decade or two. I've yet to hear a German university professor examine skeptic nature and assign a measurement to such an idea.
The 1932 election laid out a path where it was impossible for the public to judge the total value of the Nazi political machine and its achievements. In essence, the news media machine that existed at the time.....simply folded up and became part of the Nazi machine.
So, when you sit and ponder upon the 1932 election.....it really wasn't rocket science or evil lobbyists, or even deceitful news media people who helped to form the results of the election. The political system itself.....carved out the only potential result.
Over the years, I spent a fair amount of time reading through the period.....going way beyond the typical textbooks that the educational or intellectual crowd push along to be the basis of your knowledge level.
So, this is simplified and basic story of how people come to accept the political trend of Nationalist Socialists.
Germany never really recovered from WW I. You can argue this from various standpoints....but the small and barely noticed upturn lasted just a couple of years and by 1929....things were falling apart. Unemployment had slipped from a healthy (at least they perceived that) 8.5-percent level.....to roughly 30-percent.
The public was hostile and angry. By summer of 1930....the faction (combined crew) of the Centre Party and the Social Democrats were arguing over the way to remedy the problems and could not function as a workable government.
You see....Germany has this odd rule. You need to have a combined operation of fifty-percent of the Bundestag to run the government. Typically....no one ever gets beyond 40-percent because of the multiple party situation. So, this puts you into a delicate negotiation phase where you win enough but must partner with some second party. If you come to disagree....the collation will fall apart and new elections must occur.
In 1930.....rather than have an entire new election....the President of Germany at the time decided to let the minority parties come to some agreement.....as long as they could put together 50-percent. It might be argued....this was a stupid maneuver but it avoided having another round of elections which might go in a negative fashion against what people expected.
Because of the limited amount of power.....there was guaranteed to be a limited amount of success.
So by 1932....the national election came around and was to prove to be a major question for the public.
No one had done much to fix the economic mess....so the public wanted a change of significance.
Six parties came out of the election: Nationalist Socialists with 37-percent, the SPD with 21-percent, the Communist Party with 14-percent, the Centre Party with 12-percent, DNVP with 6-percent, and the BVP with 3-percent.
Here you have a weakened state from the peace treaty of WW I.....still suffering from the 1929 depression era.....promises made of state-funded projects by the Nazi Party.....and two years of marginal success from 1930-1932 of the Bundestag.
You can talk of various possible fixes that could have occurred after 1929, which would have stabilized the country and avoided looking for significant change. But these never arrived....never were implemented....and the nation went looking for something radically different.
Germans almost never talk of the election of 1932. There are over thirty different political parties in existence at the time. Oddly, again one of those things which are never explained....there are around 279,000 votes which are invalid or unable to be counted or simply "blank".
How many people showed up to vote? Thirty-seven million....out of a potential listed voter count of 44 million Germans eligible to vote. Those seven million who didn't vote? They would have been enough to push the SPD over the top and hinder the Nazis from taking power.
The ingredients that existed in 1932 to create this mess....existing in 2015? You still have numerous political parties in existence today. The national media of Germany will tell you that they are doing everything possible to hinder radicalization of German politics. One might question if the public believes the slant on news by the state-run news media....but then you'd have to gauge just skeptical the public has become over the past decade or two. I've yet to hear a German university professor examine skeptic nature and assign a measurement to such an idea.
The 1932 election laid out a path where it was impossible for the public to judge the total value of the Nazi political machine and its achievements. In essence, the news media machine that existed at the time.....simply folded up and became part of the Nazi machine.
So, when you sit and ponder upon the 1932 election.....it really wasn't rocket science or evil lobbyists, or even deceitful news media people who helped to form the results of the election. The political system itself.....carved out the only potential result.
Sunday, October 18, 2015
The Waterpipe Story
I'll point stories out occasionally that will be in the European press....which won't be covered in the US or even to a marginal degree in Germany. The water pipeline that opened this week in Cyprus is one of those stories.
If you've never been to Cyprus....it's an island that is barely off the coast of Turkey and is independent to some degree. There is a North Cyprus (run by the Turks) and a South Cyprus (run by the Greek Cypriots themselves, not Greece). This is all due to a civil conflict that erupted in the 1974.
What is mostly said is that Cyprus prior to the conflict was a quiet community with both Greeks and Turks occupying the island.....for hundreds of years. The population prior to the conflict was probably eighty-percent roughly Greek Cypriot and twenty-percent Turk. However, it should be point out that various communities on the isle (one-tenth the size of the state of Alabama) was entirely Turk or entirely Greek Cypriot. Prior to the conflict....probably three-quarters of the island was entirely one way or the other....with barely a quarter representing some combination factor of both groups.
The start-up of the conflict? This is a comical sort of story to tell but if you lined up a hundred Greek Cypriots.....they'd all tell their version with a slight twist or two. If you line up a hundred Cypriot Turks, they'd all tell their version with a slight twist or two. Historians give mixed versions and you can't be sure of much. Based on my readings....Greek political discussions in the late 1960s started to stir up the political mechanisms of Cyprus.
By 1974, the Turkish government back in Turkey reached a point where they feared for the safety of Turks on the island. It wasn't their island, but it wasn't exactly property of Greece either. Both played into the situation and were manipulated by various factions on the island.....so the natural thing to occur....a split.....was the only possible outcome.
So, here's the thing about the island, which only a non-resident would come to notice and comment extensively upon.....there's just not much of a water supply.
When you check into a hotel, there's this sign in the WC (the bathroom) which says.....after you wipe your butt.....put the paper into a can next to the toilet....NOT in the water basin itself. The reason is that when you flush....there's barely a quarter of the power behind the normal flush that you'd expect in the states or in Germany. No, I'm not kidding.
Everywhere you go, there's a limit on water usage. There just aren't any golf courses or significant swimming pools.
Farmers complain because there's a fair amount of limit on water usage for irrigation purposes. There's tons of property and a vast amount of potential for crops.....if you could just irrigate with a unlimited amount of water.
Well, this week....Turkey opened up this 107 kilometer (67 mile) pipeline.....to bring water to North Cyprus (controlled by the Turkish Cypriot population). Yes, it only pumps water.
By the general figures that are projected.....there's roughly 38 million cubic meters of water strictly for drinking or bathing purposes, and another 37 million cubic meters for irrigation usage. There's been a fair amount of hype going on with Turk-Cypriots on farm expansion and potential for agricultural growth/business projection.
Naturally, there's some aggravation by the general population on the south side of the border. No one is building a pipeline to their territory. Their Greek-Cypriot political figures aren't saying much. The Turk-Cypriot political figures? They have said that the minute that the island re-unites.....the water will be shared among their neighbors. They can say this with a smile because they know that the Greek political machine will never allow that to happen.
In some way, it's a test of the haves and the have-nots. It's not a fantastic amount of water that is being pumped out to Cyprus, but it's enough that you'd notice more irrigation and more production as time goes by. The Greek political machine will argue over the unfairness, but they really can't do much to fix this unfairness. As for hotels on the north side of the isle? I'm guessing within a year....these stupid signs will start to disappear that mandated you put your toilet paper into the can next to the 'pot', and just flush away.
If you've never been to Cyprus....it's an island that is barely off the coast of Turkey and is independent to some degree. There is a North Cyprus (run by the Turks) and a South Cyprus (run by the Greek Cypriots themselves, not Greece). This is all due to a civil conflict that erupted in the 1974.
What is mostly said is that Cyprus prior to the conflict was a quiet community with both Greeks and Turks occupying the island.....for hundreds of years. The population prior to the conflict was probably eighty-percent roughly Greek Cypriot and twenty-percent Turk. However, it should be point out that various communities on the isle (one-tenth the size of the state of Alabama) was entirely Turk or entirely Greek Cypriot. Prior to the conflict....probably three-quarters of the island was entirely one way or the other....with barely a quarter representing some combination factor of both groups.
The start-up of the conflict? This is a comical sort of story to tell but if you lined up a hundred Greek Cypriots.....they'd all tell their version with a slight twist or two. If you line up a hundred Cypriot Turks, they'd all tell their version with a slight twist or two. Historians give mixed versions and you can't be sure of much. Based on my readings....Greek political discussions in the late 1960s started to stir up the political mechanisms of Cyprus.
By 1974, the Turkish government back in Turkey reached a point where they feared for the safety of Turks on the island. It wasn't their island, but it wasn't exactly property of Greece either. Both played into the situation and were manipulated by various factions on the island.....so the natural thing to occur....a split.....was the only possible outcome.
So, here's the thing about the island, which only a non-resident would come to notice and comment extensively upon.....there's just not much of a water supply.
When you check into a hotel, there's this sign in the WC (the bathroom) which says.....after you wipe your butt.....put the paper into a can next to the toilet....NOT in the water basin itself. The reason is that when you flush....there's barely a quarter of the power behind the normal flush that you'd expect in the states or in Germany. No, I'm not kidding.
Everywhere you go, there's a limit on water usage. There just aren't any golf courses or significant swimming pools.
Farmers complain because there's a fair amount of limit on water usage for irrigation purposes. There's tons of property and a vast amount of potential for crops.....if you could just irrigate with a unlimited amount of water.
Well, this week....Turkey opened up this 107 kilometer (67 mile) pipeline.....to bring water to North Cyprus (controlled by the Turkish Cypriot population). Yes, it only pumps water.
By the general figures that are projected.....there's roughly 38 million cubic meters of water strictly for drinking or bathing purposes, and another 37 million cubic meters for irrigation usage. There's been a fair amount of hype going on with Turk-Cypriots on farm expansion and potential for agricultural growth/business projection.
Naturally, there's some aggravation by the general population on the south side of the border. No one is building a pipeline to their territory. Their Greek-Cypriot political figures aren't saying much. The Turk-Cypriot political figures? They have said that the minute that the island re-unites.....the water will be shared among their neighbors. They can say this with a smile because they know that the Greek political machine will never allow that to happen.
In some way, it's a test of the haves and the have-nots. It's not a fantastic amount of water that is being pumped out to Cyprus, but it's enough that you'd notice more irrigation and more production as time goes by. The Greek political machine will argue over the unfairness, but they really can't do much to fix this unfairness. As for hotels on the north side of the isle? I'm guessing within a year....these stupid signs will start to disappear that mandated you put your toilet paper into the can next to the 'pot', and just flush away.
The Idea of a German Fence
This morning, Welt am Sonntag (the German national newspaper) came out with an interview with Rainer Wendt, the head of the Police union in Germany.
Wendt basically says that the union now supports the idea of a fence to be built around Germany in some way....to prevent refugees from entering. His thoughts are.....if Germany builds such a fence.....Austria would be quickly forced to build a similar fence on their southern and western frontier, and all of this would shift the refugees into questioning the walk to Germany.
Hungry jumped onto the fence idea project and has put up two fences (one bordering Serbia and one bordering Croatia). It took roughly sixty days to accomplish the Serbia fence (roughly 100 km)....using mostly Hungarian military troops. I've seen various video reports of the fence construction and admit it's not a five-star fence and a guy with a pair of wire-cutters could cut through and cross the fence in a matter of five minutes.
This area that Wendt is talking about? If you simply went to the first stage of Bavaria alone....you'd be talking about a fence that was roughly 550 kilometers long. Bavarian for the most part would have no issue in building such a fence (I would guess that seventy percent of the adult population there would agree to build it). The question of cost? Well, yeah, that's going to be discussed at length because Bavarians probably don't want to foot the cost of the fence themselves and would prefer for Berlin to pay for it.
Estimated time to complete the project? This depends on the mechanism of worker. My guess is that some political figure will argue it needs to be contracted out, and built by a company....NOT by the German Army. So bids will occur, along with bribes, and some no-name company will win the process.
Folks would get hyped up and figure that if the Hungarians could build a 100 kilometer fence in sixty-odd days with just plain Hungarian Army personnel.....well, surely.....this German fence built by professionals at a length of 550 kilometers should be done in two-hundred-odd days. You could start by early December and be done by mid-April.
Well, that's a fine assessment, which would have worked prior to BER (the Berlin Airport), Stuttgart-21 (the rapid rail enhancement), and the dozens of other projects which have been significant failures in construction seen by the public over the past decade. Today? With some outstanding corruption and incompetence.....I would make a guess that this simple 550 kilometer fence would face delay after delay, and the cost would eventually exceed two billion Euro (it ought to be done in two hundred days for a cost of 25,000 Euro per kilometer). Yeah.....in the real world, 13.7 million Euro ought to wrap up the project.
You can imagine Germans sitting there at the 300th day of the project, with some journalist standing on some hill.....reporting and observing six guys marginally working for six hours a day, and commenting that it's still a full year away from completion. At some point, the news media will even find some contracted company working on the fence with undocumented Syrian refugee guys as part of the construction team.
That's the kind of confidence that will shatter German trust in the system to work in the manner of "made in Germany".
So, I'm going to make a suggestion. Having built a number of fences in my life (at least during the farming period and the Air Force period)....it's best to hand this job over to the German Army or hire sixty American guys to come over and do the work for you. These are guys who will live at the site in campers.....move along each day.....work twelve hours a day with the expectation of a bonus at the end for completion.....not complain much about snow.....and do the job the right way.
On the positive side? Well....the Berlin crowd will argue and argue about this.....for at least one full year, and thus bring all of Germany to tears over the necessity of debate by intellectuals about the construction of some fence. Someone will eventually bring up that wolves, bears and various creatures cross the border on a daily basis.....thus it's a major problem to allow such a fence to be built. And there.....the fence idea will lay.
I know....Bavarians will shake their head and just say it makes no sense. But in today's world of Berlin, nothing is worth discussing unless there's a five-star debate somewhere in the mix.
Wendt basically says that the union now supports the idea of a fence to be built around Germany in some way....to prevent refugees from entering. His thoughts are.....if Germany builds such a fence.....Austria would be quickly forced to build a similar fence on their southern and western frontier, and all of this would shift the refugees into questioning the walk to Germany.
Hungry jumped onto the fence idea project and has put up two fences (one bordering Serbia and one bordering Croatia). It took roughly sixty days to accomplish the Serbia fence (roughly 100 km)....using mostly Hungarian military troops. I've seen various video reports of the fence construction and admit it's not a five-star fence and a guy with a pair of wire-cutters could cut through and cross the fence in a matter of five minutes.
This area that Wendt is talking about? If you simply went to the first stage of Bavaria alone....you'd be talking about a fence that was roughly 550 kilometers long. Bavarian for the most part would have no issue in building such a fence (I would guess that seventy percent of the adult population there would agree to build it). The question of cost? Well, yeah, that's going to be discussed at length because Bavarians probably don't want to foot the cost of the fence themselves and would prefer for Berlin to pay for it.
Estimated time to complete the project? This depends on the mechanism of worker. My guess is that some political figure will argue it needs to be contracted out, and built by a company....NOT by the German Army. So bids will occur, along with bribes, and some no-name company will win the process.
Folks would get hyped up and figure that if the Hungarians could build a 100 kilometer fence in sixty-odd days with just plain Hungarian Army personnel.....well, surely.....this German fence built by professionals at a length of 550 kilometers should be done in two-hundred-odd days. You could start by early December and be done by mid-April.
Well, that's a fine assessment, which would have worked prior to BER (the Berlin Airport), Stuttgart-21 (the rapid rail enhancement), and the dozens of other projects which have been significant failures in construction seen by the public over the past decade. Today? With some outstanding corruption and incompetence.....I would make a guess that this simple 550 kilometer fence would face delay after delay, and the cost would eventually exceed two billion Euro (it ought to be done in two hundred days for a cost of 25,000 Euro per kilometer). Yeah.....in the real world, 13.7 million Euro ought to wrap up the project.
You can imagine Germans sitting there at the 300th day of the project, with some journalist standing on some hill.....reporting and observing six guys marginally working for six hours a day, and commenting that it's still a full year away from completion. At some point, the news media will even find some contracted company working on the fence with undocumented Syrian refugee guys as part of the construction team.
That's the kind of confidence that will shatter German trust in the system to work in the manner of "made in Germany".
So, I'm going to make a suggestion. Having built a number of fences in my life (at least during the farming period and the Air Force period)....it's best to hand this job over to the German Army or hire sixty American guys to come over and do the work for you. These are guys who will live at the site in campers.....move along each day.....work twelve hours a day with the expectation of a bonus at the end for completion.....not complain much about snow.....and do the job the right way.
On the positive side? Well....the Berlin crowd will argue and argue about this.....for at least one full year, and thus bring all of Germany to tears over the necessity of debate by intellectuals about the construction of some fence. Someone will eventually bring up that wolves, bears and various creatures cross the border on a daily basis.....thus it's a major problem to allow such a fence to be built. And there.....the fence idea will lay.
I know....Bavarians will shake their head and just say it makes no sense. But in today's world of Berlin, nothing is worth discussing unless there's a five-star debate somewhere in the mix.
The Two Sides to Nietzsche
Germany will lay claim to Fredrich Nietzsche as one of it's great writers. If you asked someone to list the ten great German writers or philosophers of all time....Nietzsche easily makes the list. The fact that he spent a fair amount of his life outside of Germany doesn't faze anyone....they will simply say that the influence of Germany created the gifted mind of Nietzsche.
The curious thing is that there are massive arguments over his works, the public interpretations of those works, and the crowd that attached themselves politically to his way of thinking.
Somewhere in the middle of Nietzsche's work is the working thoughts of 'supermen'....those who lift society to higher levels. Naturally, he meant in a positive way.....the folks behind Nationalists Socialists (Nazis) felt he meant in their way.
If you toss in poetry and musical pieces....you kinda note that he had an enormous amount of talent.
So with all this talent and demonstrated skill....you'd think Nietzsche has a great path before himself. Well, no.
Once you take apart the high points.....he's a guy who has severe stress and anxiety issues from the earliest of days. By his early thirties, he's on a trend of continually looking for some climate or some landscape where his ills would go away. This means frequently being on the move.
Between migraines and stomach ailments, he cannot rest or be settled. He is under constant stress and pressure.
By age forty-five, he will suffer what appears to be a mental-breakdown and is finished. He never recovers, and is more or less unable to function on his own from that point on. For roughly a decade, he's under the care of some relative and is waiting on death to arrive.
Everything of significance in his life for philosophy or writing purposes....came from his early twenties to his mid-forties.
At some point in his period of productive years, Nietzsche sat down and examined the frustrations of difficulty....where people are tested as they stumble or fall after remarkable success. He ended up coming to this philosophical moment:
Nietzsche comments: "Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask yourselves whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and external resistance, some kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, avarice, and violence do not belong among the favorable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible."
Without these moments in life where you hit a brick wall, or take a serious economic stumble, or find yourself lost in a maze of decision moments.....you will not advance. These are all moments which make some human growth within you develop and build character and mental strength.
In the 1800s, prior to radio and TV.....people read a mammoth amount of books. You'd read something....have a neighbor or friend come over for coffee and you'd share your latest reading material. Intellectually, people were striving toward understanding the world around themselves and looking for explanations. The works of Nietzsche made their way into the homes of the German public and came to be appreciated and shared.
I suspect if they'd known that he was mentally unbalanced from his early thirties on, and the works mostly came from an unstable but gifted gentlemen.....the public might have asked more questions or just laughed when works by Nietzsche were brought up. But in this period, there is no investigative journalism or someone looking for faults by writers.
Movies on Nietzsche or his philosophy? This is the most curious part of my essay. There's only been nine movies (that I can count on Nietzsche or his brief life). One of the nine was a 1915 silent movie production.....which you might discount. The most significant piece was a 2007 movie entitled When Nietzsche Wept....which basically tells the last few years of his life and a doctor's efforts to stabilize him.
There are literally dozens of movies which revolve around his philosophy. Even Groundhog Day with Bill Murray....is regarded as typical philosophy by Nietzsche.
So, if you are the non-German and come across commentary by some German on Nietzsche....there is a great fondness in German society to quote Nietzsche. From a gifted mind, there are thousands of quotes and some are worth remembering.
The curious thing is that there are massive arguments over his works, the public interpretations of those works, and the crowd that attached themselves politically to his way of thinking.
Somewhere in the middle of Nietzsche's work is the working thoughts of 'supermen'....those who lift society to higher levels. Naturally, he meant in a positive way.....the folks behind Nationalists Socialists (Nazis) felt he meant in their way.
If you toss in poetry and musical pieces....you kinda note that he had an enormous amount of talent.
So with all this talent and demonstrated skill....you'd think Nietzsche has a great path before himself. Well, no.
Once you take apart the high points.....he's a guy who has severe stress and anxiety issues from the earliest of days. By his early thirties, he's on a trend of continually looking for some climate or some landscape where his ills would go away. This means frequently being on the move.
Between migraines and stomach ailments, he cannot rest or be settled. He is under constant stress and pressure.
By age forty-five, he will suffer what appears to be a mental-breakdown and is finished. He never recovers, and is more or less unable to function on his own from that point on. For roughly a decade, he's under the care of some relative and is waiting on death to arrive.
Everything of significance in his life for philosophy or writing purposes....came from his early twenties to his mid-forties.
At some point in his period of productive years, Nietzsche sat down and examined the frustrations of difficulty....where people are tested as they stumble or fall after remarkable success. He ended up coming to this philosophical moment:
Nietzsche comments: "Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask yourselves whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and external resistance, some kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, avarice, and violence do not belong among the favorable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible."
Without these moments in life where you hit a brick wall, or take a serious economic stumble, or find yourself lost in a maze of decision moments.....you will not advance. These are all moments which make some human growth within you develop and build character and mental strength.
In the 1800s, prior to radio and TV.....people read a mammoth amount of books. You'd read something....have a neighbor or friend come over for coffee and you'd share your latest reading material. Intellectually, people were striving toward understanding the world around themselves and looking for explanations. The works of Nietzsche made their way into the homes of the German public and came to be appreciated and shared.
I suspect if they'd known that he was mentally unbalanced from his early thirties on, and the works mostly came from an unstable but gifted gentlemen.....the public might have asked more questions or just laughed when works by Nietzsche were brought up. But in this period, there is no investigative journalism or someone looking for faults by writers.
Movies on Nietzsche or his philosophy? This is the most curious part of my essay. There's only been nine movies (that I can count on Nietzsche or his brief life). One of the nine was a 1915 silent movie production.....which you might discount. The most significant piece was a 2007 movie entitled When Nietzsche Wept....which basically tells the last few years of his life and a doctor's efforts to stabilize him.
There are literally dozens of movies which revolve around his philosophy. Even Groundhog Day with Bill Murray....is regarded as typical philosophy by Nietzsche.
So, if you are the non-German and come across commentary by some German on Nietzsche....there is a great fondness in German society to quote Nietzsche. From a gifted mind, there are thousands of quotes and some are worth remembering.
What 6.7 Million Euro Gets You
I sat and watched the German news last night, where they talked more over the 6.7 million Euro that was bribed over to the FIFA organization to ensure the 2006 World Cup soccer games were held in Germany.
This bribe....6.7 million Euro.....really isn't that much of a bribe when you consider the amount of cash spent by visitors for the games. People had to fly into Germany and use the airports. People had to use taxi services. People ate tons of German food and drank millions of liters of beer that summer (more than they'd typically drank). Visitors stayed at nice hotels and cheap hotels. Across the nation, probably over 100 million t-shirts were sold. In the cities where games were held....various food stands were put up in the 'fan-mile' area and clubs/franchisees made tons of money....which related back to tons of VAT (sales tax). Extra hookers were brought into some towns where games were being played because the male customers would get excited and do stupid things (mostly because their wife wasn't around).
What the German government says in public (at least via Wiki quotes), is that the taxation folks made an extra 400 million Euro (more or less). At least 2.5 billion Euro was spent on fan 'junk' (t-shirts, balls, flags, etc). Somewhere in the mix.....around 500,000 (roughly) jobs were created for a brief period and employed people, who paid taxes on their income. All of this relates to a robust economy in 2006.....chiefly because of 6.7 million Euro spent to bribe the right people.
When you stand and look at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and the 2010 World Cup in South Africia....both were commercial success stories, with money/profit generated.....but the economic experts tend to agree.....Germany leads by a significant amount in terms of profit.
In terms of a huge ethics violation....I agree, bribes are a negative thing. But, for such a small bribe....Germany itself (across the entire public sector) made a significant amount of profit. It's hard to think of another enterprise where the relationship of profit to payment was better.
There's going to be discussions for weeks over this episode. Some people think legal consequences will occur, but I question what law you will invoke and how a prosecutor will drag some guy into a courtroom for legal action. The fact that the bribe did not occur on German soil will make this difficult enough.
As for the money being out of some billionaires pot of funds? Maybe so.....but you can't really invent a law that says some rich guy is forbidden from dumping his pocket money into the middle of a situation to create a shifted decision process.
A soap opera? Well, yeah. It's actually come to help the German news media because this is a hotter topic than that refugee or immigration stuff. Everyone has some opinion about the bribe and it's ethical debate.
This bribe....6.7 million Euro.....really isn't that much of a bribe when you consider the amount of cash spent by visitors for the games. People had to fly into Germany and use the airports. People had to use taxi services. People ate tons of German food and drank millions of liters of beer that summer (more than they'd typically drank). Visitors stayed at nice hotels and cheap hotels. Across the nation, probably over 100 million t-shirts were sold. In the cities where games were held....various food stands were put up in the 'fan-mile' area and clubs/franchisees made tons of money....which related back to tons of VAT (sales tax). Extra hookers were brought into some towns where games were being played because the male customers would get excited and do stupid things (mostly because their wife wasn't around).
What the German government says in public (at least via Wiki quotes), is that the taxation folks made an extra 400 million Euro (more or less). At least 2.5 billion Euro was spent on fan 'junk' (t-shirts, balls, flags, etc). Somewhere in the mix.....around 500,000 (roughly) jobs were created for a brief period and employed people, who paid taxes on their income. All of this relates to a robust economy in 2006.....chiefly because of 6.7 million Euro spent to bribe the right people.
When you stand and look at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and the 2010 World Cup in South Africia....both were commercial success stories, with money/profit generated.....but the economic experts tend to agree.....Germany leads by a significant amount in terms of profit.
In terms of a huge ethics violation....I agree, bribes are a negative thing. But, for such a small bribe....Germany itself (across the entire public sector) made a significant amount of profit. It's hard to think of another enterprise where the relationship of profit to payment was better.
There's going to be discussions for weeks over this episode. Some people think legal consequences will occur, but I question what law you will invoke and how a prosecutor will drag some guy into a courtroom for legal action. The fact that the bribe did not occur on German soil will make this difficult enough.
As for the money being out of some billionaires pot of funds? Maybe so.....but you can't really invent a law that says some rich guy is forbidden from dumping his pocket money into the middle of a situation to create a shifted decision process.
A soap opera? Well, yeah. It's actually come to help the German news media because this is a hotter topic than that refugee or immigration stuff. Everyone has some opinion about the bribe and it's ethical debate.
Saturday, October 17, 2015
It's Just Money
There is some economist in Germany who has gone out and analyzed the heck out of the refugee episode, and then predicted that the real cost per year.....will be near 30-billion euro. Journalists mostly just noted his comments and the magic number. No one really challenged it and there's been various estimates (some going to ten billion....some going to twenty billion). This was the first one to approach the thirty billion Euro point.
An average German will shake their heads and ask why the heck the government can afford this.....without raising taxes. And if they raise taxes....it'll freak out fifty percent of the German public.
Well, it's kinda simply on raising taxes. You simply pull up the infrastructure plans book, and pick out forty projects that won't be executed in 2016 or 2017. Then you pull up the education and Bundeswehr budget, and you carve off a big chunk of money. Eventually, you come to some twenty-billion point and just hope it doesn't go past that point.
I read this week that the apprentice training program that has been enhanced over the past year for Syrians and other refugees.....has hit some bumps. A fair number of guys didn't really grasp that when you go and become an apprentice....it means you have to study and pass tests. You need more than marginal German.....to sit in the class or pass the tests. That's been a problem.
But wait, there's more. According to yesterday's news.....some refugees who got visa status and a seat in some apprentice program....were shocked that the apprentice deal only gets you around five-hundred to seven-hundred Euro a month.....for the two-to-three year period. German kids could have told them that, but it's a harsh reality. The German state is having slide enough extra money over to cover apartment costs and some lifestyle things, but you are living on the edge of life as an apprentice.
For a lot of these guys, they expected to have a real job and real income.....then send some of that real income back to their family in the old homeland. Well, on apprentice income and welfare coverage.....you don't have extra cash sitting around.
Harsh reality? Yeah. It's extremely harsh.
My son sat and lived in the old house for the three-year period. He did his apprentice school episode and worked over at the company. At the peak (last year), he was making just over 700-Euro a month. Naturally, he didn't have to pay for housing, food, or anything. He'd admit....he was a bit frustrated over health insurance being taken out, and later after he got full-employment.....he whined over taxes and pension costs. My guess is that the refugees who did wrap up some apprentice deal and got to full-time employment.....discovered the same reality as my son.....taxes, healthcare and pension costs......eat up the whole check.
The financial problem here is that once you agree to house and shelter folks, then agree to provide language training and job education, then start to cover a driver's license, food, and medical care.....every single individual has a cost assigned to them. I could see a family of four refugees costing the German government 130,000 Euro for a 24-month period as they get situated and settled into some type of real work. It's a fair chunk of money, and if you asked where it came from.....well....that just infuriates the average German who pays $8 for a gallon of gas or pays 19-percent on sales tax. Some idiot political figure might even be stupid enough to appear on TV and say the magic phrase...."It's just money".
An average German will shake their heads and ask why the heck the government can afford this.....without raising taxes. And if they raise taxes....it'll freak out fifty percent of the German public.
Well, it's kinda simply on raising taxes. You simply pull up the infrastructure plans book, and pick out forty projects that won't be executed in 2016 or 2017. Then you pull up the education and Bundeswehr budget, and you carve off a big chunk of money. Eventually, you come to some twenty-billion point and just hope it doesn't go past that point.
I read this week that the apprentice training program that has been enhanced over the past year for Syrians and other refugees.....has hit some bumps. A fair number of guys didn't really grasp that when you go and become an apprentice....it means you have to study and pass tests. You need more than marginal German.....to sit in the class or pass the tests. That's been a problem.
But wait, there's more. According to yesterday's news.....some refugees who got visa status and a seat in some apprentice program....were shocked that the apprentice deal only gets you around five-hundred to seven-hundred Euro a month.....for the two-to-three year period. German kids could have told them that, but it's a harsh reality. The German state is having slide enough extra money over to cover apartment costs and some lifestyle things, but you are living on the edge of life as an apprentice.
For a lot of these guys, they expected to have a real job and real income.....then send some of that real income back to their family in the old homeland. Well, on apprentice income and welfare coverage.....you don't have extra cash sitting around.
Harsh reality? Yeah. It's extremely harsh.
My son sat and lived in the old house for the three-year period. He did his apprentice school episode and worked over at the company. At the peak (last year), he was making just over 700-Euro a month. Naturally, he didn't have to pay for housing, food, or anything. He'd admit....he was a bit frustrated over health insurance being taken out, and later after he got full-employment.....he whined over taxes and pension costs. My guess is that the refugees who did wrap up some apprentice deal and got to full-time employment.....discovered the same reality as my son.....taxes, healthcare and pension costs......eat up the whole check.
The financial problem here is that once you agree to house and shelter folks, then agree to provide language training and job education, then start to cover a driver's license, food, and medical care.....every single individual has a cost assigned to them. I could see a family of four refugees costing the German government 130,000 Euro for a 24-month period as they get situated and settled into some type of real work. It's a fair chunk of money, and if you asked where it came from.....well....that just infuriates the average German who pays $8 for a gallon of gas or pays 19-percent on sales tax. Some idiot political figure might even be stupid enough to appear on TV and say the magic phrase...."It's just money".
2006 Was a Long Time Ago
About three months ago, this FIFA (the international crowd who runs the soccer business and the World Cup) got into the news over corruption. There were comments at the time that Germany paid to have the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Well.....this past week, the comments were laid out and mostly proven.
To be honest, no one much is shocked over this except the journalists who are writing the stories.
Naturally, all of this required slush funds and what the public, or the news media wants to know....who had the slush funds and where did it come from? This might also open up tax issues because the money had to come from some invisible pocket....likely outside of Germany and this could mean jail-time if some guy shows up in the middle with a donation to the slush fund of ten million Euro. Then you'd wonder....what the slush fund guy got in return?
But all of this opens up other doors.
For example....for 2002, did Japan and South Korea pay off someone for the World Cup? For 1998, did France pay off someone for the World Cup? For 1994, did the US pay off someone for the World Cup? In 1990, did Italy pay someone off for the World Cup? You might even go back to 1954 and ask if Switzerland paid off someone for the World Cup?
Another question...once Germany got the World Cup.....did other people then get into the bribing business and pay millions to get their piece of the 2006 German World Cup? For example, how did Kaiserslautern get into the mix of cities for at least three games? Did someone there throw more cash at the German soccer authority? Once they got the games promised....political figures in the community went after tons of cash from the state and federal government for local enhancements. Was some bribery going on even at the local level?
I don't think many Germans care. They didn't win the 2006 World Cup.....they simply enjoyed the experience. I was there, and admit....Kaiserslautern was actually booming for one short month, with tourism and revenue income.
Sadly, thousands of man-hours will be poured into an investigation over something that occurred fifteen years ago (the bribes, not the games). Some big German names in soccer will quietly exit the country and leave their legendary status on the floor in shambles. Some people will ask if Russia or Qatar paid bribes, and the natural tendency is to believe there is some type of bribe deal that worked for each.
As for fixing all of this? How? The minute that you open up some door for a billion-Euro experience for some country.....there's competition and people will resort to bribes.
To be honest, no one much is shocked over this except the journalists who are writing the stories.
Naturally, all of this required slush funds and what the public, or the news media wants to know....who had the slush funds and where did it come from? This might also open up tax issues because the money had to come from some invisible pocket....likely outside of Germany and this could mean jail-time if some guy shows up in the middle with a donation to the slush fund of ten million Euro. Then you'd wonder....what the slush fund guy got in return?
But all of this opens up other doors.
For example....for 2002, did Japan and South Korea pay off someone for the World Cup? For 1998, did France pay off someone for the World Cup? For 1994, did the US pay off someone for the World Cup? In 1990, did Italy pay someone off for the World Cup? You might even go back to 1954 and ask if Switzerland paid off someone for the World Cup?
Another question...once Germany got the World Cup.....did other people then get into the bribing business and pay millions to get their piece of the 2006 German World Cup? For example, how did Kaiserslautern get into the mix of cities for at least three games? Did someone there throw more cash at the German soccer authority? Once they got the games promised....political figures in the community went after tons of cash from the state and federal government for local enhancements. Was some bribery going on even at the local level?
I don't think many Germans care. They didn't win the 2006 World Cup.....they simply enjoyed the experience. I was there, and admit....Kaiserslautern was actually booming for one short month, with tourism and revenue income.
Sadly, thousands of man-hours will be poured into an investigation over something that occurred fifteen years ago (the bribes, not the games). Some big German names in soccer will quietly exit the country and leave their legendary status on the floor in shambles. Some people will ask if Russia or Qatar paid bribes, and the natural tendency is to believe there is some type of bribe deal that worked for each.
As for fixing all of this? How? The minute that you open up some door for a billion-Euro experience for some country.....there's competition and people will resort to bribes.
Friday, October 16, 2015
The BND Story
It was a shocker...absolute shocker....to wake up and watch the news from yesterday, as German came to find that their chief spy agency....the BND....was actually spying on people (namely the French and the Americans).
Yep, absolute shocker that a spy agency would spy.
The Linke Party and the Greens chatted like wild apes in Borneo over the topic last night for the benefit of the state-run TV news crowd. Such a terrible, terrible thing.....a spy agency spying.
I realize that I'm a non-German and I'm probably not "blessed" with the gifted knowledge level of Germans or especially the German intellectural crowd. But I kept sitting there and wondering....what exactly did you hire some thugs or tech guys to be work in the BND for? BMW repairs? Pothole maintenance? Check tickets on buses or trains?
All of this supposedly ended in 2013....or so they say for public consumption. I have my doubts.
So, how can the mess be fixed? Well.....you need some political folks who sit around and pick who will be spied upon and who will not, and it simply needs to be a public debate. My guess is that most Germans would agree that Luxembourg, the Vatican, Tonga, and England need to be spied upon. FIFA (the soccer guys) should not be spied upon.....nor Russia or Austria. There will end up being some kind of spy listing and it'll be talked about openly day in and day out.
If this sounds pretty stupid.....well, this is the only way of fixing what is perceived to be broke.
If I did get you all aggravated and frustrated about the BND's actual job.....well, hopefully you won't find out what the actual job of the Arbeitsamt (Job-Center) is. You really wouldn't want to know that story.
Yep, absolute shocker that a spy agency would spy.
The Linke Party and the Greens chatted like wild apes in Borneo over the topic last night for the benefit of the state-run TV news crowd. Such a terrible, terrible thing.....a spy agency spying.
I realize that I'm a non-German and I'm probably not "blessed" with the gifted knowledge level of Germans or especially the German intellectural crowd. But I kept sitting there and wondering....what exactly did you hire some thugs or tech guys to be work in the BND for? BMW repairs? Pothole maintenance? Check tickets on buses or trains?
All of this supposedly ended in 2013....or so they say for public consumption. I have my doubts.
So, how can the mess be fixed? Well.....you need some political folks who sit around and pick who will be spied upon and who will not, and it simply needs to be a public debate. My guess is that most Germans would agree that Luxembourg, the Vatican, Tonga, and England need to be spied upon. FIFA (the soccer guys) should not be spied upon.....nor Russia or Austria. There will end up being some kind of spy listing and it'll be talked about openly day in and day out.
If this sounds pretty stupid.....well, this is the only way of fixing what is perceived to be broke.
If I did get you all aggravated and frustrated about the BND's actual job.....well, hopefully you won't find out what the actual job of the Arbeitsamt (Job-Center) is. You really wouldn't want to know that story.
Greek Price Story
There have been several long Greece stories written up this week by a number of journalists. They center on this new tourist pricing game for state museums and the woeful economic situation of Greece in general.
If you've never been to Greece.....let me introduce you to the standard tourist strategy. First, most Greek airlines work hard to gimmick the cost of the trip to a pretty high level. If there is anyway to gouge you at the last minute....like baggage weight or extra cost on the bags.....they will do it. So, it's not exactly a cheap trip.
Then you arrive to find the hotel as advertised, but drinks at the hotel bar are double what you'd expect to pay. You look at the little refrigerator bar in the room and just start laughing because they want two Euro for a Coke.....when you can buy a can of Coke for 60 cents.
The saving grace of the cost game....for decades....was the entry into the state museums. You could go anywhere on the mainland, or the islands, and usually not pay more than ten Euro for an entry fee.
This past spring when I went to Athens.....to visit the Acropolis (the mandatory place you have to visit if you go to Athens).....the cost of the hill and the adjacent ruins was in the range of 12-Euro a person ($15). I felt it was somewhat reasonable....although there's no escalator to get you up to the top of the hill and it is a no-thrills type situation where you will spend an entire day at between the hill and the ruins.
Well.....that price of a dozen-odd Euro will go up....to roughly fifty-Euro a person for the Acropolis. It is a hefty amount......almost what you'd pay for a four-star amusement park in Germany for an entire day (per adult).
The Greeks say that the rate changes affect at least two-hundred different museums. They even said that these open open archaeological dig sites.....which were often just a roped off area in some small town in the middle of nowhere.....will now have some kind of entry fee. I was scratching my head over that because there are probably between ten and twenty thousand such sites in Greece like that, and they were simply a roped-off area or a fenced-off area. Will they hire up people to stand there and collect entry fees for each one?
The other side of this fee increase? What Greece says is that if you are an unemployed Greek.....you will get free entry into the museums. They also said that there will be some type of discount in the non-tourist period (November to April).....somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty-percent off the new fees.
This will irk some folks who are returning to Greece for a second trip and can remember in the 1980s paying next to nothing to enter the Acropolis, and now have to pay a hundred Euro for a couple to enter.
What the Greeks will naturally say is that you as a tourist.....can afford such luxury. It's only right for them to charge that hefty amount.
If you'd stood there.....2,500 years ago and told a thousand Greeks what these stone structures would be used for (tourism) and what people would pay.....well, they would have built two or three times the number of temples, state buildings or statues.
So, my general advice....if you were planning a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Greece.....keep planning and go for the gusto. Just be prepared to pay hefty prices and remember.....Greeks will figure out some way to charge nine Euro for a Pepsi, if it's possible. For you American guys, that's $10. Not even the Atlanta airport will charge you that kind of rate.
If you've never been to Greece.....let me introduce you to the standard tourist strategy. First, most Greek airlines work hard to gimmick the cost of the trip to a pretty high level. If there is anyway to gouge you at the last minute....like baggage weight or extra cost on the bags.....they will do it. So, it's not exactly a cheap trip.
Then you arrive to find the hotel as advertised, but drinks at the hotel bar are double what you'd expect to pay. You look at the little refrigerator bar in the room and just start laughing because they want two Euro for a Coke.....when you can buy a can of Coke for 60 cents.
The saving grace of the cost game....for decades....was the entry into the state museums. You could go anywhere on the mainland, or the islands, and usually not pay more than ten Euro for an entry fee.
This past spring when I went to Athens.....to visit the Acropolis (the mandatory place you have to visit if you go to Athens).....the cost of the hill and the adjacent ruins was in the range of 12-Euro a person ($15). I felt it was somewhat reasonable....although there's no escalator to get you up to the top of the hill and it is a no-thrills type situation where you will spend an entire day at between the hill and the ruins.
Well.....that price of a dozen-odd Euro will go up....to roughly fifty-Euro a person for the Acropolis. It is a hefty amount......almost what you'd pay for a four-star amusement park in Germany for an entire day (per adult).
The Greeks say that the rate changes affect at least two-hundred different museums. They even said that these open open archaeological dig sites.....which were often just a roped off area in some small town in the middle of nowhere.....will now have some kind of entry fee. I was scratching my head over that because there are probably between ten and twenty thousand such sites in Greece like that, and they were simply a roped-off area or a fenced-off area. Will they hire up people to stand there and collect entry fees for each one?
The other side of this fee increase? What Greece says is that if you are an unemployed Greek.....you will get free entry into the museums. They also said that there will be some type of discount in the non-tourist period (November to April).....somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty-percent off the new fees.
This will irk some folks who are returning to Greece for a second trip and can remember in the 1980s paying next to nothing to enter the Acropolis, and now have to pay a hundred Euro for a couple to enter.
What the Greeks will naturally say is that you as a tourist.....can afford such luxury. It's only right for them to charge that hefty amount.
If you'd stood there.....2,500 years ago and told a thousand Greeks what these stone structures would be used for (tourism) and what people would pay.....well, they would have built two or three times the number of temples, state buildings or statues.
So, my general advice....if you were planning a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Greece.....keep planning and go for the gusto. Just be prepared to pay hefty prices and remember.....Greeks will figure out some way to charge nine Euro for a Pepsi, if it's possible. For you American guys, that's $10. Not even the Atlanta airport will charge you that kind of rate.
Thursday, October 15, 2015
The Pretender Reality of Berlin
I admit....I'm not a politician, nor a Journalist, nor a rocket scientist, nor an Indiana Jones-type guy, nor venture capitalist, nor cowboy actor, nor even a safari hunter. I'm just one of those people who sits and looks at something odd, and makes an observation.
Two days ago in Germany.....some political folks in Berlin got together and had this idea. They truly needed to experience the thrill or tingle of what it feels like to be a refugee on the high seas....in some 121-passenger raft.
So they all put on nice red flotation devices (it would have been catastrophic if the rubber boat had sunk in the Spree River and 121 fairly well known German political figures had drowned), and sailed out into the middle of the Spree.
Now, I've been to Berlin and can vouch that the Spree is not that much of a river. I know.....Germans will weep all over themselves and challenge me to some kinda fight....but I've kinda traveled through most of Europe and America, and have seen some mighty wide and challenging rivers. The Spree.....is a minor river.....maybe twenty-five car lengths across.
The reporters came out, and journalists spent a fair amount of time trying to grasp the situation and the adventure at hand. Some words of enthusiasm were generated, and they tried hard to make the folks look impressive.
I looked at the pictures (I won't put any up because it just weakens the story if you ask me, and copyright situations).
If you suggested this type of gimmick in the US.....then tried to talk a hundred US senators into coming out in October to the Potomac River and doing some 30-minute ride around for photos.....they would have laughed and just said 'no'. The truth is....in the US....something always goes wrong and you can just see the Coast Guard freaking out as a hundred Senators hit the water as the boat sinks. Some ensign would have saved forty Senators by just suggesting they stand up in the water because it's only four-feet deep.
I'll go out on the limb and suggest this....if the rubber boat thing was a positive thing.....why not make 121 German politicians live in a fest-tent operation for the winter, with just a mattress and a cheap blanket? Give them six Euro a day for beer money and see how they make time pass each day as they sit and lounge in fake refugee camp. Topics and discussions? For some reason, I think there won't be much positive said about politics, camp life, a cheap mattress, or productive lives.
The end result of all of this? Maybe some new German reality show......Germans pretending to be refugees and let viewers vote members off the show each day.
Two days ago in Germany.....some political folks in Berlin got together and had this idea. They truly needed to experience the thrill or tingle of what it feels like to be a refugee on the high seas....in some 121-passenger raft.
So they all put on nice red flotation devices (it would have been catastrophic if the rubber boat had sunk in the Spree River and 121 fairly well known German political figures had drowned), and sailed out into the middle of the Spree.
Now, I've been to Berlin and can vouch that the Spree is not that much of a river. I know.....Germans will weep all over themselves and challenge me to some kinda fight....but I've kinda traveled through most of Europe and America, and have seen some mighty wide and challenging rivers. The Spree.....is a minor river.....maybe twenty-five car lengths across.
The reporters came out, and journalists spent a fair amount of time trying to grasp the situation and the adventure at hand. Some words of enthusiasm were generated, and they tried hard to make the folks look impressive.
I looked at the pictures (I won't put any up because it just weakens the story if you ask me, and copyright situations).
If you suggested this type of gimmick in the US.....then tried to talk a hundred US senators into coming out in October to the Potomac River and doing some 30-minute ride around for photos.....they would have laughed and just said 'no'. The truth is....in the US....something always goes wrong and you can just see the Coast Guard freaking out as a hundred Senators hit the water as the boat sinks. Some ensign would have saved forty Senators by just suggesting they stand up in the water because it's only four-feet deep.
I'll go out on the limb and suggest this....if the rubber boat thing was a positive thing.....why not make 121 German politicians live in a fest-tent operation for the winter, with just a mattress and a cheap blanket? Give them six Euro a day for beer money and see how they make time pass each day as they sit and lounge in fake refugee camp. Topics and discussions? For some reason, I think there won't be much positive said about politics, camp life, a cheap mattress, or productive lives.
The end result of all of this? Maybe some new German reality show......Germans pretending to be refugees and let viewers vote members off the show each day.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
School Project Story
I noted in the German news this morning....some parents getting hyper in northwest Germany over school activities.
Generally, most all schools run community projects and 'herd' the kids through some forced participation....so that they get the idea of being part of the bigger community.
So, there's this school in the Kiel region which decided to send their 'herd' to a refugee project. These eighth-grade kids (from a school in Lubeck).....were directed for one week to go over to a refugee center and either help put up fresh sheets on the refugee beds or to assist in the kitchen with lunch.
You can look over the participation project....roughly a week....running from 8:30 to early afternoon.
Once the note came down....one parent read the whole thing....asked questions....and then got infuriated. Couldn't the refugees make up their own beds or run the kitchen assistance project themselves? There weren't any real answers.
So, this got out on social media and got the attention of hundreds of parents in a matter of hours.
After you sit there and examine this whole project.....it's mostly an attempt to get sympathy built up within a group of people (students) and that they feel connected to the refugees, and a part of their lives. Some intellectural education player probably looked at the negativity building up and this was the 'fix' to get young people enthusiastic about the evolution going on in Germany.
A type of project that might be repeated around Germany? I kinda doubt it. If you showed up in Wiesbaden and suggested this....half the parents would ask if the refugees were invalids or disabled. A fair number of the kids just wouldn't buy off on participation and ask for waivers or claim 'illness' during the week.
As a non-German....it interests me on how society changes are put into effect and how the public reacts different over the past twenty-odd years. In the 1980s, people would have quietly just accepted the school project. Today? Germans are more and more skeptical of what projects are about and how these tend to fit into some agenda.
Generally, most all schools run community projects and 'herd' the kids through some forced participation....so that they get the idea of being part of the bigger community.
So, there's this school in the Kiel region which decided to send their 'herd' to a refugee project. These eighth-grade kids (from a school in Lubeck).....were directed for one week to go over to a refugee center and either help put up fresh sheets on the refugee beds or to assist in the kitchen with lunch.
You can look over the participation project....roughly a week....running from 8:30 to early afternoon.
Once the note came down....one parent read the whole thing....asked questions....and then got infuriated. Couldn't the refugees make up their own beds or run the kitchen assistance project themselves? There weren't any real answers.
So, this got out on social media and got the attention of hundreds of parents in a matter of hours.
After you sit there and examine this whole project.....it's mostly an attempt to get sympathy built up within a group of people (students) and that they feel connected to the refugees, and a part of their lives. Some intellectural education player probably looked at the negativity building up and this was the 'fix' to get young people enthusiastic about the evolution going on in Germany.
A type of project that might be repeated around Germany? I kinda doubt it. If you showed up in Wiesbaden and suggested this....half the parents would ask if the refugees were invalids or disabled. A fair number of the kids just wouldn't buy off on participation and ask for waivers or claim 'illness' during the week.
As a non-German....it interests me on how society changes are put into effect and how the public reacts different over the past twenty-odd years. In the 1980s, people would have quietly just accepted the school project. Today? Germans are more and more skeptical of what projects are about and how these tend to fit into some agenda.
Shift in Numbers
The German state-run TV network....ARD...Channel One.....did another poll and asked Germans about their feelings now over the refugee crisis. Things over the past sixty days have shifted.
What ARD now says from the polling data is that fifty-one percent of the public is now worried about how this will turn out. Six weeks ago, it would have been near thirty-eight percent.
The cause? They went into some analysis but it was obvious that the media has not delivered the message and public has not grasped the proper message that they put out.
In general.....the public has reached a state where they are skeptical of both politicians and journalists. That was probably not the case a year ago....or even six months ago. But in recent weeks....more and more Germans ask questions and the answers just aren't worth discussing. When they shifted around and admitted the 850,000 refugees for 2015 was gone, and it was likely to be 1.5 million....that really got people into a negative state of thought. Ever since that point (about six weeks ago).....no one believes the slanted angle of the state-run news media.
If you pay attention....ever since the VW diesel episode....the state-run news folks have rapidly decreased their stories over immigration and refugees. Maybe they took advantage of the episode to shift gears, but it is very noticeable now. They opened up the gate for more discussion, and the public has not bought into the message in a positive way.
Where this goes in terms of politics? Well, as I've pointed out for March of 2016.....there are three state elections coming up and this trend really speaks volumes for the major topic to center the election upon. It could mean a massive issue for both the CDU and SPD....because they both bought into the Merkel strategy. Even the Greens and Linke Party have continued their strategy of supporting the refugee direction.....which means that some of the public are looking for a new and alternate political party to carry their disenchantment with the current problem.
More of the discussion? I'm guessing that ARD will discuss the idea of trying to educate the German public more.....thinking if they just understood the situation better, they'd agree with the message. Frankly, it's hard to say how this might logically work.
What ARD now says from the polling data is that fifty-one percent of the public is now worried about how this will turn out. Six weeks ago, it would have been near thirty-eight percent.
The cause? They went into some analysis but it was obvious that the media has not delivered the message and public has not grasped the proper message that they put out.
In general.....the public has reached a state where they are skeptical of both politicians and journalists. That was probably not the case a year ago....or even six months ago. But in recent weeks....more and more Germans ask questions and the answers just aren't worth discussing. When they shifted around and admitted the 850,000 refugees for 2015 was gone, and it was likely to be 1.5 million....that really got people into a negative state of thought. Ever since that point (about six weeks ago).....no one believes the slanted angle of the state-run news media.
If you pay attention....ever since the VW diesel episode....the state-run news folks have rapidly decreased their stories over immigration and refugees. Maybe they took advantage of the episode to shift gears, but it is very noticeable now. They opened up the gate for more discussion, and the public has not bought into the message in a positive way.
Where this goes in terms of politics? Well, as I've pointed out for March of 2016.....there are three state elections coming up and this trend really speaks volumes for the major topic to center the election upon. It could mean a massive issue for both the CDU and SPD....because they both bought into the Merkel strategy. Even the Greens and Linke Party have continued their strategy of supporting the refugee direction.....which means that some of the public are looking for a new and alternate political party to carry their disenchantment with the current problem.
More of the discussion? I'm guessing that ARD will discuss the idea of trying to educate the German public more.....thinking if they just understood the situation better, they'd agree with the message. Frankly, it's hard to say how this might logically work.
Observations over Public-run TV in Germany
Remember....I don't write for the pleasure of a German....I simply note observations as a non-German and it's mostly non-Germans that read my essay at their pleasure.
Public-run television is a curious thing thing in Germany. If you own a television....you are supposed to pay roughly 17 Euro a month which covers the cost of running more or less....twenty channels and a number of public radio stations.
If you go and bring up the topic of the public-run networks and the general perception by Germans....it goes from one extreme through a maze of goofy and peculiar features, to another extreme. A handful of people....probably less than five-percent will say their 17 Euro a month is buying premium service. The rest will just grumble and say that something needs to change.
So, my observations:
1. If you toss the twenty channels together....you'd describe the outcome as being something of a combination of the Discovery Channel. PBS, Animal Planet, BBC, and ESPN-lite. Toss in some intellectual themes, a bit of political chat forum commentary, some murder-mystery-cop movies, some predictable romance dramas, game-shows on knowledge only, and some National Geographic episodes....and you have the common thread of the twenty channels.
2. Between the 8PM and 9:45PM news episodes.....there's at least two US news items nightly....of which the general batting average is 35-percent positive, 20-percent neutral, and 45-percent negative (my humble numbers). Germans are fairly shocked that Americans don't get the same dosage of German national news and can't understand why Americans don't care more about Germany.
3. It's hard to find anyone under the age of twenty-five who watches more than one hour a month of public-run TV. Most watch the commercial channels, or get a data stream via Netflix. The TV 'mafia' is disturbed about this and say they are going to invest a ton of Euro on making a new network which the younger generation will watch. No one predicts much success with this except intellectuals, political folks, and the TV management folks. Maybe they ought to ask why, but that's not important.
4. One of the nightly things that appear on one of the public-run channels is a twenty-year-old episode of the nightly news. No one says much about the viewership. Personally, I doubt if more than 2,000 Germans watch this or care about it. Luckily, they kept a copy of each nightly news episode from decades ago, and it doesn't cost anything to run it again.
5. Each of the German states has their own regional network. This is the ONLY vehicle in video fashion that you might get regional or state news from. If they decide it's news....it's news. If they decide it's not news....it gets no air-time. Other than your local paper......you might not be finding out much about the crime, or waste of tax-payer money, or political corruption.
6. Altogether, in an average week from the twenty channels.....you could get around forty hours of political chat, from the left, the right, the center, and the 'otherwise'. If you kept a headcount, I'd take a guess that you might be able to view around 3,000 political figures from across Germany in an average year. Democracy needs a filter.....to soften the amount of nonsense and lunacy dished out.
7. Every year on Hiroshima day (the day that the city got nuked).....there's at least an hour of conversation over the terrible thing that the US did. The central theme is to avoid history, dump on the US, and note the the wonderful behavior of Germany and it's innocence in the modern world. It makes people happy when they watch this. I doubt if they ever get more than 500,000 of eighty-million Germans to watch it.
8. The chief thing you tend to notice after a while is that no one talks about the salary level of the state-run TV empire or how many people it takes to run the operation.....which gets into the billions, but it's best not to mention this in public.
9. The intellectual crowd will say that the public needs state-run TV because this is the only way to ensure a competent and intelligent public. Needless to say.....there's never been a study to prove this, or any statistical coverage to back up the legendary 'anchor' of TV being a cornerstone of German society.
10. Things reached a stage several years ago when the intellectual crowd and the management of state-run TV began to realize that people were quitting viewership of regular TV. Data-streaming was catching on and the youth of Germany has very little interest in continuing the 17 Euro a month on taxation. So they invented or reinvented the TV tax to be a media tax. If you just own a laptop or computer.....NOT a TV....well, you still have to pay the tax because you might data-stream the public-run TV from their server.. Note, they never provide statistical data on how much ever gets downloaded from their server, and some people wonder if it's really being used.
Huffed up and angry as a German over my comments? Well....sit down and ask a twenty-something old German what they watch and why they don't watch more state-run TV. Then ask if this 200-odd Euro a year is really a wise choice or investment on the part of that young person.
Public-run television is a curious thing thing in Germany. If you own a television....you are supposed to pay roughly 17 Euro a month which covers the cost of running more or less....twenty channels and a number of public radio stations.
If you go and bring up the topic of the public-run networks and the general perception by Germans....it goes from one extreme through a maze of goofy and peculiar features, to another extreme. A handful of people....probably less than five-percent will say their 17 Euro a month is buying premium service. The rest will just grumble and say that something needs to change.
So, my observations:
1. If you toss the twenty channels together....you'd describe the outcome as being something of a combination of the Discovery Channel. PBS, Animal Planet, BBC, and ESPN-lite. Toss in some intellectual themes, a bit of political chat forum commentary, some murder-mystery-cop movies, some predictable romance dramas, game-shows on knowledge only, and some National Geographic episodes....and you have the common thread of the twenty channels.
2. Between the 8PM and 9:45PM news episodes.....there's at least two US news items nightly....of which the general batting average is 35-percent positive, 20-percent neutral, and 45-percent negative (my humble numbers). Germans are fairly shocked that Americans don't get the same dosage of German national news and can't understand why Americans don't care more about Germany.
3. It's hard to find anyone under the age of twenty-five who watches more than one hour a month of public-run TV. Most watch the commercial channels, or get a data stream via Netflix. The TV 'mafia' is disturbed about this and say they are going to invest a ton of Euro on making a new network which the younger generation will watch. No one predicts much success with this except intellectuals, political folks, and the TV management folks. Maybe they ought to ask why, but that's not important.
4. One of the nightly things that appear on one of the public-run channels is a twenty-year-old episode of the nightly news. No one says much about the viewership. Personally, I doubt if more than 2,000 Germans watch this or care about it. Luckily, they kept a copy of each nightly news episode from decades ago, and it doesn't cost anything to run it again.
5. Each of the German states has their own regional network. This is the ONLY vehicle in video fashion that you might get regional or state news from. If they decide it's news....it's news. If they decide it's not news....it gets no air-time. Other than your local paper......you might not be finding out much about the crime, or waste of tax-payer money, or political corruption.
6. Altogether, in an average week from the twenty channels.....you could get around forty hours of political chat, from the left, the right, the center, and the 'otherwise'. If you kept a headcount, I'd take a guess that you might be able to view around 3,000 political figures from across Germany in an average year. Democracy needs a filter.....to soften the amount of nonsense and lunacy dished out.
7. Every year on Hiroshima day (the day that the city got nuked).....there's at least an hour of conversation over the terrible thing that the US did. The central theme is to avoid history, dump on the US, and note the the wonderful behavior of Germany and it's innocence in the modern world. It makes people happy when they watch this. I doubt if they ever get more than 500,000 of eighty-million Germans to watch it.
8. The chief thing you tend to notice after a while is that no one talks about the salary level of the state-run TV empire or how many people it takes to run the operation.....which gets into the billions, but it's best not to mention this in public.
9. The intellectual crowd will say that the public needs state-run TV because this is the only way to ensure a competent and intelligent public. Needless to say.....there's never been a study to prove this, or any statistical coverage to back up the legendary 'anchor' of TV being a cornerstone of German society.
10. Things reached a stage several years ago when the intellectual crowd and the management of state-run TV began to realize that people were quitting viewership of regular TV. Data-streaming was catching on and the youth of Germany has very little interest in continuing the 17 Euro a month on taxation. So they invented or reinvented the TV tax to be a media tax. If you just own a laptop or computer.....NOT a TV....well, you still have to pay the tax because you might data-stream the public-run TV from their server.. Note, they never provide statistical data on how much ever gets downloaded from their server, and some people wonder if it's really being used.
Huffed up and angry as a German over my comments? Well....sit down and ask a twenty-something old German what they watch and why they don't watch more state-run TV. Then ask if this 200-odd Euro a year is really a wise choice or investment on the part of that young person.
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