The Failures and Successes of German TV

I try hard not to complain or really dump on German TV.....at least on the commercially-run business.   They are selling some type of product and try to do a better job than the state-run TV thugs.

This week, I came to observe a major success and a major failure.

First, RTL delivered a two week "Jungle-Camp" show, which surprised me.  I will admit....I'm not much into reality-TV or the fake starts dug up for this.  But RTL took an odd group into this year's Jungle-Camp show and surprised you with the absolute underdog winning in the end.

Menderes, the Turkish guy with no singing talent (as he's proven for a number of years)....got invited to the camp and most people would have said that he'd be gone by fifth day.  The thing is.....Menderes was such a genuine nice guy and always positive on dealing with people in the camp....that you came to like him.

So in the end.....the underdog won.  Something rare in life, I will admit.  Even one of the moderators of the show dropped a tear or two when it was announced.

The other show came from RTL as well (Friday night).....the Puppet Stars.  I came for a brief twenty minutes to watch the show and there came this guy with his puppet....a talking "willy" (a manly part of the anatomy which I will leave to you to guess).

Yeah, this guy had crafted a fabric puppet to look like a talking "willy".  I had to admit.....I sat there in a state of shock.  The guy was creative....but a talking "willy"?

What would a talking "willy" say?  It's best not to ask.

It's hard to say what RTL and it's production team were thinking with this show, or how this would pan out with the pubic.  Good taste?  Well....skip that topic.

The odds of public-run TV ever producing a puppet show with a talking "willy"?  Zero chance....their President of operations would resign before he'd allow a show like that to run on ARD or ZDF.

The Fake Nature of Being Green

I read a good bit each morning.  Some items are worthless in nature but cause you to sit and ponder.  So it is with this topic.....Berlin (the city itself) will sell around 170 million "to-go" coffee cups each year.

With a population of 3.5 million residents, and around 28 million guests who stay at least one night.....someone actually sat down and counted up coffee cup usage.

Why does this matter?  Normally....it wouldn't be worth discussing.

The Green enthusiasts pondered upon this and the terrible waste of these 170 million papercups going into the trash bothered them.

So, they will have this open forum on 8 Feb with coffee house owners and managers.....to discuss ways to ease the 170 million papercups being thrown away.

First, they want the coffee houses to volunteer and try to ease the customers away from this terrible sin of throwing papercups away.

Starbucks and most of the big-name companies operating coffee shops in Berlin will stand and just admit that they already sell real mugs and coffee cups to their customers....at a discount rate.  They've been doing this for several years.

What the Green enthusiasts want to do if matters can't change.....is invent a tax.

I know.....you almost spilled coffee on yourself when I mentioned the possible coffee cup tax.

The general suggestion is that there would be a Berlin city tax of 20-cents on each papercup of coffee sold.....which would go into a Green pot of money.

What would the city do with this money?  Let's say that the people didn't change any habits and the 170 million coffee cups had the tax....it'd amount to a 34 million Euro pot of money.  I naturally read through as many sources of news on the topic and came to this one interesting detail missing.  No one asked the Green enthusiasts what the money would be spent on.  Not one single detail.

Typically, tax collected money goes into one massive city pot, and I suspect that the city managers would be very eager to collect 34 million Euro on a simple coffee cup tax.  Legal?  Most people think that German law allows for this.

I pondered upon this and came to this realization.

Let's say the law goes into effect and a tax is now effective.  If you typically bought fifteen cups of coffee to go each month.....your tax would amount to 3 Euro.  Per year, 36 Euro.

But most people are smart.

So, they'd go and order this big box of coffee papercups via Amazon, and it'd arrive at your apartment.  Each morning, you'd retrieve one papercup out of the box and walk by the coffee shop to buy your coffee....handing your papercup from home and walking out with it.

Smart people would start to make customized papercups with your logo......your name.....some picture of a cat....slogan-type cups....etc.

The coffee shop would have a discounted rate for this type of buyer because there's no tax on the guy and no cup provided by coffee shop.

As months would roll by....more people would do this.

The Green people would pat themselves on the back because coffee shops would report the normal yearly average of 170 million papercups have now dwindled down 20 million papercups.  Success.  The Greens will say they did a wonderful thing for Berlin.

Oddly, the garbage guys will note one afternoon for the news people.....there's no cut in papercups appearing in trashcans around the city.  It's the same number as before.

Great honor will be bestowed to the Green folks for reshaping and fixing a terrible problem facing the fine city of Berlin.  Tax revenue will increase.....which will make the city managers happy.  And people will continue drinking via their papercups with the feeling of happiness.....mostly through fine coffee and the effect of screwing the government out of tax revenue money.  It's rare that Germans feel happy, but this will be one such occasion.

I should note....my trust in the papercup number mentioned by the news folks?  Well, I just don't have confidence that the 170 million number is right.  Personally, I'd take a guess that it's five times that number and some folks aren't being honest on the numbers business.

The Five Billion Euro Solution?

A number of weeks ago, there was a big highlighted trip for Chancellor Merkel to Turkey.  This was mostly to shake hands with Erdogan (the elected head of Turkey's gov't) and discuss the immigration crisis in Germany with the Syrians and Iraqis.

At the time.....national news in Germany played up this great theme that Turkey would be willing to host and hold back the refugees packing up and leaving via Turkey.  I should note....at the time that this story was being told....I just sat there and wondered what device or gimmick would Turkey demonstrate....to hold back the refugees.

The deal talked about with Merkel was a EU deal....not so much a German deal.  I think she had to portray that way because it was a heck of a lot of money.....three billion Euro.

One could review this offering and some hope that the EU would invent some payment scheme, which the twenty-odd members of the EU would all put money into this pot, and maybe Germany's contribution would only amount to one billion of the three billion.  At the time.....no one in German news media circles wanted to guess how much Germany's share would amount to.....which I thought was kinda strange but then I'm not German or EU.

This week....Turkey came back and said that three billion offered was all fine and dandy.....but it'd have to be five billion Euro instead.

The problem here revolves around two central themes.  First, they are in a negotiation stage presently and this deal needs to progress quickly before the spring comes, and suddenly another 100,000 start walking up to some beach in April and getting access to the Greek isles, and then onto the march toward Bavaria.  You can stomp around for maybe four weeks.....but time is wasting away if you don't conclude this deal by early March.

The second issue is that no one is sure that the twenty-odd members of the EU will agree to cough up contributions.  If this whole thing is about a German problem....and the best you can hope for is that France offers to front 20-percent of the five billion, and the remaining members offer to front 10-percent.....Germany is left to come up with vast bulk of the five billion Euro.  Note.....this only covers 2016.

How will Turkey prevent hundreds of thousands to migrate via the normal pattern?  No one has suggested any idea over this.....other than having cops along the beach fronts and blasting any rubber boat they see leaving near vicinity of the coastline.  You can imagine the German news media with cameras out and capturing video of rubber boats being pursued and sunk, and people flopping around on the water or screaming about their liberty and rights.

For some reason, I see the EU just getting into the whole division of the five billion Euro, and Germans shocked that they have to come up with the bulk of this.  At some point...enough division will occur.....that the whole deal falls apart.  The spring rush then? Well....it'll bother Germans if 400,000 new refugees arrive by end of June.

Discussing Amerophobia with a German

Amerophobia is the irrational fear of Americans and their culture.

Some Americans and non-Germans residing in Germany....after about six months of living here....will amusingly note that they've seen this slight hint of the phobia when dealing with some Germans. 

It'll be a comment here and there.....mostly over some criticism, opinion, or judgement.  You will stand there for a minute....thinking that you might have started this by insulting your associate or friend.....going back over the past hour and what you might have said to get them disturbed.  Eventually, you will realize that you never crossed that line and never insulted them.  So you stand there....wondering what the heck happened or if this was some psychological problem with your associate.

As time passes, Amerophobia comes out occasionally.

The majority of Germans could live their entire life and never exhibit a single episode of Amerophobia.

It is my humble opinion, that this only affects around ten percent of German society....mostly people who profess some intellectual capability or great insight.  These are people who will utter Xenophobia at least once or twice a month.....but when you ask them what the irrational fear of Germans is (Teutophobia)...they will mostly stare at you and think there is no such irrational fear of Germans.

So at this point, you drift into an education phase with your German associate.  You note that the US Institute of Mental Health says that roughly 18-percent of society (across all spectrums of society....rich and poor, educated and uneducated, etc) in general suffers anxiety and phobia disorders.  You also note that such people (those with anxiety/phobias) are three to five times more likely to go to a doctor over anything (true, perceived or fake) health-related.

You can chill-out your German associate with the Amerophobia by letting them know that this disorder comes from a general list of items: genetics, brain chemistry, stress, personality, and actual events in life.

You might ask about their drug habits (if they were a weed-smoker), their personality trends, or if they had been harmed by American beer, American food, American television (Knight Rider, Bonanza, and ALF regularly run on German TV), American music, American politics, etc.  You could ask if they've been under a lot of stress lately....maybe love went south, their cat ran away, or a immigrant family moved into their building.

Let your German associate know that you are praying for them, and would be eager to help them through this rough stage (thus showing you have no Teutophobia....no irrational fear of Germans or the culture of Germany).

The best way is to invite them to the local pub, and buy the first round of beer for them.  Let them know.....together, through a number of beers.....you can help them wipe out this irrational fear of Americans and American society.

One or two things will happen at this point.  Either they accept your offer and their Amerophobia starts to lessen (after the beers of course), or they grit their teeth to such an extent.....that they have a dental problem and have to visit doctor at the earliest possible opportunity.  In the second case....it's now possible that they will develop a new phobia....Dentophobia (fear of dentists).....which is much worse than Amerophobia (at least in my book).   

Ten Rules over German Politics

This is my general list of unique rules of German politics and how things typically work.

1.  Debate, debate, debate.  Even in a non-election period, there's around ten hours each week on public-run TV (ARD, ZDF, and the dozen oddball minor networks) which offer up some journalists, intellectuals, and political figures.  The typical German might admit that he catches an hour or two per month.  If they are really enthusiastic about some subject or topic....they might be catching fifteen hours per month.  The debates can be rigged where there's only one person to represent one side of a topic and four others to represent the other side.  That's part of the moderation control and transparency problem.

2  Scandals rarely occur.  These days, divorce won't be handled as a scandal item for any German politician.  Even if you get caught with a fair amount of meth on you or some perverted sexual stuff....it'll get dragged under the rug by the press, unless you are a CDU political figure with a rigged up thesis for your master's degree from twenty-five years ago.

3.  The party rules.  The message comes from the party and it's agreed upon by each layer of politician.  If you stepped 180-degrees away from the party message.....they'd likely ask you to leave the party.

4  Because of the fifty-percent rule to get into the Bundestag or any of the sixteen state assemblies.....plus at least five political parties operating at the big-time level....it means that you really can't go and claim some very negative message against one particular party.  You might have to come up in a year and negotiate a coalition government.  This issue forces everyone to control their temper, their rhetoric, and their messages.

5.  Because of financial rules and past scandals.....it's hard for any political party to get money under the table for 'favors'.  It might be accomplished at the local level where a mayor or city council member triggers property changes or eases rules for certain parties.....but that's usually as far as this will go.

6.  A major political player will step through the local scene, the state scene, and advance to the national level.  It is impossible for some guy to appear out of nowhere and suddenly be considered a national party player with no prior experience.  Some will try to say this was advanced after Hitler and the 1932 election.....but the truth of the matter is that they were already going this way prior to 1920.

7.  If you have marginal debate skills.....you don't advance past the local level.  It's pretty simple....you need to stand up in a forum, talk over a topic, and deliver some position.  Without that ability, you are doomed for advancement.

8.  City, state, and federal-level voting all occurs on a different schedule.  Cities and states run a five-year program.  The national level voting pattern is every four years, unless a crisis occurs and provokes a call for another election.

9.  Germans aren't hyped up on politics like Americans.  Until this immigration crisis came along, Germans weren't hyped twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year on politics.  Immigration is a singular issue which has churned up attention on all different levels.....local, state, and national.  Every single German has some opinion about it.  But beyond that, there just isn't any other topic which demands that much attention.

10.  A national poll from late 2015 indicates that almost sixty-percent of all Germans have little to no trust in the public-run news media (Channel One and Two).  As much as they were key in helping project a political message prior to 2015.....they have burned various bridges to reach the stage of today, and the majority of Germans have a problem in watching their news and their message.  To help in a political crisis?  A major tool has been lost.....across all fronts.

Discussing Xenophobia

During an average week of Channel One (ARD) viewing.....if you watched eighteen hours a day of the offerings there.....you'd hear the word Xenophobia uttered at least two-hundred times for the entire week.  The news journalists will utter it.  The intellectual crowd will utter it.  And the politicians will utter it.

If you were playing the whisky shot game (one shot per utterance of Xenophobia)....you'd have to have at least eleven bottles of booze per week (assuming eighteen shots per bottle).

What's the actual real meaning and history behind Xenophobia as a word?

Around 1903, some intellectual folks who'd studied Latin in college were writing up critical summaries over racism.....particularly in Africa.  There is some belief (not a lot of evidence I will admit) that W. E. B. Dubois (the scholar and essayist) may have used the word first.

What the Latin enthusiasts did was simply take two Latin words and connect them.  Xeno meant foreigner, and phobia mean an irrational fear.

It was an intellectual way of taking the discussion to the next level and having some word to fit their dialog.

If you examine phobias......they have a fascinating trail.  Phobias were first discussed around 470 to 410 BC.....by Hippocrates....the Greek guy with a great fascination of medicine and the human mind.

Phobias were supposed to be a packaged deal where you had something wrong with you and for most folks....it was irrational.  For example.....you went nuts if a spider were on the way ten feet away.  Or you went crazy if you had to cross a bridge with water running under it.  These were all irrational or deemed so by the smart guy in the bunch (the intellectual).

By the late 1800s......we were up to the Sigmund Freud era.  Here....phobias were simply classified as conflicts of the mind.  They could be discussed and worked out into a fixable solution.  If you were afraid of tall women, electricity or cats....well....a good long discussion and mental notes in your mind would help you overlook those tall women, electricity outlets, or cats standing there by the door.

The problem with Xenophobia is that it generally means you have an irrational fear of foreigners or things of a foreign nature.

The fact that you come from England and easily associate with Russians or Chinese people....would create an issue in using Xenophobia.  The fact that you can eat just about any food of a foreign nature (except perhaps Asian food)....doesn't exactly make you Xenophobic.  The fact that you like just about every kind of alcohol or booze out there except for Italian or French wine....doesn't make you Xenophobic.

Phobias were created in a way to be used by medical personnel to describe an extreme condition that existed upon irrational behavior.  An example would be a person who goes into fits over fog, and runs into a building whenever a fog episode occurs.  Another example would be a person who who has a fear of failure....to the extent that they will not take any risks or chances in life and eliminate any hope of a career or success.  Another example would be the person who has an irrational fear of hospitals, and can't possibly enter one for any reason.....even if for a life-threatening situation.

These are treatable phobias....well.....at least the doctors will tell you that these are treated by some experts with positive outcomes.

Xenophobia being treatable? Experts will say that it's a step by step process.

You get the guy with this irrational fear to explain what the irrational fear really is.  It helps if he's confused, non-intellectual, and naive.  If he's not confused, naive and seems to be fairly intelligent....then layers his response with actual answers....you can't readily conclude that it's an irrational fear.

In this case.....when the accused Xenophobic delivers five to ten reasons why this cultural or this group doesn't fit into common society....it's more difficult to note this as being illogical or irrational.

Typically, the specialist or intellectual in this case.....will try to utter the phrase....well...."you are wrong" or "ethically, you've attached yourself to a bad position".  Things usually don't go well after that point between the two individuals.

The use of facts?  This helps.....unless of course the person accused of being a Xenophobic also has facts.

Having someone from the feared group come to the meeting and try to make them appear happy, cheerful and a valued member of the community?  The person accused of being a Xenophibic will pull out a picture of the foreigner who tried to sell him heroin this morning at the train station.....or the foreigner who tried to rob him on the street this morning....or the numerous pictures of a ghetto area of foreigners which exists now on the west part of town.

Shuffling over to food situations of the foreigner helps to some degree.  The Xenophobic guy might suggest an Italian pizzeria.....which he has no issue with....or the Greek place where he has no issue, or even the Mexican place with no issue.  Maybe he'll agree to the Syrian restaurant with no issue. Food is usually meant to be eaten and not transformed into some psychological phobia session.

The thing you need to worry about....is that this person who've you accused of being Xenophobic will eventually read up on Latin.....get smart....and then invent some phrase like Nazi-phobic.....which will up being defined as a person so fearful of their cultural past....that they might attach themselves to a fraudulent lifestyle to appear nice, cheerful, diplomatic, open and pleasant...in a fake way to be seen as normal.

Being Nazi-phobic would eventually cause you to accuse others not sympathetic to your lifestyle.....as Xenophobic.

Two phobia freaks in a head-on collision?

Well.....yeah.  These two can't sit at the same table, or participate in normal discussions.

Is Nazi-phobic treatable?  Well.....they (the accused) say no.  Frankly, I think if you use the same methods as were being used on the Xenophobic guy.....it ought to work.  Well....maybe if this is part of some drinking game at the bar while watching Channel One's political chat forums and seeing how many times Xenophobic gets uttered and downing a drink each time between the two with issues.  Maybe the two can reach a drunken state, and things all come out even.

What.....me cynical?  At least I don't have Teutophobia (an irrational fear of Germans).

Three More Safe Countries

If you watched the German news from last night.....some meeting occurred in Berlin where both the CDU and SPD political parties came to a mutual agreement.  Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia got put on a list of "safe countries".

That means if you arrive in Germany and try to use the excuse for asylum or immigration of it being too dangerous in your home country (one of those three).....it's a virtual zero chance that you will be accepted.  You might be able to draw things out for six months waiting for the Germans to fumble this along.....but they will reach a point and just say no visa will be granted.

What if you say you are a gay Muslim from Algeria?  Well....that will get a different type review for a social excuse, and your odds then go up in nature.....at least above zero where 'safe-status' would be declared currently.

The guys already in Germany from these three countries?  No one says much.  If you were here on a visa, which had a time limit attached to it.....it means that it'll come to an end and either it'll be extended or converted into citizenship.  But if they pull out the safe-status of Alteria, Morocco and Tunisia.....you'd think that no extension would be allowed and you'd be given the hint to plan on leaving Germany.

The effect of this?  Well, it's an odd thing when you look at drug empire sales (illicit of course) in urbanized cities of Germany.  The Turks used to control most illegal drug activity.....then in the 1990s....the Africans came to corner part of the market.....and in the past decade....a number of North Africans came to dominate the drug empires of Germany.  An aggressive police routine.....aggressive prosecutors....and aggressive asylum officials could use this updated situation given to them from Berlin to carve out a major crime element affecting big cities throughout Germany.

The question would be.....will they use this opportunity or just stand from the distance and watch things unfold at a natural pace?

Germany's 67,194-Issue

N-24, a German commercial TV news network.....brought up the topic of refugee and immigrant unaccompanied minors this morning.

It's a short piece which drives home the simple statistic of a lot of kids in the refugees crossing the border.....having doubled in one single year.  The word "phenomenon" was used on two or three occasions in their description of the issue.

Right now....there are 67,194 total unaccompanied minors in Germany...under the welfare system of the government.  This means they have to appoint a guardian....cover the kid with all the necessary requirements in life....and closely supervise them.  No one says the total cost of this....but you can figure it's a home-like structure with one or two adults trying to monitor a couple of the unaccompanied minors.  You can do the math with every eight such minors, and come to realize that the government has to employ at 8,000 Germans in some capacity of a minor-home-supervisor.

N-24 suggests in their commentary that by the time you figure up the total costs of this situation....each single unaccompanied minor will cost a minimum of 40,000 Euro a year.

How the situation develops?  No one is saying these are Syrian or Iraqi or North African.  These sort of statistics don't get tossed around in public....for whatever reason.  My guess is that a 12 or 14-year old kid is standing there.....in a lose-lose situation, and boldly makes the decision to leave.  He gets the info....the route...and somehow comes up with the cash to make the trip possible.

What if the trend continues?  That would be a curious thing to ponder upon.  If you had another 20,000 such minors arrive in 2016....that's another 800-million Euro that the Germans would have to dig up....on top of the 2.6-billion Euro that they have to spend on non-German minors presently.  Just finding competent people to work the home environment itself will eventually become a problem.

So, it's another one of the one-hundred odd complexities added to the immigration and asylum deal....which make it more and more impossible to resolve or feel happy about.

Local Robbery

My local news (from Wiesbaden) had a police blotter report this morning....covering a robbery-break-in from Friday night/Saturday morning.

Somewhere in the southwest end of Wiesbaden....some guy broke into a gardening shop and stole an entire pallet (two dozen boxes) of chainsaws/brush cutters.  These weren't the cheapo types....cops put the total value of the stolen items at 25,000 Euro.

The thing is....if you stand and think about it....how do you move or profit off stolen merchandise like this?  High end chain saws?  Maybe you can connect with some guy who has another gardening item shop but they will ask questions if you trying to sell them five or six as a private guy.  Black market for high end chain saws?  If you were looking for a dozen items which would be hard to 'fence'....high-end chainsaws would be on my list.  Ebay the items?  Maybe, but the minute you hint that they are practically new....some idiot will get suspicious and email the cops if this appears as possible stolen items.

I'm not saying this was a stupid break-in but you just have to wonder about the angle to this and how anyone would profit easily from stolen goods.

The Can-Only-Lose Game

If you head southwest out of Stuttgart....about an hour's drive.....right at the edge of the Black Forrest....is the city of Freiburg.  It's a university town of 230,000 residents, and has a fairly rich history.  It also has a number of pubs, nightclubs, and discos (I know it's shocking to Americans that discos still exist but yes, they never went out of style in Germany).

This past week, the newspaper from the region stumbled across a recent new policy that several of the nightclubs and discos have implemented....either restricting or liming access into the clubs.  There's been talk of incidents where non-Germans showed up....harassed women, at least one attempted rape, some violence against the bouncers, and increased pickpocketing.

It's not a policy of all clubs or discos in the area....just a half-dozen.  Cops have come to view the decision made but haven't said much.

For me, it's a private enterprise and there are various rules which have been in effect for years....you can't enter because of your age and alcohol served, ladies night where only ladies can enter, or stopping people from entering because of bad behavior.

I would imagine if you show up at the door and look non-German....they will ask for a passport.  Since German law requires you to carry a passport card.....you would produce it or skip the bar.

I'm guessing that some 'gut-Germans' from the local area will bring this up in a city council meeting and intimidate the members.  I looked at the make-up of the city council.....forty-eight members.  It's a heck of a lot.  But here's the odd factor.....thirteen political parties make up the city council.

From the left side....the Greens and the SPD have 19 votes.  The CDU barely 9 votes.  The Independent Women Party, the Christian Party, and "The Party"....one vote each.  Then some oddball parties (the Culture List, Livable Freiburg, etc).

It's a college town, so there's a tendency to have a lot of left-leaning votes.  My guess is that they will be forced to discuss the actions of the pubs and bars....offering some kind of law that would eliminate discrimination.   The bars would likely challenge this in some local court, and the judges might look at the Basic Law (the Constitution) to find what power a nation, state or city can use to force a disco to accept customers.  As silly as it sounds.....it will be viewed by the public as serious business.

It's a can't-win situation.  If you allow a trend to continue where women customers are harassed and pickpocketing escalates.....then people won't come.  If you use the ID at the door to limit customers, you will be screwed over by politicians looking for an angle and probably face a fine.  Less business?  That means less tax revenue for the state.  Less public interest in your local pub or disco scene?  That means people head out of town to other operations.  Everyone loses in the end.

Tegal and Its Future

Tegel Airport (Berlin)....has been around for just over a hundred years....at least in some form of military support or aviation-related support.

Northwest from Berlin centrum...maybe five kilometers away....it is an airport on a death-list of sorts.  It sits on what was Berlin territory and currently has around twenty million passengers a year who transit the airport.  It is one of the few major airports in Europe which has no subway or railway connections.  The topic got brought up in the 1960s, the 1970s, and the 1980s.....but the general comment was that Tegel would shut down....so why waste money on a subway system to the airport.

When BER opens (I know....it's been five years since opening day, and people have doubts that the problems can be worked out....but folks continue to plan for BER to open)....then Tegel will be put on a closure list and given X number of months to shut the operation down.

So, there is chatter now in Berlin about what to do when Tegel is finally torn down.  There's a 10-million Euro project to plan around this idea and what may come.

The term 'leisure oasis' gets brought up.

People want this airport area to transform itself into some magnificent recreational area, educational site, and technology center.  RBB (the Berlin TV public-run network) did a brief piece on the ideas.

Unlike most airports which ample room to build upon....Tegel never had that type of plus-up.  It was a well defined property and limited on enlarging itself.

In ten years, Tegel probably will be on the tourist list of things to see in Berlin.....just to see how the closure went, and what eventually was done with the property.

Hessen Poll After-Action

Last night, after the 8PM German nightly news.....my local Hessen public-run network (HR) ran a 25-minute last-minute scheduled special program....live....on the refugee crisis and featuring the top two political figures of the state (from the CDU and SPD Party).

Why?

Well, back on Monday, HR released a batch of polling slides related to politics and the refugee episode. It's probably the first poll they've done in three months, and after the Koln situation.

There are several shocks within the poll taken.

The AfD (the anti-immigration platform party)....has taken a 12-percent state voter situation.  Both the CDU and SPD are still up and fairly safe.

But hidden within the slides are two which tell an odd story.

First, there's this slide which addresses supporters who identified their party of support, and if they agree with the refugee crisis position that Merkel advocates.  At least a third of the voters of both parties (CDU and SPD)....don't approve of the current position. They still say they are with the two parties and NOT with AfD, but then you have to wonder....in a heated election period....would they step aside and vote AfD to send a frustration vote?

I did the calculations.  If both parties lost a third of their voters in November 2017's national election....it means that AfD would have 31-percent of the state vote, with the CDU roughly 8 points behind and the SPD nearly 12 points behind.

Second, there's another slide which addresses each issue area and which party would be the best to handle the problem.

Naturally, energy politics got brought up and almost half the population said that the Green Party would be best for that issue.

But the immigration situation was brought up and thirty-percent of the poll participants said NONE of the political parties are capable of now handling the issue. Not AfD, not SPD, and not CDU.

It basically means that almost a third of Hessens can't see the immigration and asylum episode as fixable.

My guess is that political folks met around on Monday night and discussed this matter at length.  It doesn't help CDU or SPD.  The poll will really shows a serious trend that has roughly 20 months to fix or both would suffer great negative numbers in the national election (Nov 2017).  If Hessen did get 31-percent for the AfD Party.....you'd have to anticipate the same or similar trend in other states.

So, they called up HR and had them rig up this last minute reality-news update....live and hyped.

Worried?  I'm guessing that people are now assessing the direction of voters and how this trend might seriously damage politics.  An entire generation of political figures might have to retire by 2017 and some new fresh message be drafted up to recover from an election defeat.

My Best Country Essay

US News and World Report.....did a survey and rated countries and the best to live in.

Germany came in number one....Canada number two....UK number three....and the US in number four.

There are different scales on this and one could argue about why this scale works and that scale doesn't.  So I reviewed this from my prospective.  The ten reasons why I'd rate Germany at the top, and the top reasons I probably wouldn't rate them at the top.

Positive?

1.  Lets face it....the autobahn system is absolutely the best in the world.  I will admit some lousy autobahn rest-stops bathrooms do exist, and I would not eat anywhere on the autobahn.  But if you simply talk road conditions, planning, and maintenance....no one runs a better system.

2.  If you wanted the image of Disneyland as your national image....Germany does it better than anyone else.  Landscape, architecture, infrastructure, and quality.

3.  You can stop in any town in Germany....at some Omma's cafe...sit down and order the schnitzel plate, and shock yourself with a four-star plate at a fair price.  Toss in a premium beer, and some desert later.....you can't do much better.

4.  Rail-wise....it's hard to beat the Bahn.  Oh, I admit....they really do screw up on some occasions....but until you've been screwed up on an Italian railway or Amtrak railway....you haven't seen nothing.  Their only weak point is that they can't design an air conditioner for passenger trains, and if the temperature ever gets above 90-degrees (Centigrade).....it's best to get off for the remainder of the day.

5.  It's hard to find a ghetto in Germany.  Maybe twenty years ago.....you'd never found a single example and today....there might be two or three dozen such examples.....but you can walk around lots of urban areas and just feel amazed at the lack of underclass neighborhoods.

6.  Crime.  Ok, it used to be non-existent.....now, it's marginally existent.  You can pick the locations and know it's a no-go area.  Otherwise, you are safe....twenty-four hours a day and need never worry about anything.

7.  Typically, when you finally called the tow service and the car is sitting in the shop....it's a 99-percent chance that you will have a real mechanic....who will absolutely determine the problem and fix the car.  Naturally, it's probably a Mercedes or Audi....with a computer onboard....telling Huns to remove this part and install a new one.  But....it's better than some New Jersey guy guessing it's this or that.

8.  Houses have color....yards have style....streets appear clean and tidy....parks are designed for recreation and purpose....and walking trails exist to keep old retired guys busy.

9.  Things work.  If the train is supposed to arrive at 3:30....it gets there typically on time.  Bridges don't fail.  Bakeries open up on time.  Germans pride themselves on this matter of things working.

10.  If you crave five-star history....nothing ranks higher than Germany.

So, we come to issues list:

1.  Big infrastructure projects are designed to fail (BER is just one example of dozens).  Stuttgart-21 will fail....miserably.

2.  Politicians and journalists hang out at parties, dinners, grand-openings, cafes, and fests.  The buddy-buddy routine has issues.  Note: Americans kinda do the same thing....but German journalists pride themselves on saying they are transparent...when they aren't.

3.  Big city urban areas are growing in crime statistics and marginal cop protection.  A decade ago....you wouldn't have uttered no-go.....now, there are such areas.

4.  Everything....absolutely everything....is touched upon taxation.

5.  This is the land that developed the best wine and beer that you can imagine.....and then built some absolutely strong DWI laws around consumption.  You'd best plan to sip at a local pub and walk back to the hotel or house.

6.  Now that everyone sees Germany as the Disneyland of the world....from their marginal place of existence....it's the place to aim for in terms of refugeeism (my word).  If you build it....they will come.

7.  Anarchists do exist in Germany, along with hooligans, Marxists, leftists, Nazis, Goths, professional hobos or tippelbruders, and fascists.  The guy at the pub....the kid next to you on the train....the teenage girl with combat boots who winks at you at the cafe....and even the dental technician who works on your teeth....they might all be of the 'other' class.  So, don't get excited about the possibility of bumping into one or two every day.

8.  All this magnificent and ancient stuff, castles, fortresses, towers, and manors?  They have upkeep, maintenance issues, and yearly costs attached.  Somebody has to pay....either through entry fees or taxation.

9.  There are 14,500-odd hours of public-run TV production per month.  For your roughly 18 Euro....mandated that you pay....you must be getting something for your money, but a growing number of people have doubts about that.

10.  German bureaucracies spend an awful lot of money on art, things that look artistic, and things which were labeled art but look like junk.  This all gets attached to some wall....mounted on some concrete pad....or put in some city park.  Even Germans complain about this and the cost involved, but it's a historical thing and they are awful proud of this tradition.

Midnight Show

Late night TV on German television....is pretty much marginal.  Tuesday night, there was some jungle-camp deal with no-name promi-stars, a cop-murder movie, reruns of some 1980s American shows, some fake reality shows, and from ARD (state-run Channel One)....a hour-long chat forum with a Muslim intellectual.

I probably caught ten minutes of it before I fell asleep (they run stuff like this at midnight....go figure).  Shockingly, today....a number of people....well, probably a couple of dozen because most people were likely asleep at midnight...commented on what the guy said.

Enlightenment and self-criticism were the two key terms that he threw out there....noting that the religion needed both.  It's probably been the only time in the past year where some open-handed comments came out in the religion discussion.

The amusing side of this is the candid behavior by the guy probably would help in the current German discussion.  But they left this to the midnight period, where barely 5,000 Germans out of 80-million sat and observed the whole hour-long discussion.  Intentional?  That's what I wonder about.

Oddly, the ARD folks put this on their web site at 2AM....allowing commentary for six hours before cutting it off.  A fair number of folks said the same thing....finally some refreshing prospective and suggestion on reform....just why run this with almost no one watching.

The platform here is that state-run ARD can claim that they have been open-minded and showed a different prospective.  Maybe it's just an odd thing that they picked midnight and hardly anyone is around to watch it.....but people could download it.  I'm pretty sure if I asked....they'd admit that almost no one over the age of forty downloads anything from their site, and the handful that do....are mostly college kids.

Austria and the Cap Limit

Yesterday, Austria finally came to some agreement on having a limit (per year) to refugees being allowed to stay and get a visa there....37,500.

Why 37,500?  This was not exactly laid out from the half-dozen news pieces that I read.  Most 'scientists' like to use some statistical number, multiplied by another number, and then pumped through some Excel-spreadsheet....down through seven columns, and then you'd arrive at some number like 37,489.  My hunch, the political guy standing there didn't want to talk about the dozen odd factors and multipliers.....so he rounded it up to 37,500 to be even and avoid discussion.

There are 8.47 million residents in Austria.  There are roughly 810,000 foreigners (at least legally) who live there....coming close to ten-percent of the population.  Of this group.....roughly 350,000 are Turkish.

What they said via interviews....was that the control and decision process would literally take 'minutes'.....not the six months that the BAMF in Germany now takes for paperwork and decision-making.  If someone was found to have lied in the process?  They get picked up later when the lie is discovered and taken to the airport....sent home....no second-chance to tell the truth.

How quick would the 37,500 number be reached?  No one says much....but I'd take a guess that the quota would fill up in a matter of four to six weeks.  What happens to the rest?

Well, that is the curious part of this quota system.  No one....from Austria or Germany talks about the effect after you meet the ceiling.

I sat and pondered upon this.  The truth is....people will still come through Greece and walk the 1,500-odd kilometers to reach either Austria or Germany. What happens after yearly quotas are met?
My humble guess is that they'd be pushed into a refugee camp and told to get a number, and when your number comes up.....you'd get a visa.  If this took a year....two years.....three years....well, that'd be the method of controlling the flow.  In some ways, the government would just grin at the citizens of the country and say they were obeying the populist theme of controlling refugees.  At the same time.....the public would still be taxed enough to pay for refugee centers that would grow in size and scale.....with people sitting there for not just weeks or months.....but perhaps years.

Maybe I'm wrong about this.....but this gimmick to say you have a upper limit and only these visas will be given out this year.....has nothing to do with limiting the size of the refugee camps/centers.

Now, if I were some guy or gal from a war zone....I wouldn't care about this too much.  I'd just want a real shelter, food, and the ability to feel safe.  For a number of migrants or immigrants.....it's a different deal....they wanted a job, a car, and an opportunity.  This group, in the literal sense, would be screwed with the ceiling cap limit.  None of them would be agreeable to sitting for one, two or three years and waiting for some stupid visa to occur.

I'm not so much buying into the idea that ceiling caps will fix anything....it'll just change the game....making some people happy (the residents of the country), and some people very unhappy (the immigrants).

An Essay Over Complexity, Germans, and Immigration

It's one of those Wednesday afternoon essays that I write after a long walk.

I sat once and watched some German cooking show (I admit it's torture, but sometimes it's a choice of that, a reality show over a German bachelor farmer hooking up with a slutty trailer trash gal, some fake German krimi movie where sixteen murders occur within a twenty-four period, or two Bavarian doctors slobbering all over some Russian countess in a romantic comedy movie)......where the German cook decided to cook up some magnificent French dinner.

The thing was....there had to be at least forty different ingredients on the table, with the guy dazzling you with three separate wines for first, second and third course of the dinner.

Complexity was something that amazed me.....and how it seemed to work in the end.  Well....the folks seemed to give hand gestures and murmur French and German words as if they were in some lusty moment of passion.....over the dinner menu.

So you gaze over at the immigration, refugee and asylum episode.....and you just feel like it's a 40-ingredient French dinner.

First, when some idiot says there were 1.1 million applicants to enter the country for 2015....they just aren't all Syrian.  And to be honest....if you used the normal numbers (before 2013).....it was pretty normal for Germany to have 200,000 to 250,000 people try to migrate or sneak into Germany.

German statistical folks and political players are always careful not to tell you how many used to pass and get a visa in the pre-crisis period.  So you can't be sure.  From the 1.1 million.....probably 250,000 were the regular folks who weren't part of the herd.

The statistical folks will tell you that roughly 40-percent of the 1.1 million were from Syria or Iraq.  But then they don't want to admit that fake passports started to get noticed after August of 2015, and that maybe some folks (maybe even 40,000 of them) were received and applied the paperwork but did so with fraudulent Syrian passports.

I did notice last night.....some German journalist in Greece talking to the right people, and they had twenty fake passports out there......some American ones too.....ready to go for the right price.

The second big issue is that religious discussion.  Nobody says how many are Christians or Muslims from the statistical office.   The state governments running the immigration centers will say that certain centers only handle Syrians, and certain ones will only handle Albanians.  Oddly, about every week, you hear about a fight between this nationality and that nationality....so the split camp idea sounds good on paper, but it's probably fake.

To be kinda honest, even if you lined up a hundred Syrian guys....you might discover that half of them just aren't that enthusiastic about the Islam business but they keep up appearances because of social settings.

Course, it bothers Germans because so much of German society was built on Christian values.  Christmas, Easter, and most of the fests.....all have some element tied into them.  They kinda want those elements to continue on.

But then you mention lessening church numbers, fewer churches, and a German will grin for a moment and admit that they've kinda peaked out.  The Romans brought Christianity into the region....knocking out the previously accepted Germanic religions (Celtic related).  For several thousand years....non-Christian religions existed in the Germanic lands.

The third big issue revolves around education and job background. Syrians are fairly lucky people....Assad and his dad (Assad Sr).....put an emphasis on higher education.  You actually find a fair number of Syrians showing up with degrees, or craftsman type backgrounds (mechanics, bakers, logistics, etc).  German companies have been enthusiastic for five or six years (taking in Greek, Spanish and Italian unemployed but qualified or educated people).

But then you run into a large segment of folks from northern Africa without much to show.

Adding to the conflict of decision-making.....then you find that folks will claim such-and-such education but be unable to prove the validity of the statement.  Because of the war.....there's not a clear way to establish accomplishments.

The fourth issue is the German addition to prove themselves as 'good-Germans'.  It's been a preoccupation since WW II and the Nazi business.  There's always that frustration about the 'good-American' and the 'good-Brit'.....so knocking either and showing the foundation of the marvelous new German would be helpful.  I would take a guess if you marked some German as an "intellectual"....it's about a ninety-five percent chance that he's pro-immigrant/pro-refugee.

In my humble view.....the good-German theme is sells itself easily.  You want to save lives....help the hopeless.....feed the hungry.....shelter the refugees....and redeem some respect. It ought to be owed, in some fashion.

The problem is....you twist and slide upon some scale where there is the good immigrant/bad immigrant.....or the good refugee/bad refugee.  At some point, you suddenly realize that among the forty people in the room....you've got two or three drug-thugs with no respect for anyone, and two or three people with an overdosed view of some religion with the capability to kill you because of a cartoon, an open blouse, a refusal to respect them, or some words left over from the 7th century.

At some point, you suddenly realize that from all the neighbors and friends you knew last month who were gleeful and happy over the whole good-German thing....several have a bad taste in their mouth now, and not quiet as enthusiastic as you are.  You quietly wonder what changed.  It's a bit.....well....complex.  And you'd rather it not be that way.

The Purgatory Trio

For the last couple of days, I've been following the Red Army Faction (RAF) story....the armored-car robbers....Ernst-Volker Staub, Marie-Luise Burdock and Burkhard Garweg.  What the cops generally say is this leftover crew (the last generation of the RAF from the early 1990s) have been active in crime.....mostly in what they believe is an attempt to cover 'pension' requirements.

The story has interested me.  You have to stand back and think over this period of time, the RAF crew, and what they fell into.

Officially, at least by their last communique....the RAF came to an end in 1998.  Most who've studied the German terrorist operation will say that the RAF started to shut-down operations back in the spring of 1991 in Dusseldorf with the assassination of Detlev Karsten Rohwedder.  Rohwedder wasn't exactly a household name and it is still sort of a puzzle why he figured into some assassination attempt.

Rohwedder was a SPD Party member and a manager by trade.  At some point as the Wall came down and all these East German state assets were stuck in the hands of a united Germany.....Rohwedder got called in and assigned the job of selling off the properties. Some were business operations.....some were simply apartment complexes....some simply warehouses.

Why some RAF hostility over Rohwedder? The typical response would be that it was government policy that the RAF disagreed with....in terms of disposing of property or assets.  The more you think about it.....it really doesn't work. It may be that some insiders felt that special deals were supposed to be concluded with them favorite assets, and they weren't willing to play in the bidding process. Eliminating Rohwedder would send a message.....while thug-like in nature....that was the typical RAF attitude (even from the 1970s).

Wolfgang Grams, RAF member, was the one accused of the murder.  The German cops took this assassination as a personal matter, and spent roughly two years hunting down Grams.  In some confrontation that went wrong, and Grams pulling a gun on GSG-9 cops (the federal guys).....killing one and then falling off the railway platform....then shooting himself in the head (the story is often challenged but various courts have viewed the evidence).

A month or two prior to Grams confrontation with the GSG-9 cops.....he and another member got into a planned bombing episode at the major new prison in Weiterstadt....designed for terrorists.  The blast did massive damage to the facility and triggered a significant delay.  It could be said that targeting of the this last generation of the RAF had a different path than the previous two generations.

As for the trio of bandits now?

Put yourself into their shoes.  As the Wall came down in November of 1989....these three members were likely sitting in a safe-house in West Germany.  Their safe-house host/hostess?  Friendly toward the anti-fascism and Marxism movement.

I would take a guess that the safe-house host was living either on a farm-house operation in a rural area of Germany (maybe the Hunsruck), or perhaps in some bakery front operation on the second floor with a private area in the rear.

As the days went by and the collapse of any DDR logistical support (it's tough to prove such existed, but they didn't run their operation off nothing).....these three sat in a purgatory-like atmosphere.  They couldn't really leave and they couldn't really turn themselves in.

Their host/hostess vowed to protect them, and this happy group of terror enthusiasts found themselves trapped.

As the months went by, the best that they could do....was simply arise each morning....drink some coffee....help the host/hostess in some way....getting paid nothing.

They couldn't associate with other people....hang out at bars and tell rich colorful stories....or travel far and wide beyond the German border.

Contact with friends or relatives from their past became impossible.  They might have occasionally passed a single card over to a friend and asked them to pass it to their family.....but they lived solitary lives.

After a while, they probably looked at the host/hostess of their safe-house and figured money was now a problem.  Robbing armored bank vehicles?  Well....it's a safe job if you plan it out and do your homework.  They had time and set upon a routine.

They probably convinced the safe-house folks to acquire a RV or camper trailer.....using it to park in some area and plan out an operation.  Two or three weeks later....they'd complete the job....return to the safe-house and fund the safe-house operation as best as they could.

You can frame this image....the two gentlemen and this lady....basically glued to each other since 1989, with their safe-house host/hostess.  They have to overlook personal habits and stupid comments....arguments are kinda forbidden....and there's this element of reality that training doesn't really cover.

The three are stuck.  They can't go forward, nor can they retreat.  They've been left in place by their keepers, and there is no plan B to extract them or help them resettle.

I don't really feel sorry for them.....they didn't exactly ask a lot of questions over the anti-fascism values or Marxism there in their younger years.  Maybe over the past decade or two....they've had some time to reflect, but what good does that do now?  The past practice of the cops?  People believe some agenda exists and the cops will shoot or execute any RAF member they come across....so surrendering isn't an option.  My guess is that each of the three carries a gun, and reserves a bullet in the end to kill themselves.

The cops aren't stupid.  Eventually, they will go back to the December attempted armored bank vehicle....draw a circle of twenty kilometers and look at every campground within that circle and who left the week after the attempt.  Maybe there's a list of 400 RVs and campers....but somewhere on that list will likely be someone who lives on an isolated farm or in a larger-sized house with plenty of space for three extra people. Eventually some confrontation will occur, and the three will end their purgatory visit.

Refugee "Syndrome"

Focus (the German news magazine) wrote up a great piece today over a German social worker who was hired roughly a year ago to help handle the immigration overflow.  It's a piece worth reading.

From the description....this social worker was in some initial stage of exhilaration and jubilation when hired.  This was an atmosphere where she'd be able to help good people and demonstrate the worthy nature of German people.  

Today?  Disillusion has arrived, and on the miserable index of one to ten....she's pushing a ten.

She says it right up front....the vast number of her daily encounters are now troublesome.  Her effort was to support a center in Hamburg with around 1,500 refugees.

Weeks went by in the initial stage of the job, and each client drilled directly into the enthusiasm that she brought to the office.

Why?

They came to Germany with expectations.  There was some imaginary checklist and benefits package in their mind when they crossed the border.  You arrive in Germany....you'd show up to register.....paperwork would lead onto the package deal.  There would be the nice apartment, the car, the immediate job, etc.

How did the refugees reach this conclusion?  My hunch is that social media helped to funnel the image to them.  We aren't talking about just Syrians.....it reaches across to each particular group.  A handful of people who made the transition back in the 1990s....simply spoke of the stepping process and made it sound simple and easy.

People pumped up and fuming?  Yeah.  They really did believe the initial story and were willing to walk from Greece to Germany to get this fantastic deal.  When days in the refugee camp in Hamburg stretches in six months, and there's no apparent apartment handed to them.....simply a voucher to lead onto a down-payment and they have to find the apartment themselves, and are a bit shocked to see what a simple two-bedroom place costs.....the aggravation starts up.  The car business starts next....because they didn't note what a decent car costs....what the fuel prices add up to....or what monthly insurance (mandated) costs.

The most interesting part of her story is the paperwork and information process.  You see....some refugees sit there and provide data for the required paperwork....which turns out to be false.  You can imagine a German....hyped up on factual necessities....then discovering that they've wasted an hour in the interview process with someone who told them a bold-faced lie.  You'd like to ask why.....but you realize that they just don't know any better and probably were told by a friend to avoid the truth.

She even gets around to doctor's appointments which she has to help make at times....which people show some tendency to skip or forget.  In Germany, that's considered really bad manners which you miss some doctor's appointment, and that usually will get the clinic's administrator all irked.  When you call the next time.....they point out that they know that the last such appointment was a missed one, and be rather blunt about problems.

Being photographed?  That was one of the more negative comments in the article.  Germans would prefer you ask before you photograph someone.  It doesn't matter if we are talking about an instructor, a government worker, a teacher, etc.  In this case, the social worker had male refugees attempt pictures of her and she was fairly negative about that.

What you see.....is burn-out.  It took in this woman's case....twelve months to reach this stage.  She doesn't say she'll quit soon, but it'll eventually turn into some mental issue with physical symptoms.  A doctor will send her off to the Kur or some rehab unit for a month, and eventually.....she might even be able to get early retirement because of the issues.

My guess is that some mental doctor will eventually develop a syndrome for social workers, with all the attributes listed.  Refugee Syndrome will get diagnosed and eventually become some treatable illness.

Hessen Polling

Local state-run news media for Hessen did a political poll check.  It's not an election year, and things are fairly safe for the current coalition running Hessen's government (CDU and Greens).  I know....it's hard to imagine some conservative CDU folks with some liberal Greens....but they've made this work.

The new polling numbers don't look good for the coalition though.

CDU Party, 36-percent.
SPD Party, 26-percent
Green Party, 11-perent
Linke Party, 8-percent
FDP Party, 5-percent
AfD Party, 12-Percent

If an election were held today....the coalition of CDU and Greens would NOT be enough to run the state gov't.  The CDU would be forced into a relationship with the SPD.

However, the bigger issue is erosion of voters who are frustrated with the CDU, and moving toward the AfD Party.

How accurate is the poll?  HR used the normal method, and from past voting patterns....they were typically within one percent of the actual vote turn-out (say from 2013 as an example).

In this case, if you walk around and some stupid conversation starts up which invokes the topic of refugees or immigrants.....past CDU and FDP voters will say if the election was tomorrow....they'd vote AfD to send a message.  So, from this 36-percent that is hyped by the state-run news media.....I'd take a guess that it's really closer to 30-percent, and the AfD is really closer to 18-percent.

No one has to worry about this election business until 2018 (five-year schedule for Hessen).  Maybe by then the crisis will be over.  If not....it would be a shocker if Hessen saw a 25-percent AfD vote, just above a heavily weakened CDU and SPD situation.

RAF Story Continued

This morning, the various German news organizations are finally getting to an update over the Red Army Faction robbers (Ernst-Volker Staub, Marie-Luise Burdock and Burkhard Garweg).

In the month of December, there were two attempted armored car robberies up in the Bremen region.....both failures....both left DNA evidence of the three characters.

Most Germans are a bit shocked that the Red Army Faction now gets mentioned as active, violent, and aggressive.

So the rest of the story?  There's a third robbery which cops are absolutely sure that the three RAF members were involved in, and were successful, with at least a million Euro taken.

Then cops pulled out the elements of three people, robberies, usage of heavy weapons, and it's a curious thing.  Over the past twenty years.....there's at least seventeen such robberies (2 in Luxembourg).

Some of these involved not only machine-guns, but a bazooka.  Based on comments, the bazooka was simply shown....never used.

In most of these cases, they were successful.  Amount involved?  If all seventeen were them (some going into the pre-Euro period)....they've probably taken a minimum of five million Euro.....maybe even up to around ten million Euro.

The issue with the other robberies is that there is NO DNA evidence at the scene to show it might have been them.  It's the weapons, style of the robbery, and quantity of three to four members.  In several episodes.....it was four robbers.

How would this all fit?  I would speculate that the former RAF members (perhaps just the three, perhaps more)....were left in limbo after RAF collapsed.  They probably had a safe house deal, with one or two people from outside of the RAF circle to give them a safe environment.  I'm guessing they can't work, and the bank robbery episodes might all tie into one bundle....to cover 'retirement' for these three, and perhaps a couple additional members that the cops have looked for and never found.

It cost money to cover healthcare out of your own pocket, with private doctors who don't ask questions.

The location of all these robberies?  They dipped into the Pfalz for a raid.....same for Saxony-Anhalt....but they stayed mostly in northern Germany and Hessen, except for the two in Luxembourg.

My guess is that they've got a farm-like operation where they maintain a low profile, with some fourth member as the public figure who shops and ensures their logistical requirements are met.  In the case of getaway cars.....they always dump the vehicle, and no one ever spots their actual car.  They are smart about this, and from what the journalists put out.....they've yet to kill anyone.

Added note: To do pre-heist homework, you need to be around some point and observe matters for at least a week, maybe two weeks.  People like this don't stay in hotels, and the seventeen points are too far apart.  So, the three RAF members, and their buddy-host....have an RV or trailer....and they camp out in the region they will conduct the robbery....pretending to be Germans on holiday.  If they likely drew a 20-km circle and asked about campers who left the area the day or week after the July or December robbery....they'd probably get a list of 2,000 RVs/campers.  It might take six months to whittle the group down, but I think six good cops could easily solve this....if they knew what to look for.

An Epic End for Karl-Heinz

Most Americans have this image of Germans as iconic and stoic in some ways.  Occasionally, you have a reminder that chaotic behavior is allowed.

This week....the local newspaper up in Koln brings up an update to a funeral episode from July of last year (2015).

It is one of those stories that probably has a rich story leading up to the funeral but no one lays out the dead guy (Kar-Heinz B.).   Generally, when papers won't avoid confrontation with legal issues.....you last name get labeled with the first letter only.

Karl-Heinz has passed on from unspecified ailment (age 59).  So the funeral unfolds.

It's best to say that Karl-Heinz has made a name for himself and the family over the past couple of decades through the scrap metal business.  It's a tough business and sometimes kinda unfair to some people.

As the head of a scrape metal 'clan'.....he had angered a few people.  The journalist writing the article hints that maybe some folks were invited to the funeral, and some folks were NOT invited to the funeral.  It's up to you to guess the circumstances, and hostility that this generated.

What is said that the funeral possession met up at the 'hof' and had laid Karl-Heinz into the ground.  It is reported that some uninvited folks showed up at this point to show their respect (or perhaps disrespect).

Words were said.  Some folks took the words as insults.

A fight at the graveside then broke out.  Someone from the family called the cops.  It would have been almost mid-day....on a hot July day....with perspiration and sweat likely part of the occasion.  You can imagine the cop car showing up at a graveyard.  The two guys probably got out....viewed the mess, and they ended up calling for two more vehicles before peace was restored.

So, it's taken roughy six months for the cop report, police interviews and prosecutor interviews to occur.  Grievous bodily harm charges have been drafted up.  There is at least one charge of insult....which usually hints that someone said something to provoke another.  There is talk of disturbance of the peace (considering it is a graveyard, it might be an easy charge to push).

It's acknowledged that some of the witnesses have not been cooperate in the interviews and that probably has delayed this a fair amount.

All of this....over a dead junkyard guy?  Yeah.  There is some epic book here waiting to be written over Karl-Heinz, his life history, and the drama at the funeral with a fist-fight.  I don't know Karl-Heinz or his history.....but I'd take a guess that he'd be awful proud of some of the activities that occurred at the funeral.

RAF Players?

Once upon a time.....Germany was set ablaze by the Red Army Faction (RAF).

From 1970 until mid-1980s....West Germany faced almost a routine of RAF violence.  Around 1998, a public statement came out by the RAF that they were finished.  They felt that the nation had modified itself and become what they had intended back in the 1970s.  Well, that's the statement made....in truth, without DDR support, they were almost to the point of non-existence.

If you go and talk to any German over the age of fifty....they remember the period of the 1970s, the bombs, the murders, etc.  The curious thing is that they were able to conduct an act....then quietly disappear into an urban zone, and it was next to impossible to find them.

So, I bring this up....because back about seven months ago.....6 June 2015 to be correct....there was an attempted robbery of a an armored bank vehicle up in Bremen (near Stuhr).  Three masked bandits approached the vehicle....fired rounds....failed in their attempt to take the vehicle....and got away.  Cops would eventually find the getaway vehicles and do a DNA sample.

Curiously, the folks from the car are Daniela Klette, Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg.  All former RAF members and wanted by the German federal cops for well over 25 years.

Daniela, Volker and Burkhard were from the last generation of the RAF.  It's a interesting thing....the RAF would recruit folks....put them through a training phase (never in Germany)...then they've been participants in the operation for roughly five to ten years.  Most people say that burnout occurred for members, and that members would retire and walk away.  So, these represent the 4th and final generation of the party.

Where have they been?  Obviously since the 1990 period to now....twenty-six years have passed.  I'd take a guess that all three are 55 to 65 years old.

Why go after an armored car?  I'd take a guess that they've bumped into reality.  The DDR system probably helped them with some assumed identity but after the wall went down....they had to be part of the new Germany, and this meant....you had to work.  Well, after they take 50-percent of your salary for taxes, social pension and healthcare.....there's only a limited amount of money for life itself.  I suspect that the three sit there now....living marginal lives and would like to hit on some bank or armored car situation and get some retirement situation.  How much would an armored car have?  Maybe 100,000 Euro....maybe 200,000 Euro.

It is a comical way for these three old RAF players to be standing at this point in life.  No great pension, fake ID to exist off, waiting for some idiot to ID them, always worrying about some Stassi file getting out in the open and approaching older age.  Now, resorting to robbing armored cars to fix their problems.

The Flip-Flop Policy

Last week, I wrote a brief essay over the swimming pool policy of Bornheim (an hour's drive north of Wiesbaden)....closed to refugees because of some complaints about bad behavior at the pool.  At the time, I forecasted that after the weekend....they'd come to cancel their no refugees policy.  Well.....as of this morning, the management folks met, and agreed.....the no-refugees policy is to end on Wednesday morning.

All of this took place based on German swimmers (mostly women apparently).....who commented about verbal situations from young male immigrants and suggestive body language.

My guess is that political folks from the state level and lawyers got into the whole discussion....noting that you can't define such a policy.

What happens now?

I would take a guess that some portion of the regular customer base....maybe ten-percent....maybe five-percent....will say that they refuse to use the pool because they are scared bad behavior possibly occurring.

At some point, a week or a month down the line....some young punk is going to be stupid and make a verbal comment or do some inappropriate body language deal.....getting some German gal all disturbed, or getting some husband/boy-friend/lesbian wife angry, and then the cops get called.  They will come out with two guys....try to stabilize the situation with the German and find some pro-kid crowd around the accused kid.  The two cops will get nervous.....call for back-up....then twelve cops will be standing at the pool for some incident that involved the kid noting that the German lady had a shapely body, and Germans all furious about the suggestive situation.

At that point, the local news media will try to convey a minor problem.....but this will end up scaring off another ten-percent of the normal crowd at the pool

No matter what Germans say....pool operations are tied to some business plan and expected profits.  They may say it's a city-operated deal or absolutely non-profit....but they have no idea of how the local pool is dependent upon X number of people coming weekly and they can't afford to lose customers.

So, you will eventually reach a point where some security guy....not a life-guard or cop.....is standing around this stupid pool....trying to prevent young guys from saying stupid things or conveying inappropriate body language.

A pool bouncer?  Yeah.  It's the perfect job for a guy like me....I can be that intimidating.....but I have to admit up front.....I can't swim.  Knowing how stupid Germans are about job details....the pool bouncer will probably have to be certified as a swimmer.   Well....it would have been the perfect job for a retired guy like me....just to goof off....look serious....enforce good behavior and appropriate hand signs....wear Bermuda-shorts to work....amaze people with my limited tanlines, and threaten people with a stern look.

The Zimmerman Effect

Most German new media organizations don't pick up interviews by Dutch media organizations....unless it's some Hollywood connected deal or some political figure talking.  Today, Focus (the German news magazine) picked up a Dutch radio interview which has gotten some German state-run news folks all huffed up.

Dutch radio conducted an interview with a WDR (a sub-network off the state-run empire in Germany that heads up the northern part of Germany) reporter.

At some point in the interview.....they asked about the 'slant' of immigration, asylum and refugee news in Germany.  The public-run journalist.....Claudia Zimmermann....noted that they were told to report on the positive aspects of the refugee policy of Germany.  It was a collection of sentences which would typically bother the average German.

The 'slant'?  WDR was told to report positive comments, per instruction. No one says exactly where this came from....just that it was the intent.  

All of this 'slant' continued on until Koln and the New Year's Eve episode.

The hint given during this interview is that various committees decided upon the direction of the journalists and how the stories would be told.

WDR?  They were pretty vocal after this came out....no, they weren't slanting any story and no committees were handing out such instructions.  Additional comments by Zimmermann?  None.  I looked up Zimmermann.  She's not some young punk journalist signed out of some university in the last year or two.  She's been around for at least two decades in the news business.

So, you have to stand there and ask.....what exactly occurred here?  What did the Dutch interview stumble upon and what did Zimmermann really see?

My humble guess is that the Berlin leadership (not really Merkel but just the 'gang' itself) just kinda stood there and watched the immigration business grow from a meaninglessness number.....to a fairly robust number in the spring of 2014.

The Berlin crowd who should have shown some dynamic leadership and asked questions......simply stood to admire the situation.  Suggesting a fix?  For what?  They didn't see anything broke, so why fix a non-existing problem.

By the end of 2014....the numbers were increasing and the state-run news media saw this great human interest stories.  The immigrant rafts sinking in the Med.....the poor people making their way to Greece and the trail to Germany.....the 'good-Germany' serving as a light-house to asylum seekers.

So, out of various chats and party functions.....where Berlin political party enthusiasts and state-run news media members hang out....there was some type of euphoria that existed over this topic.  It wasn't money under the table, or promotions tied to good reporting.  It was simply an intoxicating moment of high spirits.

So boss X went to his meeting with the news controller staff, and they talked over the great positive message that they could carve out of the immigration, asylum and refugee exultation.  Perhaps exultation is a harsh word for some people.....but it's better than using the word 'glee'.

Then the news controller staffs went off to each division and sub-network and charged up people with a slanted way of telling a story.

You could always weave the word Xenophobic into comments if anyone asked stupid questions...whether it was a journalist or some poor German who doubted the slant.  That scared people to be insulted like that, and typically worked.

The Koln episode finally triggered journalists to be a bit embarrassed.  These are people who saw various angles and problems around the 'slant' and the actual government policy.  Normally, the job of a reporter is to always be critical and ask more questions.  When you fail to be critical or ask question.....you aren't a journalist anymore.....you're a cheer-leader.

Zimmerman?  I'm guessing that WDR will ask her to take two weeks off and reconsider her words.  At some point.....some other journalists from the state-run network side will stand up and say basically the same thing.  Within a week.....maybe five or six such people will admit that they felt the same way as Zimmerman.

The problem is....what now?  Sixty-plus-percent of German society doesn't believe the truthful nature of the news today (statistical report from fall of 2015).  This is simply icing on the cake.

My guess is that Zimmerman will say enough, and just walk away.  Maybe RTL or one of the commercial networks like N-24 will hire her, and life will go on.  Maybe the WDR will bring the 'herd' of reporters into a room and try to shake them enough and let them know that it's just not like Zimmerman spoke about.  Some idiot will ask why she left, and the WDR chief will look foolish in front of everyone.  Normally.....you'd fire the guy, but then you'd have to admit that there's something wrong.

So, that's it.  If you are a German.....your state-run news folks let you down.  Don't worry.....the TV council folks will ask stupid questions and eventually believe the story of the managers.  Life will go on.

Update: By the end of Monday, Zimmermann had backpedaled a bit.

The Poster Fix

Over the past week or two.....posters have started to go up around public pools in Germany.  They end up at the entrance and basically resemble a US comic book style drawing....thirteen drawings in full rich color....with "Baderegeln" across the top.

The poster is supposed to hint various rules of behavior at pools.

You aren't supposed to grab women's butts or bikini bottoms.

You can wear any normal clothing for the pool, of a decent fashion.

Everyone is supposed to act friendly toward others at the pool.

Be hygienic.

Don't stare at women.

Under each picture, is the German brief description for the behavior expected.

I looked at the drawing and it occurs to me that this wasn't something that occurred overnight.  To design this....draw it....mass-produce it.....someone had to be already working on this back in the summer of 2015.  It might come out now after the Koln business to be standard.....but already six months ago....it appears that they saw problems with public behavior at German pools.

For an American, German pools are a fairly different kind of operation.  It surprises me on the number and quantity throughout Germany.  Any decent sized village will have an outdoor pool.  Most major urban areas (like Mainz or Wiesbaden) will have at least one indoor pool....sometimes two or three of them.

In the Ramstein area.....back in the 1990s.....they built up a major indoor pool complex....almost as good a quality as a four-star resort.  A decade later on the east end of Kaiserslautern, they added another huge indoor complex.

All of this leads a large segment of the German population to regularly swim for exercise and stress-relief purposes.  I won't say it's cheap anymore, unless you have a standard outdoor complex.

As for the poster effect  It's hard to say if the problem-people will really pay attention to it or grasp what the Germans are suggesting.  Germans always have this perception....problems can be fixed.  In this case, I'm not sure that a simple poster will fix a complex problem.  If it was.....we'd have posters plastered all over buses, trains, sidewalks, public buildings, libraries and schools.

The Concept of Views

I sat and watched a 1999 interview with David Bowie.  I admit....I just never had much of an impression over his music (but I can say the same over rap, techno, the Bee Gees, the Bieber kid, and ninety-percent of Lady Gaga's stuff).

It's a curious interview where Bowie actually did display his intellect and wit.  So, the journalist came to this question about if perceptions or open views of society have really taken off.

In a brief two-minute discussion....Bowie opens upon on the idea that society in general (Europe and the US) stepped up to the 1970s with most people thinking along one single theme.  Something clicks in the 1970s, and from that point on.....there are different perceptions and different views.  We are for the most part....a multi-perception society from that point on.

One problem....ten different views?  Yeah.  It's a curious change which I would tend to agree with.

In fact, we are at a point where certain elements of society really don't want to hear ten views....they want one single view of a problem or simply to say there is no problem....thus there's no need for nine other and colliding views.

This dysfunction of society now has a certain group of people who are Fox-News-enthusiasts and they'd like to only get their news and perception from their people.  On the other side, there are the opposite crowd who only want their news from one source (CNN or the New York Times) and they desire to have only one single perception from their source.

The same issue works well in Germany with the do-gooder crowd or the gutmensch folks who will only view state-run news, and the Pegida crowd who have their version to view.

Bowie sums it up at one point in the interview.....about 9:40 into the conversation....about a new world viewing "duality" of subjects now.  The hinge of this duality?  The internet.  It was a brilliant summary of sorts.....where Bowie draws upon the beginning stages of the internet in 1999 (17 years ago).  Fragmentation....where you have to examine various 'truths' and eventually come to a centralized position that isn't a party-driven strategy, a populist one-sided view, or some long-winded news media position without concrete.

The sad part of this story?  You really need open dialog, free and open forums, and continued debate.  That's something that bothers a number of people.

Fixing the German Problem

One of the big issues in asylum applications, immigration situations and refugee status in Germany....is what you do after the guy or gal fails the paperwork exercise.

Most of German news media journalists will simply say that if you are an Iraqi or Syrian participant.....it's a 95-percent chance you will get a visa.  After that....your odds go down drastically....with some groups (Albanians for example, only getting a five-percent chance of approval).

The current practice by the government is to announce you've failed and in a couple of days....you will be either bused or flown back to your country.  What typically happens next is that the failed applicant will destroy his passport, and then the whole mess gets thrown into an unwinnable situation.

The Germans then have to approach the country of the applicant and note that he needs to return....and they need to manufacture another passport.  In most all cases (at least by what the German news media has said over the past year).....most countries don't want the guy back and they refuse to make another passport.

The current political game is that they talk about making up treaties between the EU and the various countries....where the EU would withhold financial considerations (it's a BRIBE in English but you just can't say that phrase in this context) from the country unless they act on the passport issue.

After you look at this for a while....at least for me....the solutions are pretty simple.

After some immigrant shows up in Germany and wants a visa....he needs to surrender his passport to a local office which locks it up in a vault.  You get some kind of German visa/passport which covers your actions in Germany.  If you fail the visa episode (it may take six to eight months)....fine, they got your original passport and you can be flown or bused out.

For issues that occur and no passport exists (because the guy tossed or destroyed it)?  Simple.  You go to the country in question and give them one month to deliver a passport for that guy.  Failure to do so?  No entry into Germany for any citizen of that country, for any reason (won't matter if they are a businessman, banker, tourist, etc).  You extend the no-enter status throughout the EU and establish the quick-to-fix routine for countries with bad attitudes.  Daily flights from various countries heading toward Europe would immediately stop and chaos would be dumped on local politicians to fix the problem.

The last part of my solution might be more difficult for Germans to accept.  Once a guy is declared failed on the visa and there is no passport to tie to the guy.....you pack him up and send the guy to a prison with actual guards.  He's not welcome or accepted...he's a problem. You treat him that way.

If Germans don't like the tough character of this?  Fine....just go ahead with the US-style concept of letting everyone stay and pretend there's no real policy at all.  Pretend there is no visa process, and just get on with life.

The fakeness of all of this....and the continued behavior of politicians saying they have a problem but they can't find a solution....well, it's more of a comedy than an exercise in democracy.

AfD Party Shift in Berlin Local Politics

If you look ahead in German politics at the fall of 2016....there's another state election coming....for the state of Berlin.  Yesterday, the AfD Party (the anti-immigration party in Germany).....shifted gears and brought in a new chairman for the regional party headquarters.

Beatrix von Storch is now the head of the AfD Party in Berlin.

The change?  Storch is a younger gal (44).....a lawyer....has a fair amount of education as a lawyer....and delivers sharp and clever speeches.  She started her education in the banking sector, then slid over to law, and studied in both Germany and Switzerland. She's been a representative for the AfD Party in the EU for the past year.

Why all this matters?  There's going to be a bump-up for the AfD after the March elections (3).  She'll have six months to maneuver around Berlin....get into talk forums....and carve up on CDU voting patterns.  The CDU in 2011's state election took only 23.4-percent of the vote (the SPD Party took 28.3-percent).  The AfD didn't exist in 2011.....so you can't really say how they'd fare in the local politics.

My humble guess is that AfD ought to be able to easily take 10-percent in the fall election, without a lot of effort.  If you had an accomplished political figure who made great debate action in the last month of the election?  Well....that's the thing.  Storch might be able to take half of CDU's normal voting pattern, and even a quarter of the SPD frustration vote (unless they shift on politics).

It doesn't mean that the AfD can win....it just means they'd be standing there with 15-percent of the vote, with the SPD clearly in the winner's seat but with only 25-percent of the vote.  If the CDU takes only 12-percent of the vote....it'd be a massive and disruptive loss for them and drag in all kinds of potential changes for the 2017 election season.

And no....don't anticipate any partnership between the SPD and AfD groups.  The SPD locally in Berlin would likely be forced into some coalition with the Linke Party AND the Greens in order to lead local state affairs.

Big Raid on Saturday Evening

Sometime around 5:30PM in Dusseldorf yesterday.....local cops started a 300-man raid on what they call the Maghreb-quarter (adjacent to the train station there in Dusseldorf).

Generally, what the news media says.....this was against North African criminal gangs that now roam the station area.....either robbing people or making drug sales in the area outside of the station.

All the cops will say is that they brought a bunch of guys into a tent they erected there.....asked questions....interrogated folks....and arrested a "few".  My interpretation is that few means less than fifteen.

What'd they get out of this massive effort for a handful of arrests?

I'm guessing everyone was photographed, with names attached to each, and their status to be in the country was settled.  There's a database that you can now bump against and use surveillance to easily build cases.

The other element is that this raid occurred mostly around cafes and pubs where the gangs operate.  So it wouldn't surprise me if cops deposited a dozen-odd bugs and have easy access to the thug's conversations.

When you look back at the NSU-murder case that eventually got worked up by cops.....they put tremendous effort into cameras and bugs, and there were thousands of hours of collected information for the cops to hand over to the prosecutor for court efforts.

I think the cops might sit down with the Social Office people, the Job-Center people, and eventually ask how these guys seem to live lifestyles without any job.  Couple that with pressure on the BAMF folks to revoke visas, and the guy would have to go back to his host country.  Course, this funny habit by immigrants to destroy their home-country passports will trigger another problem.....but eventually, Germany is going to force each immigrant who wants the visa....to probably give up their passport in a willing manner and let it be held by the local immigration office (it is odd they've yet to get that smart).

My prediction is that you start to see raids like this every week or two, and the cops start to build massive cases.

You Just Gotta Take It

Over the past decade, I've written a couple of essays over the issue of anti-American talk by Germans.  After an American has been around in Germany for a while.....he's been surprised at moments when associates or some display occurred which was a veiled or open insult toward American society, culture or political figures.

The question may come up.....how did this arrive in German society?

When you go back to American history (I'm well past the 2,000 book level), you tend to find this interesting piece of history.

From 1776 on....to roughly 1914.....America had this fascinated crowd from England, France, and Germany.....who traveled for weeks on the Atlantic, and arrived for a tour.  These weren't immigrants....they were people with money and status....wanting to see America for themselves.

These trips were NOT the TUI-travel agency type.....two weeks in some resort where a German would gulp down cocktails, sun themselves on the beach, and dine in a buffet atmosphere. These were trips that involved at four weeks on the sea to reach the shores of America, and the guests typically spent six to twelve months touring the country.  In some ways, they saw the nation from the ground up.....noting the hospitality of Americans....and enjoying landscape that a drawing could not replicate.

When they finally came back to Europe....they wrote rich magazine articles, drafted books for public consumption, and gave lectures to entertain the public.

From the 1850s on.....English, French and German hunters came and did hunting expeditions throughout the western part of the United States.  To them, it was an epic adventure.

In 1914, the positive stereo-type story of America came to an end.  The Germans who felt that WW I would last six to twelve months and only involve Russia and France.....guessed wrong.  By the end of the war, they were a bit shocked that the United States would involve themselves in the war.....that they were not a bumbling bunch of idiots....and that US refused to place their troops under English or French control to repeat all of the past mistakes of the war.  Within months, the US involvement in the war brought an end....a bitter end to Germany.

By 1929.....you had the Wall Street episode which rippled across the globe....affecting Germans, and in some ways helping to pave an unstable government....which needed "glue" (the Nationalist Socialists) in November 1932 to stabilize the nation.

By the summer of 1945, the war was over, and Germany found itself gutted out for the most part.  The 'kind' Americans (a sarcastic note by some Germans) did forge the Marshall Plan and helped to rebuild Germany over the next two decades.

The handling of the German rebirth of government.....meant that some groups were on the inside, and a few were on the outside (Communists and Antifa groups for example).  If you were around the last year or two of the war and viewed the damage.....then you saw 1965 Germany.....you probably would have been shocked, surprised, and amazed.  If you were part of some Antifa political agenda....you were aggravated because you weren't in the middle of the success story.

By the late 1960s, there was a youth revolution of sorts going on in the German university system, and the Red Army Faction was being groomed.  Anti-American talk was becoming a regular thing.

What can generally be said over the past three decades is that intellectuals come and go on state-run news to chat on what the Americans did wrong, and how they screwed up.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, and the internet have rattled the German cage and gotten very negative German commentary.  It's reached the point where Facebook now gets dragged into some German court almost monthly.  Twenty-two million Germans are on Facebook, and the vast number don't have much negative to say.  So invasion of privacy and Facebook policy gets picked up by a random few and dragged into public forums.  Every German residence has the ability to use legal means now to 'fuzz-up' their residence on Google overhead imagery.....to protect their privacy.  Google got dragged into court because Germans news organizations felt it was just not right that they could lead viewers to read their news.

US military situations get discussed almost nightly in some negative fashion.  US business operations will be routinely be accused of corruption or deceit.  Shockingly.....Volkswagen got the return-treatment because of the diesel crisis, and no....Americans aren't going to let the VW guys off the hook with a $200 check and a 'sorry'.

The general slant?  I'd take a humble guess that fifty to sixty percent of German society has got more important stuff on their mind than this anti-American slant.  The lesser crowd?  They get talking points via state-run news.  Toss in the righteous 'do-gooders' fighting fascism or right-wing gimmicks but fake in terms of a non-political message.  Then toss in the public forum chatters who pour on the intellectual charm.  So, it puts an American in an awkward position at times....defending something of marginal significance (like being called on to explain the 1920 prohibition episode).....or why President so-and-so did such-and-such.  The plain truth is that most Americans are in viewing mode only......and aren't really pumped-up to to head-to-head with someone who has agenda.

Today....depending on which news source you gravitate over to.....you get a dose of some slant.  Occasionally, the Russians and the English get a dose too.....but they are way down on the list.

So, here's the thing.  You more or less need to grit your teeth a little and humor the German in his world....letting him slam you a time or two.  I know you could stand there and grin a while, and tear loose on the poor gal or guy.  You could throw enough intellectual slack over to them....that they'd fall and tangle themselves up badly.

But face facts.....it's their game and it makes them feel happy.  After a long day, and a dozen odd insults at various Americans they might socialize with or bump into.....they come up....open up a beer, and feel like they actually knocked the American back a step or two.  It's one of the few and brief things that gives them a thrill after they've paid out half their salary for taxes, healthcare or social security.  

Toss on the fact that 17 Euro a month on the TV tax basically gives you 14,400-plus hours of marginal public-run TV viewing, an occasional Tour de France, some World Cup action every four years, and BBC's Inspector Barnaby at least once a week.  Figure in fake political dialog, crapped out competence when building new infrastructure (BER for example), and a trend for new and brilliantly created state taxes....dumping on the American is the only real entertainment left.

Just grin, and take it.