I sat and read an Austrian newspaper this morning....the Kurier.
The article? For weeks in Austria....various news outlets have been talking about fake news, and usually the finger of blame either goes to the Russians or the FPO Party in Austria (the right-wing guys).
The Kurier? They interviewed FPO's boss.....Heinz-Christian Strache.
He kinda laid out the criticism of is party, and the fake news business.....but he then flipped it around and noted various times in the past couple of years that the government itself worked up fake news articles.
The unemployment numbers.....statistics which were done in varying ways to prevent negative public attention? Yeah.....that was fake news.
Police reporting which declined to identify the background or nationality of the offending guy? Well.....yeah, that was fake news as well....or at least manipulated news.
The 2014 drug trafficking report for the nation? So fakeness to the report helped to lessen public frustration.
Here's the thing....everyone in Europe....from left to right, and down through the various government agencies, and onto various platforms of journalism....have learned how to manipulate and write fake news. It's not exactly a recently developed or KGB-orchestrated business. It's been around, for a fairly long time....not just decades, but hundreds upon hundreds of years.
Eventually, some idiot will wake up and say that it's a real shock....that Italian ice cream shops in Austria are manufacturing fresh ice cream daily with the home-made-Italian sticker, but find that all the materials are from Slovenia or Romania. Or, some government official will admit that cops were told never to ask for passports or ID when interviewing suspects.
We live in an era where manipulation of the public is a hour by hour event, and necessary to prevent the public from firing people for incompetence. You can look at the Austrian Presidential election and how screwed up the whole thing was.....yet no one was fired.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
The Plugs Story
If you go to a typical US or European hotel....at least in the four-star range, you rarely pay attention to this detail....but if you count electrical outlets in the room....they usually average eight to ten. Of which four will be used for items stationed in the room (TV, bed lamps, clock radio, etc). I stayed at a Helsinki hotel this week, and about thirty minutes into this stay....I just stared around the room at electrical outlets. Total? Altogether (including the bathroom).....around twenty. Everywhere you looked....multiple plug-in points.
Just about everywhere that you turned in the room, there's another outlet.
This brought me to an odd question....do Finns and Swedes carry around that many devices that require power?
Between my wife and I.....we might carry one cellphone, a camera unit that might require a charge, a small portable coffee maker, and a hair-dryer. That's it. The odds of ever needing all four at the same time charged? Zero.
The odds that all twenty lead to just one circuit breaker? Perhaps something that shouldn't be brought up, but one might assume that all twenty lead to just one single circuit, and it'd be a waste to have that many plugs in such a situation.
Course, maybe all of this is simply forethought, from some Finn hotel designer from sixty years ago.
The Stoic Station
I'd take a guess that in another hundred years.....the station will still be there and standing.
One of the odder features of the building is that they actually have a VIP-Presidential lounge. Yeah, it is actually reserved for the President of Finland and he could show up....with some entourage....sip some beers and talk up politics....at the railway station. How often he ever uses it? I would have my doubts.
Usage of the railway center? Well, the station has 17 platforms, a major subway connection point, a huge bus parking lot and a tram-stopping for a dozen-odd trams in operation around the city. You can figure that 200,000 people use some part of this station on a daily basis.
One of the interesting features of the station is the entryway (facing south). On each side are two Finn-like guys (long hair obviously)....muscular and giving the stoic Finn stare. I stood admiring the two guys on the right side. It's an impressive entry area.
The one thing you start to realize is that whoever made the manly Finn statues....wanted to ensure each had prominent nipples. Even from 200 feet away....you kinda notice this. Most manly statues around Europe don't go into that kind of detail. Obviously, this artist did.
So if you ever are in Helsinki....I would encourage you to go and spend an hour walking around the railway station. It is an interesting structure, with a lot of thought put into a useful structure a century ago, and into the modern era of today.
My Trash Can Story
Yeah, it's a lot of technology to push into a regular city garbage can. What did guys do before the light business? They lifted the top to gaze in.
Cost? With the solar cell technology? 2013 pricing indicates it was around $3,000 in the US for such a can. So you can figure in Helsinki, with a 23-percent tax rate....it's in the $4k range.
It's not a big park but I would guess at least a dozen cans placed around the park.....so they spent $60,000 minimum.
On the green bragging scale.....they got lots of points. In terms of value or use? I have my doubts. Eventually, the cell will wear out and some replacement cell will have to be procured. The disposal of the old cell? That's a curious thing. With various EU rules in effect, I doubt that you can just dump this or bury it. So you might have to spend at least 100 Euro to dispose of one single cell like this.
I admit....the can is sturdy and could last forty years. The cell? I have my doubts that it lasts more than ten years.
Helsinki: Safety
I spent the week (five days) in Helsinki. I'll probably write three or four essays off the topic but there's one significant thing that I tended to notice. Security (safety).
With the exception of the railway station in Helsinki.....I walked around for five days in the city and just never saw the cops. I can't think of a single German city where you would get that feeling or see so little of the police. Maybe twenty years ago, that was possible.....but not in today's atmosphere.
Crime in Helsinki? Almost non-existent. Even if you read up on it.....the most that you have to worry about is pick-pocketing.
No thugs? No drug activity? No nutcases?
Now, I admit....it's brutally cold in the winter (-3 C, with a 20 kph wind).....making it awful cold. With just five hours of sunlight in the winter, People just don't hang out much.
The cops at the railway station? I think they simply drew a line and let the crime crowd know that they won't tolerate anyone just hanging around and making for trouble (like you'd see in Koln or Frankfurt). I stood in the middle of the station and can admit that you don't see dark corners or shady characters eyeballing unsuspecting 'targets'.
Course, on the other hand....it is a fairly socialized country with a high tax rate.....23-percent on sales tax for example. Anyone thinking about settling there or picking it for a new homeland....might examine the cost of living (just the cost of a can of Pepsi), and discuss other options.
On safety, I'd rate Helsinki at a "10".....just don't go in the midst of winter though.
With the exception of the railway station in Helsinki.....I walked around for five days in the city and just never saw the cops. I can't think of a single German city where you would get that feeling or see so little of the police. Maybe twenty years ago, that was possible.....but not in today's atmosphere.
Crime in Helsinki? Almost non-existent. Even if you read up on it.....the most that you have to worry about is pick-pocketing.
No thugs? No drug activity? No nutcases?
Now, I admit....it's brutally cold in the winter (-3 C, with a 20 kph wind).....making it awful cold. With just five hours of sunlight in the winter, People just don't hang out much.
The cops at the railway station? I think they simply drew a line and let the crime crowd know that they won't tolerate anyone just hanging around and making for trouble (like you'd see in Koln or Frankfurt). I stood in the middle of the station and can admit that you don't see dark corners or shady characters eyeballing unsuspecting 'targets'.
Course, on the other hand....it is a fairly socialized country with a high tax rate.....23-percent on sales tax for example. Anyone thinking about settling there or picking it for a new homeland....might examine the cost of living (just the cost of a can of Pepsi), and discuss other options.
On safety, I'd rate Helsinki at a "10".....just don't go in the midst of winter though.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
The 485,000
I was reading a long list of business-related articles and this little short two liner got thrown into the mix. Some analyst sat down with numbers from the BaMF (the German agency responsible for migration and refugees).
It's a number statement that kinda surprises you. The numbers from BaMF says that as you enter into 2018, there will be 485,000 rejected immigrants sitting in Germany. These are people who filled out the paperwork....went through the months of review by BaMF....and it concluded that they were not going meet the standards or requirements of Germany. Course, they might put hundred here and there on planes over each month and keep the number from ever reaching 500,000.
Public view? Since they are dispersed across the sixteen states, it's hard to view this as an immediate problem. If someone did break the number down and you came to realize that you had 700 of these people in Mainz, or 2,000 in Frankfurt, or 3,200 in Koln....that's the point where the public might shift and make this a personal or regional issue.
Last year, I read a commentary where someone within one of the German political parties suggested some kind of "bonus" for those who volunteered and left with no issue, but they never suggested the amount of money to be involved. The problem with this is that you might have a guy who collects his bonus, and this convinces a dozen others in his homeland to make the trip....just to collect the bonus.
More of one group than another? This is one of the statistical displays which isn't readily available, and it makes you wonder if there are very few Syrians or Iraqis on this list, but a lot more Tunisians or Afghanis.
The problem I see is that as this number lingers.....the public will start to ask what the failed applicants are doing and you start to discover some of them directly connected to crime or the drug-trade. If you were looking for an election year theme, this connect a lot of the public to one single issue.
It's a number statement that kinda surprises you. The numbers from BaMF says that as you enter into 2018, there will be 485,000 rejected immigrants sitting in Germany. These are people who filled out the paperwork....went through the months of review by BaMF....and it concluded that they were not going meet the standards or requirements of Germany. Course, they might put hundred here and there on planes over each month and keep the number from ever reaching 500,000.
Public view? Since they are dispersed across the sixteen states, it's hard to view this as an immediate problem. If someone did break the number down and you came to realize that you had 700 of these people in Mainz, or 2,000 in Frankfurt, or 3,200 in Koln....that's the point where the public might shift and make this a personal or regional issue.
Last year, I read a commentary where someone within one of the German political parties suggested some kind of "bonus" for those who volunteered and left with no issue, but they never suggested the amount of money to be involved. The problem with this is that you might have a guy who collects his bonus, and this convinces a dozen others in his homeland to make the trip....just to collect the bonus.
More of one group than another? This is one of the statistical displays which isn't readily available, and it makes you wonder if there are very few Syrians or Iraqis on this list, but a lot more Tunisians or Afghanis.
The problem I see is that as this number lingers.....the public will start to ask what the failed applicants are doing and you start to discover some of them directly connected to crime or the drug-trade. If you were looking for an election year theme, this connect a lot of the public to one single issue.
Sunday, December 25, 2016
Dienst der Wahrheit?
In the coming weeks in Berlin, some folks will be forming up a new agency under the Interior Ministry. No one has the official name yet....my name for the agency would be "Dienst der Wahrheit" (Ministry of Truth).
They will be charged by the Merkel coalition (CDU-CSU-SPD) to put a spotlight upon the internet and news media, and halt fake news.
Number of employees? It's not really spoken much about but I would take a guess of at least three-hundred folks. I would also take a guess that some of the employees will be transfers from within the Interior Ministry....to give them a headstart, and the rest will be new hires.
A lot of young employees? This is a question I would pose.
Several employees hired from ARD and ZDF (the state/public TV folks)? I'm betting on a couple of experts with status or years in the business of news.
Will they limit themselves to only German-language news or news only produced within Germany? I have my doubts. My guess is that they will end up grading or judging not only German-language news, but English-language, Italian-language, Russian-language, and French-language news.
Stepping on the toes of news sources throughout the EU? This will come up rather quickly as the Berlin team starts to judge harshly on the Daily Mail, or Le Figaro. The Berlin crowd might have a phone call or two each week as they deem such-and-such story fake, and the offended newspaper will threaten legal consequences or start to aim at the Dienst der Wahrheit itself.
Will they limit themselves to just general news or start to jump into business news, health news, or possibly global warming/climate change news? I doubt that there will be a limit, and eventually there will be some public demand that another agency....the Ministry of Truth over the Ministry of the Truth ends up existing in twelve months....with day by day analysis of the fake news business is going.
Could it be that the Ministry of Truth deems a news story true while ARD or ZDF deems it a fake? Well....it's best not to bring up this possibility.
Is it possible that some politician in Germany might make a speech....with it getting into the news and he cites some statistics which are deemed by the Ministry of Truth as being false, and thus the politician is cited as a "faker"? Well....yeah, that could happen.
Here's the thing.....as much good as some bureau like this might be, you just have this impression that it's bound to dig itself into a pit and have public frustration dumped upon them as they brand certain stories fake when it's discovered that they weren't fake. Then you end up with some Bundestag truth committee (like the current NSA committee), and a bunch of folks asking what your agenda is and who you have working for you.
The odds that the Russians will figure out these mechanisms and arrange to have five or six folks hired within the Truth Ministry? Oh, please don't suggest to the German politicians or journalists that there may already be Russian-fake-supporters on the inside of this whole concept. It'd just make the intellectuals start crying and get all upset.
Germans aren't that stupid. At some point, a handful of fairly smart, clever, and humor-filled Germans will band together and make up some fake foundation, and produce their own fake reports and try to entice the Ministry of Truth to grade them. Whether they are smart enough to figure out the gimmick....might be a good question.
So, if you were looking for moments of humor in Germany for 2017....settle back and prepare for the Ministry of Truth.
They will be charged by the Merkel coalition (CDU-CSU-SPD) to put a spotlight upon the internet and news media, and halt fake news.
Number of employees? It's not really spoken much about but I would take a guess of at least three-hundred folks. I would also take a guess that some of the employees will be transfers from within the Interior Ministry....to give them a headstart, and the rest will be new hires.
A lot of young employees? This is a question I would pose.
Several employees hired from ARD and ZDF (the state/public TV folks)? I'm betting on a couple of experts with status or years in the business of news.
Will they limit themselves to only German-language news or news only produced within Germany? I have my doubts. My guess is that they will end up grading or judging not only German-language news, but English-language, Italian-language, Russian-language, and French-language news.
Stepping on the toes of news sources throughout the EU? This will come up rather quickly as the Berlin team starts to judge harshly on the Daily Mail, or Le Figaro. The Berlin crowd might have a phone call or two each week as they deem such-and-such story fake, and the offended newspaper will threaten legal consequences or start to aim at the Dienst der Wahrheit itself.
Will they limit themselves to just general news or start to jump into business news, health news, or possibly global warming/climate change news? I doubt that there will be a limit, and eventually there will be some public demand that another agency....the Ministry of Truth over the Ministry of the Truth ends up existing in twelve months....with day by day analysis of the fake news business is going.
Could it be that the Ministry of Truth deems a news story true while ARD or ZDF deems it a fake? Well....it's best not to bring up this possibility.
Is it possible that some politician in Germany might make a speech....with it getting into the news and he cites some statistics which are deemed by the Ministry of Truth as being false, and thus the politician is cited as a "faker"? Well....yeah, that could happen.
Here's the thing.....as much good as some bureau like this might be, you just have this impression that it's bound to dig itself into a pit and have public frustration dumped upon them as they brand certain stories fake when it's discovered that they weren't fake. Then you end up with some Bundestag truth committee (like the current NSA committee), and a bunch of folks asking what your agenda is and who you have working for you.
The odds that the Russians will figure out these mechanisms and arrange to have five or six folks hired within the Truth Ministry? Oh, please don't suggest to the German politicians or journalists that there may already be Russian-fake-supporters on the inside of this whole concept. It'd just make the intellectuals start crying and get all upset.
Germans aren't that stupid. At some point, a handful of fairly smart, clever, and humor-filled Germans will band together and make up some fake foundation, and produce their own fake reports and try to entice the Ministry of Truth to grade them. Whether they are smart enough to figure out the gimmick....might be a good question.
So, if you were looking for moments of humor in Germany for 2017....settle back and prepare for the Ministry of Truth.
Guy On a Spiral
There are a dozen-odd news sources which have gone to review the personal history of the Berlin terrorist. In some way, it reads like a tragic saga.
Young guy at age 16 in the midst of Al-Waslatiyah, Tunisia. It's a town of 8,000 residents and already a decade ago showing economic issues, with marginal employment chances. Already in his youth, he's on the focus of the cops.....apprehended for alcohol consumption and bad juvenile behavior (drug usage).
At age 18, in the midst of the revolution, he has a chance to leave Tunisia (2011). He boards a ship and ends up in Italy.....in a refugee camp. He only gets this chance at the refugee camp because he convinces the Italians that he's really an underage teenager.....something which he is not.
His history at the refugee camp is short and dismal. He helps to set fire to a building. Evidence points toward him, and he ends up in a real Italian prison....a four-year sentence.
Normally, you'd be evaluated on a four-year sentence, and possibly earn months off the sentence. There is no evidence to show any positive behavior in the Italian prison....so he spent the whole four years in prison.
Released? Italy has this amazing problem upon him completing his sentence. Tunisia won't accept him back. He's got some serious history attached, and they really don't want him back.
Within a couple of months, he's packed up and left Italy.....going to Germany.
No one gives the reason or logic to this 2015 move to Germany. Maybe it's just social media chatter and the fact that Germans at that point aren't hyped up to stop anyone.
The family back in Tunisia get feedback from the guy.....he's got periods of employment in the agricultural field. No one can prove this side of the story.
What the Germans can say is that the guy ends up quickly in the drug-trafficking field. The Germans detain him on various occasions, with six possible aliases.
All along this year-long period....he's connected to either drug dealing or radicalized Islam folks. You can tell already at this point, there is nothing good out of this lifestyle to come.
Six months ago....the Germans finally conduct the last review and say "no" to his asylum application. Deporting him? Impossible. He has no passport, and Tunisia isn't eager to cooperate on taking him back. Would you?
At some point, Tunisia is convinced by the Germans (no one says how)....to produce a passport and accept him back. The new passport? It arrives two days after the Berlin attack.
He always talks about some employment or some change in his economic circumstance. I don't think there is a single factual moment that he can show he ever earned an income that didn't come via radicalized folks or the drug business. Over a six-year period....there is no twist or turn. He never had a chance.
Young guy at age 16 in the midst of Al-Waslatiyah, Tunisia. It's a town of 8,000 residents and already a decade ago showing economic issues, with marginal employment chances. Already in his youth, he's on the focus of the cops.....apprehended for alcohol consumption and bad juvenile behavior (drug usage).
At age 18, in the midst of the revolution, he has a chance to leave Tunisia (2011). He boards a ship and ends up in Italy.....in a refugee camp. He only gets this chance at the refugee camp because he convinces the Italians that he's really an underage teenager.....something which he is not.
His history at the refugee camp is short and dismal. He helps to set fire to a building. Evidence points toward him, and he ends up in a real Italian prison....a four-year sentence.
Normally, you'd be evaluated on a four-year sentence, and possibly earn months off the sentence. There is no evidence to show any positive behavior in the Italian prison....so he spent the whole four years in prison.
Released? Italy has this amazing problem upon him completing his sentence. Tunisia won't accept him back. He's got some serious history attached, and they really don't want him back.
Within a couple of months, he's packed up and left Italy.....going to Germany.
No one gives the reason or logic to this 2015 move to Germany. Maybe it's just social media chatter and the fact that Germans at that point aren't hyped up to stop anyone.
The family back in Tunisia get feedback from the guy.....he's got periods of employment in the agricultural field. No one can prove this side of the story.
What the Germans can say is that the guy ends up quickly in the drug-trafficking field. The Germans detain him on various occasions, with six possible aliases.
All along this year-long period....he's connected to either drug dealing or radicalized Islam folks. You can tell already at this point, there is nothing good out of this lifestyle to come.
Six months ago....the Germans finally conduct the last review and say "no" to his asylum application. Deporting him? Impossible. He has no passport, and Tunisia isn't eager to cooperate on taking him back. Would you?
At some point, Tunisia is convinced by the Germans (no one says how)....to produce a passport and accept him back. The new passport? It arrives two days after the Berlin attack.
He always talks about some employment or some change in his economic circumstance. I don't think there is a single factual moment that he can show he ever earned an income that didn't come via radicalized folks or the drug business. Over a six-year period....there is no twist or turn. He never had a chance.
Saturday, December 24, 2016
The Exit Show on Germans
Around a decade ago, I got interested in one particular German TV show....Goodbye Deutschland. It's produced by the German commercial network VOX.
The basis of this reality-soap opera-like TV show was to lay out over sixty minutes this German family which had decided to pack up and leave Germany. I know.....it sounds weird that anyone would want to leave this Disneyland-of-sorts, but the TV production crew found various Germans who wanted a fresh start in life, or were just a bit "crazy".
If you posed the idea to a hundred Germans (normal, working-class people)....I doubt if you would find more than four of them who would express this idea of permanently leaving Germany.
So week after week, the epic (less than epic, I must admit) tale was told....over and over.
Germans went off to Brazil, Australia, Finland, Spain, Italy, the US, and so on.
I've probably watched at least 200 episodes over the decade of the show, and have come to three basic conclusions.
First, you tend to notice that only about 20-percent of this crowd actually do their homework and know about every single part of the new country.
You would think.....in the planning part of this and 'trigger-moment' where you make the decision to do something this radical....you would accomplish a heck of a lot of homework. You'd know the taxation rate. You'd know about schools. You'd know about jobs and business rules. Yet, over and over, the bulk of this crowd (Germans, mind you) did minimal review and really weren't prepared for their new country.
I look at the immigrants and migrants who made the decision to come to Germany, and wonder if they also repeated the same mistake.
Oddly, for these Germans who left.....the point of success and failure on this massive move....is directly tied to lack of planning and understanding.
Second, the bulk of people featured on this show are looking for some type of adventure. It doesn't matter where they move to, or the angle to their land.....they are seeking an adventure that most Germans don't usually think about.
Third, if you follow the show year after year.....they do go back and see how certain people have done, and you kinda discover that somewhere between a quarter and half of the folks on this exit out of Deutschland.....have returned. Some busted economically (they went somewhere with a bad economy)....some overwhelmed by the stress....and some never found what they were looking for.
The worst case I've seen featured was some German family of five who moved to Finland. Nothing was planned. They'd been up there on a vacation once and thought it'd be a wonderful place to live permanently. On the list of a hundred things that should have been considered....I doubt if they got past five to ten of those significant things you should know about or think about. By the end of the show, you were pretty confident that they'd make it no more than twelve months, and return to Germany.
The best case? Some couple who'd moved to Namiba....into some real estate project connected to some national game park. Lions, elephants, etc. It didn't matter what came up....they were hyped up to overcome the shortfall. If there was a list of a hundred things to consider, this couple probably had reviewed that hundred things, and added a list of another hundred on top of that.
There's not a lot of published statistics on Germans leaving Germany....at least I've yet to find a year by year listing. A couple of years ago, I noted some journalist report that put the number between 5,000 and 10,000 Germans who officially check out via their Rothaus (town hall) to exit Germany. Some are just people taking a job somewhere for a couple of years....some are permanent exits. Out of 82-million people....it's a small relative number, at least in my mind.
Entertaining? That's the thing about this. On some of these episodes, I feel awful sorry for the kids involved, or the wife who got dragged along, or the husband who was convinced of some great future ahead in Iceland. It's more of a lessons-learned show, if you ask me. Maybe if you watched all three-thousand hours of production....you'd be smart enough to either stay in Germany and not risk anything....OR learn enough that you don't repeat the same mistake as that guy.
The basis of this reality-soap opera-like TV show was to lay out over sixty minutes this German family which had decided to pack up and leave Germany. I know.....it sounds weird that anyone would want to leave this Disneyland-of-sorts, but the TV production crew found various Germans who wanted a fresh start in life, or were just a bit "crazy".
If you posed the idea to a hundred Germans (normal, working-class people)....I doubt if you would find more than four of them who would express this idea of permanently leaving Germany.
So week after week, the epic (less than epic, I must admit) tale was told....over and over.
Germans went off to Brazil, Australia, Finland, Spain, Italy, the US, and so on.
I've probably watched at least 200 episodes over the decade of the show, and have come to three basic conclusions.
First, you tend to notice that only about 20-percent of this crowd actually do their homework and know about every single part of the new country.
You would think.....in the planning part of this and 'trigger-moment' where you make the decision to do something this radical....you would accomplish a heck of a lot of homework. You'd know the taxation rate. You'd know about schools. You'd know about jobs and business rules. Yet, over and over, the bulk of this crowd (Germans, mind you) did minimal review and really weren't prepared for their new country.
I look at the immigrants and migrants who made the decision to come to Germany, and wonder if they also repeated the same mistake.
Oddly, for these Germans who left.....the point of success and failure on this massive move....is directly tied to lack of planning and understanding.
Second, the bulk of people featured on this show are looking for some type of adventure. It doesn't matter where they move to, or the angle to their land.....they are seeking an adventure that most Germans don't usually think about.
Third, if you follow the show year after year.....they do go back and see how certain people have done, and you kinda discover that somewhere between a quarter and half of the folks on this exit out of Deutschland.....have returned. Some busted economically (they went somewhere with a bad economy)....some overwhelmed by the stress....and some never found what they were looking for.
The worst case I've seen featured was some German family of five who moved to Finland. Nothing was planned. They'd been up there on a vacation once and thought it'd be a wonderful place to live permanently. On the list of a hundred things that should have been considered....I doubt if they got past five to ten of those significant things you should know about or think about. By the end of the show, you were pretty confident that they'd make it no more than twelve months, and return to Germany.
The best case? Some couple who'd moved to Namiba....into some real estate project connected to some national game park. Lions, elephants, etc. It didn't matter what came up....they were hyped up to overcome the shortfall. If there was a list of a hundred things to consider, this couple probably had reviewed that hundred things, and added a list of another hundred on top of that.
There's not a lot of published statistics on Germans leaving Germany....at least I've yet to find a year by year listing. A couple of years ago, I noted some journalist report that put the number between 5,000 and 10,000 Germans who officially check out via their Rothaus (town hall) to exit Germany. Some are just people taking a job somewhere for a couple of years....some are permanent exits. Out of 82-million people....it's a small relative number, at least in my mind.
Entertaining? That's the thing about this. On some of these episodes, I feel awful sorry for the kids involved, or the wife who got dragged along, or the husband who was convinced of some great future ahead in Iceland. It's more of a lessons-learned show, if you ask me. Maybe if you watched all three-thousand hours of production....you'd be smart enough to either stay in Germany and not risk anything....OR learn enough that you don't repeat the same mistake as that guy.
A Tale of Two Guys
Nothing makes much sense of the situation because the cops say 'no robbery'.
Based on descriptions....the top picture is what was released the next day by the cops as they searched for this guy.
The guy lived in the local area of Biebrich.
Nothing makes much sense out of this murder. The pictures? Two entirely different people. But then you realize that the second picture (on the bottom) is the passport ID picture of this guy at age 18. The top picture....the same guy....in the police drawing....seven years later.
There's probably some epic chain of events over the past seven years with this Benjamin G character....involving some drug usage. Benjamin version one was some clean-cut kid with some apprenticeship and focus. Benjamin version two is some lost guy with no real focus and a threat to society.
There's a story to be written here over a guy who walked off the clear path to a future. Sadly, it doesn't go well with the ending.
UPDATE: Sometime on Friday evening....the cops finally cornered the guy in question....near his apartment, and arrested him. Situation over. No motive noted by the cops still.
Friday, December 23, 2016
Closure of a Berlin Terror Chapter
On some street in Milan, Italy....an Italian cop notices someone that just seems out of place. It's 3AM, and generally....most folks are either at home sleeping or at some business preparing for early AM opening times.
So the Italian cop approached this guy and asked for an ID. Most Italians would have simply spoke in Italian and suggested this was unnecessary....but this suspect went into a different behavior....reaching into his jacket or backpack for a weapon, and pulls it out. The Italian cop reacts....pulls his weapon out and at a very short range....both fire. Suspect dead....Italian cop wounded (he will survive).
The suspect? No real papers on the guy. Cops look at the dead guy, and there's this suspicion. They need fingerprints and a picture.
Between 10 and 11 this morning....7 hours later....the Italians confirm this dead suspect is the Berlin terrorist.
It's a 1,036 kilometers between Berlin and Milan. Somehow, this guy made it all the way down....through Austria or Switzerland. Method? Unknown.
So the Italian cop approached this guy and asked for an ID. Most Italians would have simply spoke in Italian and suggested this was unnecessary....but this suspect went into a different behavior....reaching into his jacket or backpack for a weapon, and pulls it out. The Italian cop reacts....pulls his weapon out and at a very short range....both fire. Suspect dead....Italian cop wounded (he will survive).
The suspect? No real papers on the guy. Cops look at the dead guy, and there's this suspicion. They need fingerprints and a picture.
Between 10 and 11 this morning....7 hours later....the Italians confirm this dead suspect is the Berlin terrorist.
It's a 1,036 kilometers between Berlin and Milan. Somehow, this guy made it all the way down....through Austria or Switzerland. Method? Unknown.
I doubt that he drove himself. Maybe he took a train, but I kinda doubt it. Some guy likely drove him down. What he was supposed to do in Milan? Unknown. Maybe he had another mission in mind. Maybe he was going to make way today to Rome....to the Vatican, for another terror act. It's hard to say. Obviously, he didn't stay around Berlin.
I read a piece this morning from Tunisia from the guy's family. They noted that he left several years ago in search of a better life. They can't believe what the guy fell into or how he got this stage. I'm guessing they will claim the body....give the kid some brief words...then bury him. It's hard to say how he started his trip to Italy five years ago, but I doubt that he figured he'd end up like this.
Now? A frustrated Berlin public can relax to some degree. Cops can shift gears and go back to a standard shift. Investigators can work to close most of this case.
Is it over? Is it really over?
I read a piece this morning from Tunisia from the guy's family. They noted that he left several years ago in search of a better life. They can't believe what the guy fell into or how he got this stage. I'm guessing they will claim the body....give the kid some brief words...then bury him. It's hard to say how he started his trip to Italy five years ago, but I doubt that he figured he'd end up like this.
Now? A frustrated Berlin public can relax to some degree. Cops can shift gears and go back to a standard shift. Investigators can work to close most of this case.
Is it over? Is it really over?
Some Germans are sitting there and questioning how this guy stayed on and on, and on....when he should have been deported....back to Tunisia. Some are asking how many others exist like this? They'd like to hold someone responsible.....but it's impossible to pin this on one person.
A dozen-odd families in Berlin are handling funeral services in this holiday season, and within the circle of dead and wounded.....there's probably 10,000 people who knew or associated with fifty-odd people at the scene. For them, it's personal....they are frustrated with what they see.
Rest for the cops? A brief rest maybe. They know that a couple hundred nutcases are out there and working up the courage for the next terror act. It's only because of brave cops....intense investigations....and suspicions that go to the next step.....that people can feel half-way safe. The Disneyland-mentality that existed for decades? It's fragile around the edges of German society now.
The best we can say is that a chapter to a book has closed out....and tomorrow will start a fresh new chapter. It's an epic....that people have grown negative about and would like more than just a few words spoken.
A dozen-odd families in Berlin are handling funeral services in this holiday season, and within the circle of dead and wounded.....there's probably 10,000 people who knew or associated with fifty-odd people at the scene. For them, it's personal....they are frustrated with what they see.
Rest for the cops? A brief rest maybe. They know that a couple hundred nutcases are out there and working up the courage for the next terror act. It's only because of brave cops....intense investigations....and suspicions that go to the next step.....that people can feel half-way safe. The Disneyland-mentality that existed for decades? It's fragile around the edges of German society now.
The best we can say is that a chapter to a book has closed out....and tomorrow will start a fresh new chapter. It's an epic....that people have grown negative about and would like more than just a few words spoken.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
When Laws Are Obsolete
I was reading a German news piece this week and the word "anachronistic" came up. It's one of those words that I was unfamiliar with and admit it's way outside of my vocabulary.
The meaning? It's when you've built a custom, or a law.....that has many different pieces, from different periods of time. So the law, on a consistent basis....doesn't fit well.
This came up because some cops got around to discussing the newest problem they are facing.
German cops will find an individual who they'd like to put a wire-tap on them. So they start a legal process to have the judge involved and he'll review their requirement. At some point, the cops will then discover that the suspect has two, three, four, and perhaps even five cellphones.
So you would think...one single wire-tap request would be sufficient for this one single guy. Well....no.
The German law in place requires a wire-tap form/approval on a one-phone to one-guy case. So if he had three phones, you'd have to present the three documents to the judge and explain the situation.
It is in essence....extra paperwork. You'd think that judges would be demanding an upgrade or fix to this because of the modern era. But they haven't said much. For cops, it's more paperwork, and unnecessary.
The meaning? It's when you've built a custom, or a law.....that has many different pieces, from different periods of time. So the law, on a consistent basis....doesn't fit well.
This came up because some cops got around to discussing the newest problem they are facing.
German cops will find an individual who they'd like to put a wire-tap on them. So they start a legal process to have the judge involved and he'll review their requirement. At some point, the cops will then discover that the suspect has two, three, four, and perhaps even five cellphones.
So you would think...one single wire-tap request would be sufficient for this one single guy. Well....no.
The German law in place requires a wire-tap form/approval on a one-phone to one-guy case. So if he had three phones, you'd have to present the three documents to the judge and explain the situation.
It is in essence....extra paperwork. You'd think that judges would be demanding an upgrade or fix to this because of the modern era. But they haven't said much. For cops, it's more paperwork, and unnecessary.
The Narcissist Story
There is an odd feature of the Berlin terror act of this week.....the terrorist left his visa in the cab of the truck. For me, it makes no sense why some idiot would go and do all of this....then drop this ID of himself.
Focus went out and asked the cops about this, and wrote up a piece today. What the cops say is that they've noticed various occasions (Nice, Paris, etc) that ID's being left at the crime scene is almost normal for a terrorist.
Real criminals don't do stupid crap like this.
Narcissists....however....want to be identified with the act, and leaving the ID there is the way for them to claim their status.
Generally, there are five fairly recognized traits to a narcissist: (1) they don't identify with the feelings or needs or others, (2) they tend to always exaggerate on what they did or what talent they have, (3) someone has to lose in order for the narcissist to gain, (4) always thinks of themselves as special, and (5) lives mostly in a fantasy dream-world.
In this case, the guy doesn't care if he lives or dies....so leaving the ID doesn't really matter to him except it gets him front page lines.
Since every time a German newscast comes up with his picture and name....or he sees a German newspaper with his picture and name.....he gets all hyped up and gets a thrill.
If you think about this...perhaps the obvious step to take is when you put up some picture of a highly wanted terrorist in German.....give them a fake name. "BX", "ST", or "CY".
I admit....the news people might throw a ethics fit over this and lodge a complaint about this to the court-system.....but if this entire game is about a bunch of loser narcissists...then it's time to play some real poker and up the whole ante.
Facebook can play by substituting the fake name for the real name whenever any article comes up. Twitter can do the same.
Treat the narcissists like you treat hurricanes....just make up a name.
Focus went out and asked the cops about this, and wrote up a piece today. What the cops say is that they've noticed various occasions (Nice, Paris, etc) that ID's being left at the crime scene is almost normal for a terrorist.
Real criminals don't do stupid crap like this.
Narcissists....however....want to be identified with the act, and leaving the ID there is the way for them to claim their status.
Generally, there are five fairly recognized traits to a narcissist: (1) they don't identify with the feelings or needs or others, (2) they tend to always exaggerate on what they did or what talent they have, (3) someone has to lose in order for the narcissist to gain, (4) always thinks of themselves as special, and (5) lives mostly in a fantasy dream-world.
In this case, the guy doesn't care if he lives or dies....so leaving the ID doesn't really matter to him except it gets him front page lines.
Since every time a German newscast comes up with his picture and name....or he sees a German newspaper with his picture and name.....he gets all hyped up and gets a thrill.
If you think about this...perhaps the obvious step to take is when you put up some picture of a highly wanted terrorist in German.....give them a fake name. "BX", "ST", or "CY".
I admit....the news people might throw a ethics fit over this and lodge a complaint about this to the court-system.....but if this entire game is about a bunch of loser narcissists...then it's time to play some real poker and up the whole ante.
Facebook can play by substituting the fake name for the real name whenever any article comes up. Twitter can do the same.
Treat the narcissists like you treat hurricanes....just make up a name.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Explaining the Whole German Immigration Thing
I could write this essay to be 400 pages easily, but why make it that complicated. So, this is a 150-line summary/essay to basically lay out the immigration, asylum, integration mess of Germany....how things got this way....and the connection of journalists, intellectuals and politicians to the big picture.
So....once upon a time....the German culture woke up and made decisions on their own to have fewer kids. Careers, high cost of living, limited opportunities, whatever.....it all starts in the 1960s and is recognized by the end of the 1960s as an fact. Politicians think they can fix this.....later admitting that their tricks aren't really working well. About a decade ago, the rate for a couple on production came to about 1.5 kids per couple.
In 2015, I read three separate reports (private economic foundation, government statistics agency, and a university). All came to the central theme that Germany will shrink from 82-million (presently) to somewhere between 65 and 70 million by 2035 (twenty years away). The only thing the three disagreed upon was the outcome number. 12-million people will drop over the next twenty years. The only thing preventing that? Immigration.
Does this spiral matter? If you were running a pension program, a medical health insurance program, or an industrial complex relying upon manpower....yeah, the 12-million matters.
You can admit this to a 100,000 Germans, but it really doesn't drill down into their subconscious. They don't typically think 20 years ahead. For political folks....you can sip whiskey in dark cafes and conduct a four hour conversation about the implications. Beyond that....it's just talk.
So, along comes this odd moment. You've got some migrant values in play.....asylum, wars, immigration, etc.
In a normal year in Germany....over the past twenty-five years.....roughly 250,000 people will try for asylum or migration. Some years were slightly higher, but on average....it stays between 200,000 and 250,000. It was a wide assortment, but over the past decade....you could say that East Europeans fell more into this category, with the Turks.
2014? 450,000 migrants and asylum seekers came to Germany. The bulk were Iraqi, Syrian and Afghani. The rest were from at least twenty odd countries. Some Muslim....some non-Muslim.
2015? The number goes from 1.1 million down to 950,000.....depending on which government report you want to use.
With people hyped up and angry over the program set by Berlin....Merkel and company went to a plan where they offered some things (EU membership perhaps, visa-free options, and three billion Euro a year) to Turkey to help slow the refugees down.
Turkey accepted the deal but they expected membership to be serious (which it never really has been treated that way). Somewhere in 2016, the coup came, and Turkey's whole deal is about as fragile as you can get.
The way that this open door was run? This is where things get interesting. Everything about the shelter business, the BaMF (agency that runs the immigration paperwork), the cost factor, the integration requirements, and the disapproval results (sending them out of Germany if necessary) all became some amateur-hour game. It was almost like first-year college students running Apple or Goggle....with no clear comprehension about the end-result.
Crime? Oddly, statistics show that since the early 1990s....it' been edging up slightly, and was already a problem before 2014. A lot of the crime is more relative to crime gangs or syndicates from Lebanon, Serbia, Russia, North Africa, Bulgaria, Romania, etc. Cop manpower since the 1990s has been cut....so we are back into a hiring phase for cops but it may be three to five years before you really start to see effects on the crime. Anything related to Syrians or Iraqis? No. You can't show anything other than a handful of terror episodes leading back to them.
Did the Berlin crowd really know what they were doing? I would speculate that they were continually behind when it came to analyzing numbers and grasping where things were going.
Effect of journalists? They took a pro-immigration lead and tried to cast negativity at anyone who suggested that this was screwed up and needed to stopped or discussed more. In some ways, the journalists have made themselves a less-trusted element in this whole thing. This even brought more conversation about the monthly TV-media tax. If you look at pro-slant from January of 2015 to today....it's vastly different and the journalists are very careful not to make this a hyped up event.
Effect on politics? Because the CDU, FDP, SPD, Linke Party and Green Party handcuffed themselves to the Merkel policy....it seemed like that no real change was going to occur to affect the vision. Minor criticism by the CSU? It drew some public interest but seemed to be limited.
Then along came the AfD Party. They were going to be anti-immigrate, period. Yeah, a one-trick pony....with very limited chat or platform for anything else. Oddly, this was the only place you could cast a frustration vote and send a message to Berlin.
Today, the AfD might get in the 12-to-14 percent range nationally....in the east....maybe up to 20 percent on occasion in state elections. For the SPD and CDU, the AfD has carved out votes and puts both of them (yes, even SPD voters are frustrated) in a difficult position.
So, you would think.....new vision, new politics, new strategy....dump Merkel....and just aim for the September 2017 national election? Well....no. The CDU is mostly stuck with Merkel. There just aren't any four-star characters ready for the national stage. The SPD....mostly in a 22 percent situation nationally and limited on what they can do about the immigration issue.
Muslims part of this whole problem? To some degree, you have the terror issue....the integration success (or limited success)....and the vail-business (the burqa) which has become some political theme. Some political folks are defending a multi-culty society....some see multi-culty as a failure. Oddly, a lot of the Syrians had crafts, degrees and job experience which help to quickly fit them into this job market. Iraqis less so. Afghanis much less so, and the rest are very marginally able to fit in unless you offer a lot of job-training chances. Cost of this job-training business? It's something that can't be discussed in public much.
Just talking over the next four years, cost of job-training, language programs, social programs to cover the new folks.....it's believed that 20-odd billion might be the magic number for this group. But you can't be sure.
Fake names, fake passports, fake ID's? Everywhere up and down the line....there are fakes. Some people figured out early on that Syrians got approved more than anyone else....so fake Syrian passports are valued. Some other folks figured out that "kids" are getting a better deal....so they came as underage kids and told the Germans they were 14 or 15.....when they were 18, 20 or 22 years old. Some people even figured out that you could come with one kid and say your wife died....with the Germans giving you an apartment to you and the kid.....then the kid disappeared three to six months later....and reality is that there never was a kid for you.....you just borrowed a kid from a relative or friend to get in the front door.
The moment when the whole game changed? After the Koln New Year's Eve episode with over 1,000 police reports filed....with the bulk on groping or sexual assault, and the ARD/ZDF news folks delayed reporting this for five days....that was the magic moment. Within a month, I would take a guess that what was a one-third negative on this episode.....turned into a sixty to seventy percent negative situation. Cops today will tell that less than 10-percent of the folks from Koln night have been brought into court. Most will never face charges. The general public is fairly angry at the cops, the city, and the legal system.
Here's the thing. This has all been some national strategy....bought by the bulk of the Berlin crowd. It's not a Merkel-owned theme.....they all bought into it.
Firing Merkel or fixing this? No one wants early elections and if you did offer them....then what? The AfD crowd might shock people with 20 percent on a really harsh campaign but it doesn't mean they can win and form a government. And if AfD did get 35 percent of the vote? What exactly can they really do? Maybe ban the burqa....maybe briefly slow down the migration situation before the courts hinder them. There are a limited number of things that AfD might be able to construct.
A new Merkel strategy? A new SPD strategy? Three or four things have been put on the table. Each slightly different. The SPD folks want a test for each asylum person....which you'd have to show a craft or education to get past the front door. Merkel suggest a burqa ban. Cop increases are on everyone's mind.
If all these immigrants had been Chinese? I've often speculated on this that 500,000 Chinese would have thrown an entirely dynamic into this game and made integration and adjustment a totally more acceptable situation. The same is true if 200,000 South Koreans had made the decision to come settle in the Pfalz or Hessen area. Part of this whole discussion is centered on Islam, and a large segment of society who've never been in a progressive culture or Christian country before. Just walking into a public pool area gets some Muslim young guys all freaked out and thinking they are in a topless bar.
Reality is that a bunch of these migrants and newcomers are now grasping that the cost-of-living is outrageous, and that any idea that they had of having four or six kids....is going to be next to impossible to afford. Just walking into Lidl grocery and figuring out what you get for seventy Euro is a challenge.
Keeping your religion? One-third of Germans are atheists. Germany is one of the most progressive societies in the world. Kids talk birth-control by age 12. Songs on TV and radio feature full-up sex-chat and get played around the clock. German women dress in a provocative way....around the clock. Booze and marijuana are openly consumed (weed might be illegal but it's sold like chocolate candy). German TV features all kinds of challenges to ones morality. So out of 185-odd countries in the world.....if I were a very conservative religious guy....Germany would be one of the twenty last countries that I would bring my wife, or kids into. The numbers are slanted that a fair portion of the Islam crowd coming in....will lose their faith....one way or another.
So, that's reality. It's an epic story. Some fancy castle in the distance. A bunch of folks wanting the golden unicorn feeling. Black knights at the castle walls. The old queen has seen her better days. The court jester (Thilo Sarrazin) is the only legit guy with a sense about the outcome. Some fake fairy pretending to have the magic potion. Wolves in the mist and fog. A kingdom in search of a knight to slay all it's dragons. Some Brothers Grimm characters trying to weave a good tale out of a bad tale. And a false enchantment consuming the trust of Kingdom's peasants?
You need this story to just end, and move onto a different set of adventures or fresh new problems.
So....once upon a time....the German culture woke up and made decisions on their own to have fewer kids. Careers, high cost of living, limited opportunities, whatever.....it all starts in the 1960s and is recognized by the end of the 1960s as an fact. Politicians think they can fix this.....later admitting that their tricks aren't really working well. About a decade ago, the rate for a couple on production came to about 1.5 kids per couple.
In 2015, I read three separate reports (private economic foundation, government statistics agency, and a university). All came to the central theme that Germany will shrink from 82-million (presently) to somewhere between 65 and 70 million by 2035 (twenty years away). The only thing the three disagreed upon was the outcome number. 12-million people will drop over the next twenty years. The only thing preventing that? Immigration.
Does this spiral matter? If you were running a pension program, a medical health insurance program, or an industrial complex relying upon manpower....yeah, the 12-million matters.
You can admit this to a 100,000 Germans, but it really doesn't drill down into their subconscious. They don't typically think 20 years ahead. For political folks....you can sip whiskey in dark cafes and conduct a four hour conversation about the implications. Beyond that....it's just talk.
So, along comes this odd moment. You've got some migrant values in play.....asylum, wars, immigration, etc.
In a normal year in Germany....over the past twenty-five years.....roughly 250,000 people will try for asylum or migration. Some years were slightly higher, but on average....it stays between 200,000 and 250,000. It was a wide assortment, but over the past decade....you could say that East Europeans fell more into this category, with the Turks.
2014? 450,000 migrants and asylum seekers came to Germany. The bulk were Iraqi, Syrian and Afghani. The rest were from at least twenty odd countries. Some Muslim....some non-Muslim.
2015? The number goes from 1.1 million down to 950,000.....depending on which government report you want to use.
With people hyped up and angry over the program set by Berlin....Merkel and company went to a plan where they offered some things (EU membership perhaps, visa-free options, and three billion Euro a year) to Turkey to help slow the refugees down.
Turkey accepted the deal but they expected membership to be serious (which it never really has been treated that way). Somewhere in 2016, the coup came, and Turkey's whole deal is about as fragile as you can get.
The way that this open door was run? This is where things get interesting. Everything about the shelter business, the BaMF (agency that runs the immigration paperwork), the cost factor, the integration requirements, and the disapproval results (sending them out of Germany if necessary) all became some amateur-hour game. It was almost like first-year college students running Apple or Goggle....with no clear comprehension about the end-result.
Crime? Oddly, statistics show that since the early 1990s....it' been edging up slightly, and was already a problem before 2014. A lot of the crime is more relative to crime gangs or syndicates from Lebanon, Serbia, Russia, North Africa, Bulgaria, Romania, etc. Cop manpower since the 1990s has been cut....so we are back into a hiring phase for cops but it may be three to five years before you really start to see effects on the crime. Anything related to Syrians or Iraqis? No. You can't show anything other than a handful of terror episodes leading back to them.
Did the Berlin crowd really know what they were doing? I would speculate that they were continually behind when it came to analyzing numbers and grasping where things were going.
Effect of journalists? They took a pro-immigration lead and tried to cast negativity at anyone who suggested that this was screwed up and needed to stopped or discussed more. In some ways, the journalists have made themselves a less-trusted element in this whole thing. This even brought more conversation about the monthly TV-media tax. If you look at pro-slant from January of 2015 to today....it's vastly different and the journalists are very careful not to make this a hyped up event.
Effect on politics? Because the CDU, FDP, SPD, Linke Party and Green Party handcuffed themselves to the Merkel policy....it seemed like that no real change was going to occur to affect the vision. Minor criticism by the CSU? It drew some public interest but seemed to be limited.
Then along came the AfD Party. They were going to be anti-immigrate, period. Yeah, a one-trick pony....with very limited chat or platform for anything else. Oddly, this was the only place you could cast a frustration vote and send a message to Berlin.
Today, the AfD might get in the 12-to-14 percent range nationally....in the east....maybe up to 20 percent on occasion in state elections. For the SPD and CDU, the AfD has carved out votes and puts both of them (yes, even SPD voters are frustrated) in a difficult position.
So, you would think.....new vision, new politics, new strategy....dump Merkel....and just aim for the September 2017 national election? Well....no. The CDU is mostly stuck with Merkel. There just aren't any four-star characters ready for the national stage. The SPD....mostly in a 22 percent situation nationally and limited on what they can do about the immigration issue.
Muslims part of this whole problem? To some degree, you have the terror issue....the integration success (or limited success)....and the vail-business (the burqa) which has become some political theme. Some political folks are defending a multi-culty society....some see multi-culty as a failure. Oddly, a lot of the Syrians had crafts, degrees and job experience which help to quickly fit them into this job market. Iraqis less so. Afghanis much less so, and the rest are very marginally able to fit in unless you offer a lot of job-training chances. Cost of this job-training business? It's something that can't be discussed in public much.
Just talking over the next four years, cost of job-training, language programs, social programs to cover the new folks.....it's believed that 20-odd billion might be the magic number for this group. But you can't be sure.
Fake names, fake passports, fake ID's? Everywhere up and down the line....there are fakes. Some people figured out early on that Syrians got approved more than anyone else....so fake Syrian passports are valued. Some other folks figured out that "kids" are getting a better deal....so they came as underage kids and told the Germans they were 14 or 15.....when they were 18, 20 or 22 years old. Some people even figured out that you could come with one kid and say your wife died....with the Germans giving you an apartment to you and the kid.....then the kid disappeared three to six months later....and reality is that there never was a kid for you.....you just borrowed a kid from a relative or friend to get in the front door.
The moment when the whole game changed? After the Koln New Year's Eve episode with over 1,000 police reports filed....with the bulk on groping or sexual assault, and the ARD/ZDF news folks delayed reporting this for five days....that was the magic moment. Within a month, I would take a guess that what was a one-third negative on this episode.....turned into a sixty to seventy percent negative situation. Cops today will tell that less than 10-percent of the folks from Koln night have been brought into court. Most will never face charges. The general public is fairly angry at the cops, the city, and the legal system.
Here's the thing. This has all been some national strategy....bought by the bulk of the Berlin crowd. It's not a Merkel-owned theme.....they all bought into it.
Firing Merkel or fixing this? No one wants early elections and if you did offer them....then what? The AfD crowd might shock people with 20 percent on a really harsh campaign but it doesn't mean they can win and form a government. And if AfD did get 35 percent of the vote? What exactly can they really do? Maybe ban the burqa....maybe briefly slow down the migration situation before the courts hinder them. There are a limited number of things that AfD might be able to construct.
A new Merkel strategy? A new SPD strategy? Three or four things have been put on the table. Each slightly different. The SPD folks want a test for each asylum person....which you'd have to show a craft or education to get past the front door. Merkel suggest a burqa ban. Cop increases are on everyone's mind.
If all these immigrants had been Chinese? I've often speculated on this that 500,000 Chinese would have thrown an entirely dynamic into this game and made integration and adjustment a totally more acceptable situation. The same is true if 200,000 South Koreans had made the decision to come settle in the Pfalz or Hessen area. Part of this whole discussion is centered on Islam, and a large segment of society who've never been in a progressive culture or Christian country before. Just walking into a public pool area gets some Muslim young guys all freaked out and thinking they are in a topless bar.
Reality is that a bunch of these migrants and newcomers are now grasping that the cost-of-living is outrageous, and that any idea that they had of having four or six kids....is going to be next to impossible to afford. Just walking into Lidl grocery and figuring out what you get for seventy Euro is a challenge.
Keeping your religion? One-third of Germans are atheists. Germany is one of the most progressive societies in the world. Kids talk birth-control by age 12. Songs on TV and radio feature full-up sex-chat and get played around the clock. German women dress in a provocative way....around the clock. Booze and marijuana are openly consumed (weed might be illegal but it's sold like chocolate candy). German TV features all kinds of challenges to ones morality. So out of 185-odd countries in the world.....if I were a very conservative religious guy....Germany would be one of the twenty last countries that I would bring my wife, or kids into. The numbers are slanted that a fair portion of the Islam crowd coming in....will lose their faith....one way or another.
So, that's reality. It's an epic story. Some fancy castle in the distance. A bunch of folks wanting the golden unicorn feeling. Black knights at the castle walls. The old queen has seen her better days. The court jester (Thilo Sarrazin) is the only legit guy with a sense about the outcome. Some fake fairy pretending to have the magic potion. Wolves in the mist and fog. A kingdom in search of a knight to slay all it's dragons. Some Brothers Grimm characters trying to weave a good tale out of a bad tale. And a false enchantment consuming the trust of Kingdom's peasants?
You need this story to just end, and move onto a different set of adventures or fresh new problems.
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Why the AfD Hype May Be Worthless
For two years, the AfD Party has been touted as the place to put a frustration vote against Merkel, the coalition government, the CDU Party, the SPD Party, the Linke Party, the FDP Party and the Green Party.
It was public frustration with the immigration, migration and asylum policy. It was hostility over failed integration. It was resentment against Islam, the veiled ladies, and potential threats (real or imagined). It was a disgruntled society who felt that Berlin was out of touch and unable to comprehend the costs of an open door program. The list goes on and on.
So here it was.....AfD.
As much as the opposition to them painted the AfD as potential Nazis, incompetent fools, or extremists....it didn't matter. It was the only place to place a vote by a German citizen and say something bold with that one single vote.
Currently, polling by public-TV will say that AfD can get 13-percent of the vote, and they suggest (particularly over the last month) that they've peaked out. Some people still think that for the national election in September of 2017....they might be able to carve out 15 to 18 percent of the national vote. With the right "events" occurring and a loss of confidence in Merkel and both major parties....I could even envision AfD taking 20-to-22 percent of the vote.
But as you sit back and really look over things with the AfD....what exactly do you get with your vote?
A weak new party, with a limited cast of characters with any background or experience? Yeah.
A party with very few platforms other than immigration, crime, and integration? Yeah.
If they did clear 28-percent and won....could they even form a government? No, it's very unlikely that any of the other parties would agree to partner up with them.
Even if someone did....what kind of legislation could AfD bring? Could they order mosques to be closed? It's very unlikely that the court system would allow them to go that far. Could they toss out 300,000 migrants or immigrants? State courts would likely hinder that objective. Could they arrest and detain 100,000 young men with questionable behavior issues? Courts would likely hinder that.
Oh, there's no doubt that the "A" team in Berlin (CDU and SPD) really screwed up badly and mismanaged the past three years to a great degree. But would the "B" team coming on repeat or do even worse?
So we are in some great open field with no trees for any distance and can see things very clearly. The problem is.....you can hope Merkel and company learned some lessons, thus giving them your vote.....or saddle up with some AfD folks who are more of a frustration vote than anything else.
I hate to suggest all of this is just hype.....but Germans are in search of something that doesn't exist. The mythical unicorn who would chase out wolves, keep the economy steady, fix VW's diesel issue, fix the BER airport, ensure Stuttgart-21 finishes on schedule, be lovable, and keep beer flowing.....is not to be found.
It was public frustration with the immigration, migration and asylum policy. It was hostility over failed integration. It was resentment against Islam, the veiled ladies, and potential threats (real or imagined). It was a disgruntled society who felt that Berlin was out of touch and unable to comprehend the costs of an open door program. The list goes on and on.
So here it was.....AfD.
As much as the opposition to them painted the AfD as potential Nazis, incompetent fools, or extremists....it didn't matter. It was the only place to place a vote by a German citizen and say something bold with that one single vote.
Currently, polling by public-TV will say that AfD can get 13-percent of the vote, and they suggest (particularly over the last month) that they've peaked out. Some people still think that for the national election in September of 2017....they might be able to carve out 15 to 18 percent of the national vote. With the right "events" occurring and a loss of confidence in Merkel and both major parties....I could even envision AfD taking 20-to-22 percent of the vote.
But as you sit back and really look over things with the AfD....what exactly do you get with your vote?
A weak new party, with a limited cast of characters with any background or experience? Yeah.
A party with very few platforms other than immigration, crime, and integration? Yeah.
If they did clear 28-percent and won....could they even form a government? No, it's very unlikely that any of the other parties would agree to partner up with them.
Even if someone did....what kind of legislation could AfD bring? Could they order mosques to be closed? It's very unlikely that the court system would allow them to go that far. Could they toss out 300,000 migrants or immigrants? State courts would likely hinder that objective. Could they arrest and detain 100,000 young men with questionable behavior issues? Courts would likely hinder that.
Oh, there's no doubt that the "A" team in Berlin (CDU and SPD) really screwed up badly and mismanaged the past three years to a great degree. But would the "B" team coming on repeat or do even worse?
So we are in some great open field with no trees for any distance and can see things very clearly. The problem is.....you can hope Merkel and company learned some lessons, thus giving them your vote.....or saddle up with some AfD folks who are more of a frustration vote than anything else.
I hate to suggest all of this is just hype.....but Germans are in search of something that doesn't exist. The mythical unicorn who would chase out wolves, keep the economy steady, fix VW's diesel issue, fix the BER airport, ensure Stuttgart-21 finishes on schedule, be lovable, and keep beer flowing.....is not to be found.
Monday, December 19, 2016
Berlin Today
There are probably seven or eight facts over the Berlin terror act of last night.
The driver of the vehicle is Pakistani....having come in Feb of 2016...the last of the big wave. He's used at least two different names and it seems that the authorities aren't that sure about who he really is. His associate? Dead.
The truck? Polish-plated, and was driven by a polish delivery guy up until 4PM. Polish guy had a chat with his wife. No contact after that point. He was found dead in the truck.
Twelve dead at this point, and around fifty injured.
Around 9:30, commercial German TV broke and started telling the story....using the word "terrorism" in about every four sentence. After ten minutes of viewing that.....I flipped the channel to public-run ARD. Oddly, ten seconds into this episode....the news guy used "unfall" (German word for accident) rather than using the word terror or terrorism. Over a 45-minute period, they tried awful hard to avoid the word terror.
Lots of Berlin-regional political figures did interviews....local gov't folks trying to calm the residents of the city.
As for the market? I would suspect that it won't reopen. Other Christmas markets will evaluate security and I suspect that more barriers will be put up today. Long-term? No fest will be able to operate unless barriers are in place.
So you stand back and assess all of this. You can talk all you want about dark-net, guns on the street, and more cops.....but as proven in this case, you just need a tractor-trailer rig and enough speed to plow through a crowd. I suspect if they drug-tested the Pakistani guy, he will show something in his system. I don't think the cops or prosecutor cares about that line of thought.
Zurich? No connection to this but someone walked into a Islam center yesterday afternoon and shot three members who were in the center (all in mid-30s). All three still alive at this point. Shooter? Just walked away. Cops hunting the guy but no idea who he is. Might be just angry Swiss guy.....might be someone with a grudge against this particular group of Islamic guys.
The driver of the vehicle is Pakistani....having come in Feb of 2016...the last of the big wave. He's used at least two different names and it seems that the authorities aren't that sure about who he really is. His associate? Dead.
The truck? Polish-plated, and was driven by a polish delivery guy up until 4PM. Polish guy had a chat with his wife. No contact after that point. He was found dead in the truck.
Twelve dead at this point, and around fifty injured.
Around 9:30, commercial German TV broke and started telling the story....using the word "terrorism" in about every four sentence. After ten minutes of viewing that.....I flipped the channel to public-run ARD. Oddly, ten seconds into this episode....the news guy used "unfall" (German word for accident) rather than using the word terror or terrorism. Over a 45-minute period, they tried awful hard to avoid the word terror.
Lots of Berlin-regional political figures did interviews....local gov't folks trying to calm the residents of the city.
As for the market? I would suspect that it won't reopen. Other Christmas markets will evaluate security and I suspect that more barriers will be put up today. Long-term? No fest will be able to operate unless barriers are in place.
So you stand back and assess all of this. You can talk all you want about dark-net, guns on the street, and more cops.....but as proven in this case, you just need a tractor-trailer rig and enough speed to plow through a crowd. I suspect if they drug-tested the Pakistani guy, he will show something in his system. I don't think the cops or prosecutor cares about that line of thought.
Zurich? No connection to this but someone walked into a Islam center yesterday afternoon and shot three members who were in the center (all in mid-30s). All three still alive at this point. Shooter? Just walked away. Cops hunting the guy but no idea who he is. Might be just angry Swiss guy.....might be someone with a grudge against this particular group of Islamic guys.
German TV and Christmas
Back in the mid-1990s....I worked at Ramstein with another guy....who was also married to a German. Christmas came up one year. I had fairly big laugh over TV options on the 24th (Xmas eve) and the 25th (Christmas Day). When I returned to work....my associate brought up the topic and we spent a fair amount of time discussing this.
From what I can remember on the 24th....my choices at 8:15 PM on German TV consisted of: (1) some German-produced Santa movie with Santa being chased around by bad guys with assault rifles, (2) Rambo, (3) a Tatort (a German krimi series), (4) some 1950s Hercules movie, (5) some Czech-production from the 1960s of Cinderella, and (6) some British romance piece.
What Germans usually say is that none of the networks....public or private....care to put much effort into the schedule for the 24th or 25th because no one is watching TV very much.
For this year on the 24th? I have my new TV guide and checked it out: (1) Kevin (it runs at least six to eight times a year in Germany), (2) Lord of the Rings, (3) some German-produced comedy Christmas movie from 2014, (4) A Night in the Museum, (5) a two-hour Hansel and Greta opera (from a story that usually only take six minutes to tell), (6) a three-hour Daniela Katzenburger (the German promi blonde gal) special, (7) a 1950s British-made Miss Marple murder mystery, (8) the Wonder of Manhatten (US-made 1990s Christmas movie), (9) the Czech 1960s production of Cinderella, (9) two different Christmas tunes shows, and (10) Con Air (a US made shoot-them-up movie).
No one ever does statistics, but I would take a humble guess that fewer than twelve million Germans (out of 82-million) are watching any TV for the 24th. Maybe in some way, it's a positive thing and that people are doing in-house or neighborhood type Christmas activities, instead of sitting at home and watching Miss Marple solve the strange case of the dead vicar, who was actually killed by six different people.
From what I can remember on the 24th....my choices at 8:15 PM on German TV consisted of: (1) some German-produced Santa movie with Santa being chased around by bad guys with assault rifles, (2) Rambo, (3) a Tatort (a German krimi series), (4) some 1950s Hercules movie, (5) some Czech-production from the 1960s of Cinderella, and (6) some British romance piece.
What Germans usually say is that none of the networks....public or private....care to put much effort into the schedule for the 24th or 25th because no one is watching TV very much.
For this year on the 24th? I have my new TV guide and checked it out: (1) Kevin (it runs at least six to eight times a year in Germany), (2) Lord of the Rings, (3) some German-produced comedy Christmas movie from 2014, (4) A Night in the Museum, (5) a two-hour Hansel and Greta opera (from a story that usually only take six minutes to tell), (6) a three-hour Daniela Katzenburger (the German promi blonde gal) special, (7) a 1950s British-made Miss Marple murder mystery, (8) the Wonder of Manhatten (US-made 1990s Christmas movie), (9) the Czech 1960s production of Cinderella, (9) two different Christmas tunes shows, and (10) Con Air (a US made shoot-them-up movie).
No one ever does statistics, but I would take a humble guess that fewer than twelve million Germans (out of 82-million) are watching any TV for the 24th. Maybe in some way, it's a positive thing and that people are doing in-house or neighborhood type Christmas activities, instead of sitting at home and watching Miss Marple solve the strange case of the dead vicar, who was actually killed by six different people.
Sunday, December 18, 2016
The Lost Consumers of Swedish News
I picked up a Swedish publication....Resume....which had this interesting report from the Stockholm School of Economics. They sat down with seven Swedish newspapers or TV news producers (Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, Swedish Radio, Swedish Television, and Upsala Nya Tidning), and asked some questions about where Swedes are going with their views on news.
At some point, they came to this surprising conclusion.
Roughly fifty-percent of Swedes DON'T get their daily dose of news from the listed seven producers (seen above).
One out of five Swedes in the survey said that their focus in life led to distrust of the news media. Note....that didn't really make up the whole of that 50-percent number. This would lead one to ask more questions.
One gets the impression after reading the Resume article....that a fair number of Swedes want news to fit their thinking, their agenda or their focus in life. This isn't to say that they are right-wing or conservative.....they could very well be leftist, or on an environmental theme, or desiring good news only. These are people who weren't going toward the seven normal delivery vehicles of news in Sweden.
What Resume does hint toward the end of this article....this is the first time anyone has ever looked at news and viewers in Sweden. In some ways, the survey now lays out a great mystery and requires more research.
The curious thing, when you sit and look at this information....is that news organizations mostly survive because of capitalistic tendencies. They go after a consumer and ensure that the consumer is satisfied. Up until now, the Swedish news empire felt they were in control and easily had the bulk of consumers. Now? Less so.
Some people will say that news is not consumer driven....but factual. However, these are not the people paying the bills at the newspapers or determining the national TV tax.
I sat and looked up the state TV tax. 250 Euro a year.
Where does this all lead? I suspect that the newspapers and TV news people are a bit shocked at the high level (50-percent) of people who don't use their service or product. If there was a slant or agenda....this report more or less confirms that people have caught on and simply declined the product. A problem for future politics?
The next big election in Sweden is in Sep of 2018. To be honest, Swedish politics runs along a normal script with roughly eight political parties. The majority are center-left/center-right....a Green Party...and the remainder on the left. The Swedish Democrat Party would be the only party that has a right-wing theme. The only new-comer party that Swedes might admit to? The Pirate Party....but it's mostly a younger voter theme with them.
An upsurge for the Swedish Democratic Party? They will 'brag' in speeches of taking 25-percent in the next election. That would be double of what they took in the last election (12.9-percent of the total vote).
The angry frustrated crowd influenced by their choice of news? Yet to be played out and if you read the whole Resume article....there's this big mystery left....what exactly are these readers thinking? Are they pro-capitalist, anti-capitalist, pro-immigration, anti-immigration,etc?
Curiously enough....the population of Sweden is 9.6 million. Number of Facebook members? Just over 5 million. The German identification of the fake news problem is likely to repeat with the same accusations in Sweden (sooner or later).
At some point, they came to this surprising conclusion.
Roughly fifty-percent of Swedes DON'T get their daily dose of news from the listed seven producers (seen above).
One out of five Swedes in the survey said that their focus in life led to distrust of the news media. Note....that didn't really make up the whole of that 50-percent number. This would lead one to ask more questions.
One gets the impression after reading the Resume article....that a fair number of Swedes want news to fit their thinking, their agenda or their focus in life. This isn't to say that they are right-wing or conservative.....they could very well be leftist, or on an environmental theme, or desiring good news only. These are people who weren't going toward the seven normal delivery vehicles of news in Sweden.
What Resume does hint toward the end of this article....this is the first time anyone has ever looked at news and viewers in Sweden. In some ways, the survey now lays out a great mystery and requires more research.
The curious thing, when you sit and look at this information....is that news organizations mostly survive because of capitalistic tendencies. They go after a consumer and ensure that the consumer is satisfied. Up until now, the Swedish news empire felt they were in control and easily had the bulk of consumers. Now? Less so.
Some people will say that news is not consumer driven....but factual. However, these are not the people paying the bills at the newspapers or determining the national TV tax.
I sat and looked up the state TV tax. 250 Euro a year.
Where does this all lead? I suspect that the newspapers and TV news people are a bit shocked at the high level (50-percent) of people who don't use their service or product. If there was a slant or agenda....this report more or less confirms that people have caught on and simply declined the product. A problem for future politics?
The next big election in Sweden is in Sep of 2018. To be honest, Swedish politics runs along a normal script with roughly eight political parties. The majority are center-left/center-right....a Green Party...and the remainder on the left. The Swedish Democrat Party would be the only party that has a right-wing theme. The only new-comer party that Swedes might admit to? The Pirate Party....but it's mostly a younger voter theme with them.
An upsurge for the Swedish Democratic Party? They will 'brag' in speeches of taking 25-percent in the next election. That would be double of what they took in the last election (12.9-percent of the total vote).
The angry frustrated crowd influenced by their choice of news? Yet to be played out and if you read the whole Resume article....there's this big mystery left....what exactly are these readers thinking? Are they pro-capitalist, anti-capitalist, pro-immigration, anti-immigration,etc?
Curiously enough....the population of Sweden is 9.6 million. Number of Facebook members? Just over 5 million. The German identification of the fake news problem is likely to repeat with the same accusations in Sweden (sooner or later).
2017, Germany and Facebook
At some point toward the end of 2017.....I believe (just my humble guess) that some slight hint will be made by Facebook that numbers, advertising, clicks....are lessening...over Germany.
Why?
As much as the German bureaucracy and intellectual strength want to "fix" Facebook, I think they will do enough damage that some people will see Facebook as Myspace.
Remember Myspace?
Ten years ago....Myspace was the dominate social media platform. Kids used it.....college kids were users....and adults were starting to drift into it.
Myspace came alive in 2003, and took off. By 2005....they were bought by News Corp and figured to be safely in place. The junior guys on the block (Facebook)? They didn't come around until late fall of 2006. If you ask most people....the junior guys (Facebook) only required eighteen months to dislodge the "giant" (Myspace), and the rest is history.
What happened? There are different versions.
I worked in a tech office in this 2008/2009 period. Most of the younger kids were pro-MySpace because you could download and share pictures or tunes. The techie folks didn't see a big need to comment back and forth (like Facebook and Twitter would provide). But these were simply the techie folks....not normal regular users. The normal users, by my belief, wanted communication without a lot of bells and whistles.
Some people will say that MySpace was developed without a lot of strategy. Their focus, at least in that 2005 to 2008 period was simply to connect users to some entertainment strategy. There was no multi-focus approach on differing ways.
Others will say that Facebook was a technology driven platform....needing just start-up funding and a little bit of patience.
But the thing is....all of this revolves around capitalism. Facebook, while pretending to be free and open....is handcuffed to making a profit via some method. It's attached to a business plan and it has a certain "script" that it has to go along....for profit to occur and the platform to survive.
So I keep looking at this long discussion in Germany and the EU over Facebook and how they "want" (manipulate would fit too) Facebook to function within their guidelines. The thing is....Facebook has to fit a user strategy and have a profit element to it. If any part of Facebook's platform is drawn into a questionable strategy....whether morally right or politically conceived, then users will vacate as they did with MySpace.
Across the globe today....it's fairly safe to say that MySpace survives with roughly 50-million active users. Facebook? With active users....1.8 billion. MySpace is still the platform for users with entertainment, movie clips, or songs as their priority.
MySpace? It's surviving with less than 200 employees today. If you were betting on things....it's hard to see them still around in a decade.
If Germany and the EU go forward with their control play, my guess is that user numbers will peak in 2017, and shift to lesser numbers by the end of the year.
Somewhere in the balance of things....Facebook will become less of a tool of communication...mostly because of this continuing debate on fake news and the developed tools to make the Germans happy. Less clicks equal less profit. Less profit leads to questions.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I suspect in five years.....people will be standing there and asking....how did fake news damage Facebook enough that it lost it's mojo and stepped back toward the shadows of MySpace.
Why?
As much as the German bureaucracy and intellectual strength want to "fix" Facebook, I think they will do enough damage that some people will see Facebook as Myspace.
Remember Myspace?
Ten years ago....Myspace was the dominate social media platform. Kids used it.....college kids were users....and adults were starting to drift into it.
Myspace came alive in 2003, and took off. By 2005....they were bought by News Corp and figured to be safely in place. The junior guys on the block (Facebook)? They didn't come around until late fall of 2006. If you ask most people....the junior guys (Facebook) only required eighteen months to dislodge the "giant" (Myspace), and the rest is history.
What happened? There are different versions.
I worked in a tech office in this 2008/2009 period. Most of the younger kids were pro-MySpace because you could download and share pictures or tunes. The techie folks didn't see a big need to comment back and forth (like Facebook and Twitter would provide). But these were simply the techie folks....not normal regular users. The normal users, by my belief, wanted communication without a lot of bells and whistles.
Some people will say that MySpace was developed without a lot of strategy. Their focus, at least in that 2005 to 2008 period was simply to connect users to some entertainment strategy. There was no multi-focus approach on differing ways.
Others will say that Facebook was a technology driven platform....needing just start-up funding and a little bit of patience.
But the thing is....all of this revolves around capitalism. Facebook, while pretending to be free and open....is handcuffed to making a profit via some method. It's attached to a business plan and it has a certain "script" that it has to go along....for profit to occur and the platform to survive.
So I keep looking at this long discussion in Germany and the EU over Facebook and how they "want" (manipulate would fit too) Facebook to function within their guidelines. The thing is....Facebook has to fit a user strategy and have a profit element to it. If any part of Facebook's platform is drawn into a questionable strategy....whether morally right or politically conceived, then users will vacate as they did with MySpace.
Across the globe today....it's fairly safe to say that MySpace survives with roughly 50-million active users. Facebook? With active users....1.8 billion. MySpace is still the platform for users with entertainment, movie clips, or songs as their priority.
MySpace? It's surviving with less than 200 employees today. If you were betting on things....it's hard to see them still around in a decade.
If Germany and the EU go forward with their control play, my guess is that user numbers will peak in 2017, and shift to lesser numbers by the end of the year.
Somewhere in the balance of things....Facebook will become less of a tool of communication...mostly because of this continuing debate on fake news and the developed tools to make the Germans happy. Less clicks equal less profit. Less profit leads to questions.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I suspect in five years.....people will be standing there and asking....how did fake news damage Facebook enough that it lost it's mojo and stepped back toward the shadows of MySpace.
The 'Truth-Commission' Story
Back in 2014...the Merkel coalition (CDU-CSU-SPD) was forced into a corner about the NSA revelations that Snowden revealed. The opposition parties in the Bundestag of Berlin wanted to know the full picture. Naturally, you need a truth-commission.
As this idea was discussed....one of the issues that everyone wanted to avoid was having classified or extremely sensitive data stuck out there and handed either to some journalist or to WikiLeaks. As this truth-commission was formed....sticking to security rules would be necessary. Anyone near the collected data had to be trusted.
This weekend....it's been noted that the Bundestag President (Norbert Lammert, CDU) has issued an investigation approval. He says in a crafted sort of way....there's a mole or spy within the Bundestag.
As you might expect...roughly two-thousand documents from this truth commission got out, via WikiLeaks. These were confidential files from the NSA investigation committee.
If you read the Focus piece....the cops looked at everything, file security, access to the internet...the German cops feel pretty sure that this was not a hacker action...it was an insider episode.
What happens now? It's probably a two sided approach. First, they will go line by line on the computer log files to see who downloaded the files in question. Second, the cops have approval to do some surveillance of Bundestag members now. Since the accusation is a mole (in essence a spy), if they get to some person and can prove the document theft, it's hefty charges and a major embarrassment to whichever party the guy is connected with.
Odds of success? It'll be curious how this proceeds. They may reach a point where they just can't establish a lead on any single person.
But then we have the secondary event coming up in 2017....since the courts have ordered the Merkel coalition to bring Snowden to testify in Berlin....there's going to be a testimony on what he provides. The odds that this will also be leaked out via WikiLeaks?
My guess is that someone will be stupid enough to return and steal this set of fresh new documents and get caught. In a matter of hours, this will become page one news as the guy is arrested and carried off to some Berlin police station.
By early summer, this Snowden episode will occur and you can probably guess that within a month....the new theft will occur. WikiLeaks will put the fresh documents up and the cops will go seize this guy and a series of political blunders will occur with some political party trying to separate themselves from the act of one of their players. With the election in September, some party is sitting in a potential mess....waiting for the curtain to fall on one of their members. Hint: I don't think we are talking about anyone with the CDU, CSU or SPD.
As this idea was discussed....one of the issues that everyone wanted to avoid was having classified or extremely sensitive data stuck out there and handed either to some journalist or to WikiLeaks. As this truth-commission was formed....sticking to security rules would be necessary. Anyone near the collected data had to be trusted.
This weekend....it's been noted that the Bundestag President (Norbert Lammert, CDU) has issued an investigation approval. He says in a crafted sort of way....there's a mole or spy within the Bundestag.
As you might expect...roughly two-thousand documents from this truth commission got out, via WikiLeaks. These were confidential files from the NSA investigation committee.
If you read the Focus piece....the cops looked at everything, file security, access to the internet...the German cops feel pretty sure that this was not a hacker action...it was an insider episode.
What happens now? It's probably a two sided approach. First, they will go line by line on the computer log files to see who downloaded the files in question. Second, the cops have approval to do some surveillance of Bundestag members now. Since the accusation is a mole (in essence a spy), if they get to some person and can prove the document theft, it's hefty charges and a major embarrassment to whichever party the guy is connected with.
Odds of success? It'll be curious how this proceeds. They may reach a point where they just can't establish a lead on any single person.
But then we have the secondary event coming up in 2017....since the courts have ordered the Merkel coalition to bring Snowden to testify in Berlin....there's going to be a testimony on what he provides. The odds that this will also be leaked out via WikiLeaks?
My guess is that someone will be stupid enough to return and steal this set of fresh new documents and get caught. In a matter of hours, this will become page one news as the guy is arrested and carried off to some Berlin police station.
By early summer, this Snowden episode will occur and you can probably guess that within a month....the new theft will occur. WikiLeaks will put the fresh documents up and the cops will go seize this guy and a series of political blunders will occur with some political party trying to separate themselves from the act of one of their players. With the election in September, some party is sitting in a potential mess....waiting for the curtain to fall on one of their members. Hint: I don't think we are talking about anyone with the CDU, CSU or SPD.
Saturday, December 17, 2016
My Top Ten German Fakes
I sat the other day and pondered upon this German topic of fake news, asked myself....why one circle? There actually are a lot of fake things....some even German.
1. Nutella. It's a wonderful German "nutritional" spread for breakfast or snacks. I should note that it's 70-percent saturated fat and processed sugar by weight. Just two table-spoons are 200 calories. This German spread is often hyped up in various countries (to include the US) as a great nutritional item because it comes from Hazelnuts. The thing is....if you bring up this nutritional topic....German experts will get all hyped up and angry because it is fake. No nutritional expert will ever say it has any good stuff on nutrition.
2. VW Diesel Issue. For roughly seven years, VW manufactured a series of diesel engine which they were proud of the technology for clean air. Then someone figured out that the software within the vehicle was rigged, and it was a 'dirty' diesel engine. Fake statistics? Yeah. The engineering team came to realize they could never build a engine that had good mileage, was clean, and had power.....so they manufactured a software that made you think it was clean. It is such a fake situation, that VW is fairly damaged. German owners getting compensation? Oddly, they are at the very end of the whole deal and VW is probably hoping that the German government never forces them to pay off individual owners here.
3. Fake resume. For over twenty years, Petra Hinz kept moving up the SPD Party of members in NRW. Her job profession? She was a degreed-lawyer. Well....back in July of 2016....reality finally caught up and she had to admit that she didn't have the law degree, and never took the state bar exam. Here she was....one of the top twenty-five SPD members nationally, and highly regarded within Berlin Bundestag....a fake lawyer. She was urged to resign quickly....for the sake of the party. This took several months of coaching before she finally walked away.
4. Fake band, Milli Vanilla. This German R&B band (two guys actually) was a creation of Frank Farian in 1988. What can be said is that Frank did know good music and how to package it. So he had these tunes in his mind, but he needed a front act to fit it. So he hired these two guys....Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus. Fab and Rob basically dressed in hip-fashion (for 1988), and had the appearance of male models. 1989 was this break-out year for the band with Girl You Know It's True....giving them a Grammy for Best New Artist in spring of 1990. The thing is....NEITHER guy could actually sing. Frank had the vocals done in a studio with a couple of regular singers/artists who didn't have the "appeal" that Fab and Rob gave him. Things would have been fine except both Fab and Rob wanted to do the vocals and sing on their own....which they just didn't grasp the talent situation. The public figured out the gimmick by the end of 1990. Things went downhill with the German band, with Rob heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol, dying in a Frankfurt hotel in 1998.
5. Fake German beer steins. Most all American guys who spend a couple of years in Germany on some tour....end up with a authentic-looking beer stein. These can be highly decorative. Prior to the 1990s....when you bought one of these at some local German gift shop....it probably was German-made. Over the past decade, the German gift shops have imported a fair number of Chinese-made steins. So if you are buying these....you need to pay attention, and buy only from a reputable dealer and ask questions.
6. Fake Hitler Diary. In the early 1980s....Konrad Kujau appeared with no less than sixty volumes of daily journals that Adolf Hitler had written. Yeah....it was unbelievable at the time that such journals existed. The fact that we are talking about sixty of them....all hand-written...was a monumental effort. It took roughly two years to create these. Stern magazine (one of the top German publications) bought the sixty....for 9.3 million DM (roughly 4.5 dollars). To recover their investment.....they sold serial rights to the sixty journals. By 1984....the fake diaries were figured out. It became a massive scandal, with Focus, the London Times, and Newsweek all tied to this. For months, jokes were made about the fake diaries. The thing is....Germans were hyped to want to know more about Hitler and were literally begging for the diaries to exist.
7. Fake Western Writer. When German Karl May passed away in 1912 at age 70....he had the distinction of having written dozens of successful western-theme fictional books. In his youth, you can basically say that he was more or less a failure as a tutor (his chosen profession). From 1870 to 1874....he spent some time in prison and spent a fair amount of this episode reading. So when he emerged in 1874....he felt he could write as well as anyone, and started producing an American western series of books. You have to remember....he'd never stepped outside of Germany in his life (at this point). The series would revolve around a friendly Indian (Winnetou) and a honest cowboy (Old Surehand). Using travel pamphlets, Karl wrote a series of western books that Germans enjoyed and were entertained by. From 1892 to 1899....May was turning out a book about every four months. Germans generally laugh over the stories today, but the movies made from the 1960s are regularly featured. How May accomplished this? Most say that he had a great imagination and did pour into research of the topic. That made up for the fact that he didn't make a trip to the US until the last few years of his life.
8. Fake Car of the Year. Back in 2013....ADAC, the Automobile Club of Germany, did a annual collection of votes to pick car of the year.....which ended up with the VW Golf being the winner. So after a few weeks of hype....it came out that the votes were manipulated, and the Golf should not have been the ADAC car of the year.
9. Fake Phantom Killer. For roughly two years, German cops were convinced because of DNA evidence that a serial killer was operating somewhere in the region of Heilbronn. They had tied at least a dozen serious crimes (from robbery to murder) to this one single individual. At some point, it appears that a cop began to doubt the complex nature of this whole case and he sent a blank DNA swab to the analysis office. It came back identifying the Phantom Killer to the non-existent crime. This was a problem now. So, they looked at the packing of the DNA swabs and went to the company that manufactured them. The company wasn't aware of this DNA usage....they simply sold their product to a 3rd party, who packaged it as DNA swabs. There was no control and individuals at the company were openly in contact with the swabs during production. The whole fake phantom killer investigation? Literally thousands of man-hours thrown into this....totally wasted.
10. Fake wine connoisseur. By the end of the 1980s....Hardy Rodenstock (in his late 40s) had been a successful publisher and even managed a number of German pop and Schlager stars. His newest claim to fame was that he was a wine collector, and wine connoisseur. His big deal was old and rare wines. So Hardy would have these five-star wine tastings, with a few prominent people around and sold wine that was featured. At some point in the 1991/1992 period....the gimmick was figured out and that some of the rare wines were simply a fraud. By 1992, Hardy ended up in front of a German court and had to settle out of court. The problem is that a lot of people from across the globe had bought 'treasured' wine for hefty prices with some sitting there wondering the real value or authenticity. Some of Hardy's deals were probably correct and some questionable.
When I talk about this topic of fakeness.....it's not that the Germans alone produce a fair bit of fake things....but that German society will easily buy into fakes. You can ask Germans today about Nutella, at least half of society will say that it's a nutritional spread for a breakfast....which hypes up the nutritional-police to a great extent. When ADAC's car of the year fake came up....it blew up the brand-name of ADAC for vote-rigging.
Skepticism is a wonderful tool....if applied.
1. Nutella. It's a wonderful German "nutritional" spread for breakfast or snacks. I should note that it's 70-percent saturated fat and processed sugar by weight. Just two table-spoons are 200 calories. This German spread is often hyped up in various countries (to include the US) as a great nutritional item because it comes from Hazelnuts. The thing is....if you bring up this nutritional topic....German experts will get all hyped up and angry because it is fake. No nutritional expert will ever say it has any good stuff on nutrition.
2. VW Diesel Issue. For roughly seven years, VW manufactured a series of diesel engine which they were proud of the technology for clean air. Then someone figured out that the software within the vehicle was rigged, and it was a 'dirty' diesel engine. Fake statistics? Yeah. The engineering team came to realize they could never build a engine that had good mileage, was clean, and had power.....so they manufactured a software that made you think it was clean. It is such a fake situation, that VW is fairly damaged. German owners getting compensation? Oddly, they are at the very end of the whole deal and VW is probably hoping that the German government never forces them to pay off individual owners here.
3. Fake resume. For over twenty years, Petra Hinz kept moving up the SPD Party of members in NRW. Her job profession? She was a degreed-lawyer. Well....back in July of 2016....reality finally caught up and she had to admit that she didn't have the law degree, and never took the state bar exam. Here she was....one of the top twenty-five SPD members nationally, and highly regarded within Berlin Bundestag....a fake lawyer. She was urged to resign quickly....for the sake of the party. This took several months of coaching before she finally walked away.
4. Fake band, Milli Vanilla. This German R&B band (two guys actually) was a creation of Frank Farian in 1988. What can be said is that Frank did know good music and how to package it. So he had these tunes in his mind, but he needed a front act to fit it. So he hired these two guys....Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus. Fab and Rob basically dressed in hip-fashion (for 1988), and had the appearance of male models. 1989 was this break-out year for the band with Girl You Know It's True....giving them a Grammy for Best New Artist in spring of 1990. The thing is....NEITHER guy could actually sing. Frank had the vocals done in a studio with a couple of regular singers/artists who didn't have the "appeal" that Fab and Rob gave him. Things would have been fine except both Fab and Rob wanted to do the vocals and sing on their own....which they just didn't grasp the talent situation. The public figured out the gimmick by the end of 1990. Things went downhill with the German band, with Rob heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol, dying in a Frankfurt hotel in 1998.
5. Fake German beer steins. Most all American guys who spend a couple of years in Germany on some tour....end up with a authentic-looking beer stein. These can be highly decorative. Prior to the 1990s....when you bought one of these at some local German gift shop....it probably was German-made. Over the past decade, the German gift shops have imported a fair number of Chinese-made steins. So if you are buying these....you need to pay attention, and buy only from a reputable dealer and ask questions.
6. Fake Hitler Diary. In the early 1980s....Konrad Kujau appeared with no less than sixty volumes of daily journals that Adolf Hitler had written. Yeah....it was unbelievable at the time that such journals existed. The fact that we are talking about sixty of them....all hand-written...was a monumental effort. It took roughly two years to create these. Stern magazine (one of the top German publications) bought the sixty....for 9.3 million DM (roughly 4.5 dollars). To recover their investment.....they sold serial rights to the sixty journals. By 1984....the fake diaries were figured out. It became a massive scandal, with Focus, the London Times, and Newsweek all tied to this. For months, jokes were made about the fake diaries. The thing is....Germans were hyped to want to know more about Hitler and were literally begging for the diaries to exist.
7. Fake Western Writer. When German Karl May passed away in 1912 at age 70....he had the distinction of having written dozens of successful western-theme fictional books. In his youth, you can basically say that he was more or less a failure as a tutor (his chosen profession). From 1870 to 1874....he spent some time in prison and spent a fair amount of this episode reading. So when he emerged in 1874....he felt he could write as well as anyone, and started producing an American western series of books. You have to remember....he'd never stepped outside of Germany in his life (at this point). The series would revolve around a friendly Indian (Winnetou) and a honest cowboy (Old Surehand). Using travel pamphlets, Karl wrote a series of western books that Germans enjoyed and were entertained by. From 1892 to 1899....May was turning out a book about every four months. Germans generally laugh over the stories today, but the movies made from the 1960s are regularly featured. How May accomplished this? Most say that he had a great imagination and did pour into research of the topic. That made up for the fact that he didn't make a trip to the US until the last few years of his life.
8. Fake Car of the Year. Back in 2013....ADAC, the Automobile Club of Germany, did a annual collection of votes to pick car of the year.....which ended up with the VW Golf being the winner. So after a few weeks of hype....it came out that the votes were manipulated, and the Golf should not have been the ADAC car of the year.
9. Fake Phantom Killer. For roughly two years, German cops were convinced because of DNA evidence that a serial killer was operating somewhere in the region of Heilbronn. They had tied at least a dozen serious crimes (from robbery to murder) to this one single individual. At some point, it appears that a cop began to doubt the complex nature of this whole case and he sent a blank DNA swab to the analysis office. It came back identifying the Phantom Killer to the non-existent crime. This was a problem now. So, they looked at the packing of the DNA swabs and went to the company that manufactured them. The company wasn't aware of this DNA usage....they simply sold their product to a 3rd party, who packaged it as DNA swabs. There was no control and individuals at the company were openly in contact with the swabs during production. The whole fake phantom killer investigation? Literally thousands of man-hours thrown into this....totally wasted.
10. Fake wine connoisseur. By the end of the 1980s....Hardy Rodenstock (in his late 40s) had been a successful publisher and even managed a number of German pop and Schlager stars. His newest claim to fame was that he was a wine collector, and wine connoisseur. His big deal was old and rare wines. So Hardy would have these five-star wine tastings, with a few prominent people around and sold wine that was featured. At some point in the 1991/1992 period....the gimmick was figured out and that some of the rare wines were simply a fraud. By 1992, Hardy ended up in front of a German court and had to settle out of court. The problem is that a lot of people from across the globe had bought 'treasured' wine for hefty prices with some sitting there wondering the real value or authenticity. Some of Hardy's deals were probably correct and some questionable.
When I talk about this topic of fakeness.....it's not that the Germans alone produce a fair bit of fake things....but that German society will easily buy into fakes. You can ask Germans today about Nutella, at least half of society will say that it's a nutritional spread for a breakfast....which hypes up the nutritional-police to a great extent. When ADAC's car of the year fake came up....it blew up the brand-name of ADAC for vote-rigging.
Skepticism is a wonderful tool....if applied.
Friday, December 16, 2016
Anchoring Facebook?
Comments today by the German Justice Minister (Maas, SPD) indicate that after the holidays....probably going into mid-January to mid-February...he will introduce some draft law and hope to get CDU support lined up behind it....on fake news.
The rumored draft?
Out of Spiegel today is some talk from inside the SPD Party that this will invoke some situation where a "market-dominating" platform (Facebook Twitter, Ebay, etc) would have to have a legal center on German soil. This center....operating 24 hours a day....365 days a year....would immediately be tasked to react to "victims" (yet to be detailed how you could be qualified as such) of fake news.
The suggestion of this Spiegel story is that if you didn't delete the offending fake news within 24 hours, then you'd have to pay 500,000 Euro.
So you stand there looking at this. A Facebook center, open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year....to react? How many personnel are you talking about? My humble guess would be some chief...ten to twenty sub-chiefs and support personnel. Then figure.at least twenty to forty phone response people with administrator privileges, with five or six on each shift....around the clock.
Could any individual just call and say he's angry about such-and-such posting? Yeah. Reaction by Facebook phone folks? I would imagine, they'd be quick to delete anything to avoid this 500,000 fine for each single issue. All you need is five or six of these a year, and your profit margin suffers a bit.
So you could create a wave on some evening around Christmas where you get seven-hundred people calling in every three hours and triggering massive deletions? In theory....yeah.
The second part of this that makes it interesting is that you'd have various platforms affected. Ebay could be dragged into this....even though they make next to nothing on profit.
The comments section of Amazon? Well....yeah....you could write something to offend some author of a book.
Other EU members asking for this "service"? Well....no.
I could imagine all 28 members getting hyped up and each asking for this 24-hour a day, 365-day a year operation in each country....just to hype up jobs. Presently, you don't see that many other European societies hyped up.
All of this policing and cleansing leads to? So you sit back and look over this scheme suggested. If this is the gimmick of persuasion by the SPD to draft as a law.....you would create this 100-day wave of deletions....one after another. It'd take four months to probably bring this center into operation. So by mid-summer....the cleansing crew would be doing their work for Germany and humanity.
By late-summer, deep into this election period....with folks at Facebook patting themselves on the back, and the Justice Minister all happy.....someone would ask, so that's the end of the problem?
Well....no. You see by late-summer, with the platform turned into a comical routine....a fair number of German users would just walk away. Facebook would ask about user rates and advertising numbers, and start to get a bit freaked out. Losing twenty to thirty percent of their audience in Germany in a hundred-day period? Yeah.
Where did they go? With a non-market-dominating platform....way off the German soil, and probably off of the EU range.
New strategy? Dragging the new non-market-dominating platform to German soil? Oh, I doubt if anyone would be that stupid. Meanwhile....Facebook and the others would be concerned how this trend lost them users, advertising money, and profit. Wanting to cut cost on this customer center....you'd eventually fill the room with one single cheap person (the mini-job 8.50 an hour person), and re-route all the phones to some Bombay office where Haj would answer with a crisp Bavarian accent and pretend he was in Munich.
Maybe there will be an end to this whole fake agenda talk and some real solution. But in the end, you'd just reinvent the whole problem requiring a new solution, and repeating this over and over.
The rumored draft?
Out of Spiegel today is some talk from inside the SPD Party that this will invoke some situation where a "market-dominating" platform (Facebook Twitter, Ebay, etc) would have to have a legal center on German soil. This center....operating 24 hours a day....365 days a year....would immediately be tasked to react to "victims" (yet to be detailed how you could be qualified as such) of fake news.
The suggestion of this Spiegel story is that if you didn't delete the offending fake news within 24 hours, then you'd have to pay 500,000 Euro.
So you stand there looking at this. A Facebook center, open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year....to react? How many personnel are you talking about? My humble guess would be some chief...ten to twenty sub-chiefs and support personnel. Then figure.at least twenty to forty phone response people with administrator privileges, with five or six on each shift....around the clock.
Could any individual just call and say he's angry about such-and-such posting? Yeah. Reaction by Facebook phone folks? I would imagine, they'd be quick to delete anything to avoid this 500,000 fine for each single issue. All you need is five or six of these a year, and your profit margin suffers a bit.
So you could create a wave on some evening around Christmas where you get seven-hundred people calling in every three hours and triggering massive deletions? In theory....yeah.
The second part of this that makes it interesting is that you'd have various platforms affected. Ebay could be dragged into this....even though they make next to nothing on profit.
The comments section of Amazon? Well....yeah....you could write something to offend some author of a book.
Other EU members asking for this "service"? Well....no.
I could imagine all 28 members getting hyped up and each asking for this 24-hour a day, 365-day a year operation in each country....just to hype up jobs. Presently, you don't see that many other European societies hyped up.
All of this policing and cleansing leads to? So you sit back and look over this scheme suggested. If this is the gimmick of persuasion by the SPD to draft as a law.....you would create this 100-day wave of deletions....one after another. It'd take four months to probably bring this center into operation. So by mid-summer....the cleansing crew would be doing their work for Germany and humanity.
By late-summer, deep into this election period....with folks at Facebook patting themselves on the back, and the Justice Minister all happy.....someone would ask, so that's the end of the problem?
Well....no. You see by late-summer, with the platform turned into a comical routine....a fair number of German users would just walk away. Facebook would ask about user rates and advertising numbers, and start to get a bit freaked out. Losing twenty to thirty percent of their audience in Germany in a hundred-day period? Yeah.
Where did they go? With a non-market-dominating platform....way off the German soil, and probably off of the EU range.
New strategy? Dragging the new non-market-dominating platform to German soil? Oh, I doubt if anyone would be that stupid. Meanwhile....Facebook and the others would be concerned how this trend lost them users, advertising money, and profit. Wanting to cut cost on this customer center....you'd eventually fill the room with one single cheap person (the mini-job 8.50 an hour person), and re-route all the phones to some Bombay office where Haj would answer with a crisp Bavarian accent and pretend he was in Munich.
Maybe there will be an end to this whole fake agenda talk and some real solution. But in the end, you'd just reinvent the whole problem requiring a new solution, and repeating this over and over.
My Ten Observations on Fake News
On an average, I'll probably run through one thousand stories or news posts each week....some maybe more....some maybe less. I'm retired, and I have time on my hands. The number of organizations? NPR, London Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, ARD, ZDF, SWR, N-24, France-24, BBC, Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, The Australian, HuffPo, Drudge, the Telegraph, the AGE out of Australia, etc.
After a while, you can generally regard news into three categories: (1) worthless, meaning anything with Lady GaGa, Kardashians or Hollywood remakes. (2) limited value or fake news. This usually means they cite one fact, and then tell an entire story....40 lines....over that one fact...which most are simply their humble opinion or slant view of the story. I generally regard this more as commentary or a blog-deal....rather than real news. Then (3), where you have some honest journalist like at the WSJ who is telling a 40-line story with ten facts over a developing situation like the VW diesel story. You don't own a diesel VW but you just find it interesting how so many people worked to deceive the public and the government. Factually, it is complete.
So, here are my observations:
1. If they don't cite where or who they got the information from....it's either limited value or fake news. If they say some priest noted the Pope's letter said such-and-such.....who is the priest?
2. If a poll is the entire basis of the story....it's either a limited value or fake news item. Polls for the most part can be constructed to bring a false story enough weight to support the theme wanted by the journalist.
3. Once you realize a past story written by such-and-such writer/journalist was totally false....if the newspaper or press organization won't fire the guy....then everything he or she produces is a question mark from that point on. By not firing them....it is bringing discredit to the organization.
4. If it sounds too good to be true.....it probably isn't true.
5. The lack of quotes. Most factual stories will quote someone....at least once or twice. If there's not a single quote in the story....it might still be true, but the odds lessen to some degree.
6. Do your homework. If they discuss some particular trend or event....go back and read several reviews on the trend or event (not just with these guys). You want to build up a group of sources that you generally feel good about. When the Wall Street Journal talks about business, I feel comfortable with their analysis. When the Washington Post talks about the DC metro, I generally don't feel that comfortable with their analysis. When German ARD folks discuss BREXIT, I take the news and read other sources because I know that ARD can be occasionally one-sided on their view.
7. Planted news. When some new five-star news comes out and it looks really bad on one company, or one political party, or one country....you might want to ask....was this planted by someone with an agenda? Fake? No....but it means there's more to the story and the agenda. If the story-line comes out of some charity or human-rights group...what's the factual side of the story or what can be proven?
8. News derived from a foundation. Journalists like to get 'copy' from some foundation who hand them a hundred lines for a story, and they cut-and-paste the item....without really researching the angle or slant. The minute that you realize it's a foundation-piece....you need to exercise your judgement on the fakeness level.
9. Rarely is there fake news in sports. I've been waiting for someone to dig up some fake story on German soccer, or Grand Prix auto racing....but it never appears to happen. So your chief aim on fake news has a limit. Same can be said for fashion, and TV-show commentaries.
10. Remember that there's only X-amount of news per day being created. So, let's be realistic....at best, there might be 100 lines of real news for you to read, and the rest is all garbage. So, to get you up and watching this broadcast or reading Focus or Bild....they have to hype things a good bit. It's part of the gimmick.
Do we need filters to filter out fake news? Maybe. But then you might ask....will legit journalists find ways to deliver news of a marginal quality with limited quality of factual information? Notice, I didn't call it fake news....just marginal quality.
We may find in a year that the new Facebook filter removed not only fake news but also legit pieces written by Newsweek, the Daily Mail, and the Italia Oggi out of Milan. Then we wake up by the end of 2017 realizing that a quarter of normal users of Facebook just stopped logging in or checking things out. Then we act all shocked that another platform emerged out of thin air over the summer of 2017....providing everything that Facebook filtered out.
It's like the anti-alcohol slant at the turn of the last century in the US, and our attempt in 1920 to finally squeeze out booze and bring in the Prohibition Era. It took only a couple of years to admit that while in the morally right position....it was an absolute failure, and it took til 1933 to end mistake.
Fake news is worth discussing but if you drag this topic to an open debate with real Germans.....they might just suggest wage stagnation and increasing poverty affect them more than fake news. That's the harsh reality of this debate.
Footnote: I'm also wondering where UFO news, the Loch Ness Sea Monster, Bigfoot, and Kardashian updates will end up with this Facebook fake news checker. Is it possible that Bigfoot might pass, but Kardashian stories might fail?
After a while, you can generally regard news into three categories: (1) worthless, meaning anything with Lady GaGa, Kardashians or Hollywood remakes. (2) limited value or fake news. This usually means they cite one fact, and then tell an entire story....40 lines....over that one fact...which most are simply their humble opinion or slant view of the story. I generally regard this more as commentary or a blog-deal....rather than real news. Then (3), where you have some honest journalist like at the WSJ who is telling a 40-line story with ten facts over a developing situation like the VW diesel story. You don't own a diesel VW but you just find it interesting how so many people worked to deceive the public and the government. Factually, it is complete.
So, here are my observations:
1. If they don't cite where or who they got the information from....it's either limited value or fake news. If they say some priest noted the Pope's letter said such-and-such.....who is the priest?
2. If a poll is the entire basis of the story....it's either a limited value or fake news item. Polls for the most part can be constructed to bring a false story enough weight to support the theme wanted by the journalist.
3. Once you realize a past story written by such-and-such writer/journalist was totally false....if the newspaper or press organization won't fire the guy....then everything he or she produces is a question mark from that point on. By not firing them....it is bringing discredit to the organization.
4. If it sounds too good to be true.....it probably isn't true.
5. The lack of quotes. Most factual stories will quote someone....at least once or twice. If there's not a single quote in the story....it might still be true, but the odds lessen to some degree.
6. Do your homework. If they discuss some particular trend or event....go back and read several reviews on the trend or event (not just with these guys). You want to build up a group of sources that you generally feel good about. When the Wall Street Journal talks about business, I feel comfortable with their analysis. When the Washington Post talks about the DC metro, I generally don't feel that comfortable with their analysis. When German ARD folks discuss BREXIT, I take the news and read other sources because I know that ARD can be occasionally one-sided on their view.
7. Planted news. When some new five-star news comes out and it looks really bad on one company, or one political party, or one country....you might want to ask....was this planted by someone with an agenda? Fake? No....but it means there's more to the story and the agenda. If the story-line comes out of some charity or human-rights group...what's the factual side of the story or what can be proven?
8. News derived from a foundation. Journalists like to get 'copy' from some foundation who hand them a hundred lines for a story, and they cut-and-paste the item....without really researching the angle or slant. The minute that you realize it's a foundation-piece....you need to exercise your judgement on the fakeness level.
9. Rarely is there fake news in sports. I've been waiting for someone to dig up some fake story on German soccer, or Grand Prix auto racing....but it never appears to happen. So your chief aim on fake news has a limit. Same can be said for fashion, and TV-show commentaries.
10. Remember that there's only X-amount of news per day being created. So, let's be realistic....at best, there might be 100 lines of real news for you to read, and the rest is all garbage. So, to get you up and watching this broadcast or reading Focus or Bild....they have to hype things a good bit. It's part of the gimmick.
Do we need filters to filter out fake news? Maybe. But then you might ask....will legit journalists find ways to deliver news of a marginal quality with limited quality of factual information? Notice, I didn't call it fake news....just marginal quality.
We may find in a year that the new Facebook filter removed not only fake news but also legit pieces written by Newsweek, the Daily Mail, and the Italia Oggi out of Milan. Then we wake up by the end of 2017 realizing that a quarter of normal users of Facebook just stopped logging in or checking things out. Then we act all shocked that another platform emerged out of thin air over the summer of 2017....providing everything that Facebook filtered out.
It's like the anti-alcohol slant at the turn of the last century in the US, and our attempt in 1920 to finally squeeze out booze and bring in the Prohibition Era. It took only a couple of years to admit that while in the morally right position....it was an absolute failure, and it took til 1933 to end mistake.
Fake news is worth discussing but if you drag this topic to an open debate with real Germans.....they might just suggest wage stagnation and increasing poverty affect them more than fake news. That's the harsh reality of this debate.
Footnote: I'm also wondering where UFO news, the Loch Ness Sea Monster, Bigfoot, and Kardashian updates will end up with this Facebook fake news checker. Is it possible that Bigfoot might pass, but Kardashian stories might fail?
The Once Upon a Time Story
It is a story which is remarkable in some ways, and in others....demonstrates how Germans are fixated on fixing a problem that they perceive.
So, SWR tells the basic story.
Some education tests and surveys were conducted, and in the Baden-Wurttemburg region....there's some lousy numbers for kids and their ability to spell. Bad enough...that the Minister of Culture (Education as well)...wants to shift a huge focus on this issue.
The teacher's union reaction? Well...you need better equipment (hint: computers). Some of the retired teachers would probably grin and say that they did just fine with writing and spelling activities long before computers came along and that it's a skill or talent that needs simple enforcement.
Normally, you'd look at this issue and just say it's the bottom 50-percent of kids...those in Hauptschule who are on this dismal negative list. Well, in the past year....there's been some university talk in Germany that kids arriving at their front-door....aren't prepared in terms of language skills (hint: writing). So, this is probably a more broad issue.
As for the fix? You get this odd feeling that computers and spelling software would be the solution, which translates in funding escalation. You'd have to send Huns and Claudia to an hour a week of some computer-room deal, where they get 45 minutes of writing some story and having the computer check their writing for spelling errors and "encourage" (it's hard to make up another word to fit) them to spell better.
Eventually some smart German kid would suggest that his Microsoft Word program at home has a word-checker and he doesn't worry about errors because it finds and corrects his errors. I admit....the kid might be right.
There is a historical side to this story. In the early 1800s, if you went around and measured Germans on writing, reading and spelling skills....you would have found a marginal score not worth bragging about.
Then came the Brothers Grimm. These two intellectuals have this one curiosity and hobby....they like to sit at a local pub, sip a beer and hear a good story. They build onto their passion....the German language, and see this great chance to build an actual dictionary of German words and meanings (something that hadn't occurred).
Along the way, by 1810....they've written a collection of tales which catch on with Germans everywhere and serves as a vessel of entertainment. Without TV, radio or regular news type publications....the book is a clear masterpiece with the general public.
Over the next hundred years....if you were looking for something that would draw Germans to spelling, language, reading, and story-telling....their book of fables did the job.
Today? It's mostly forgotten and story-telling takes a back-seat to life.
So if you are watching on some night....some German news segment and the political folks are falling all over swords....left and right....about writing skills and needing more computers....that's what the whole story is about. It's worthy of a fable, but it's hard to say who is the wolf or where these gold coins will be found in the deep dark enchanted woods.
So, SWR tells the basic story.
Some education tests and surveys were conducted, and in the Baden-Wurttemburg region....there's some lousy numbers for kids and their ability to spell. Bad enough...that the Minister of Culture (Education as well)...wants to shift a huge focus on this issue.
The teacher's union reaction? Well...you need better equipment (hint: computers). Some of the retired teachers would probably grin and say that they did just fine with writing and spelling activities long before computers came along and that it's a skill or talent that needs simple enforcement.
Normally, you'd look at this issue and just say it's the bottom 50-percent of kids...those in Hauptschule who are on this dismal negative list. Well, in the past year....there's been some university talk in Germany that kids arriving at their front-door....aren't prepared in terms of language skills (hint: writing). So, this is probably a more broad issue.
As for the fix? You get this odd feeling that computers and spelling software would be the solution, which translates in funding escalation. You'd have to send Huns and Claudia to an hour a week of some computer-room deal, where they get 45 minutes of writing some story and having the computer check their writing for spelling errors and "encourage" (it's hard to make up another word to fit) them to spell better.
Eventually some smart German kid would suggest that his Microsoft Word program at home has a word-checker and he doesn't worry about errors because it finds and corrects his errors. I admit....the kid might be right.
There is a historical side to this story. In the early 1800s, if you went around and measured Germans on writing, reading and spelling skills....you would have found a marginal score not worth bragging about.
Then came the Brothers Grimm. These two intellectuals have this one curiosity and hobby....they like to sit at a local pub, sip a beer and hear a good story. They build onto their passion....the German language, and see this great chance to build an actual dictionary of German words and meanings (something that hadn't occurred).
Along the way, by 1810....they've written a collection of tales which catch on with Germans everywhere and serves as a vessel of entertainment. Without TV, radio or regular news type publications....the book is a clear masterpiece with the general public.
Over the next hundred years....if you were looking for something that would draw Germans to spelling, language, reading, and story-telling....their book of fables did the job.
Today? It's mostly forgotten and story-telling takes a back-seat to life.
So if you are watching on some night....some German news segment and the political folks are falling all over swords....left and right....about writing skills and needing more computers....that's what the whole story is about. It's worthy of a fable, but it's hard to say who is the wolf or where these gold coins will be found in the deep dark enchanted woods.
The Rest of the Freiburg Murder Case
It's been two weeks since cops in Freiburg announced that they had their suspect in the case of a young nursing student who was murdered back about two months ago. 17-year-old Afghan guy who immigrated in the fall of 2015 into Germany.
At the time, I figured....someone will go and challenge his age. Authorities noted that they felt pretty sure about things, and that the kid would end up in juvenile court, with a max of ten years on the sentence if guilty.
Then it came out that in Greece (the Isle of Corfu), this kid in 2013 (then at age 17) had attempted to push some Greek gal off some 30 foot cliff and kill her. Video of the guy being taken into court was shown yesterday. Event was hyped up in Corfu. Sentenced to ten years....at the 18-month point, the judge releases him.
Oddly, none of this....his name, his crime, his sentence, his release from jail.....was put into any Interpol database. Lots to say over the Greeks and their incompetence of this.
Kid leaves Greece upon release, and comes to Germany....without a passport. Greeks still held that. Does an interview.....things check out....he is registered and gets a visa.
I watched the German interior minister give his speech on the topic last night. He's a bit peeved because the guy is at least 20 years old and never should have left Greece.
The mess to clean up? They will clear up the age business....treat him as an adult....and charge with murder. Max that he can get is 20 years in prison. They might try to research his period in Germany and see if any other crimes pop up.
The question remaining is how many more cases exist like this?
For me, I would be curious how you get a 10-year sentence in Greece and only serve 18 months to be released, but I guess the Germans won't dig into that tiny detail.
At the time, I figured....someone will go and challenge his age. Authorities noted that they felt pretty sure about things, and that the kid would end up in juvenile court, with a max of ten years on the sentence if guilty.
Then it came out that in Greece (the Isle of Corfu), this kid in 2013 (then at age 17) had attempted to push some Greek gal off some 30 foot cliff and kill her. Video of the guy being taken into court was shown yesterday. Event was hyped up in Corfu. Sentenced to ten years....at the 18-month point, the judge releases him.
Oddly, none of this....his name, his crime, his sentence, his release from jail.....was put into any Interpol database. Lots to say over the Greeks and their incompetence of this.
Kid leaves Greece upon release, and comes to Germany....without a passport. Greeks still held that. Does an interview.....things check out....he is registered and gets a visa.
I watched the German interior minister give his speech on the topic last night. He's a bit peeved because the guy is at least 20 years old and never should have left Greece.
The mess to clean up? They will clear up the age business....treat him as an adult....and charge with murder. Max that he can get is 20 years in prison. They might try to research his period in Germany and see if any other crimes pop up.
The question remaining is how many more cases exist like this?
For me, I would be curious how you get a 10-year sentence in Greece and only serve 18 months to be released, but I guess the Germans won't dig into that tiny detail.
Thursday, December 15, 2016
The Berlin Video Story
In the south of Berlin....there's a neighborhood called Neukolln. It's part of the city, and has subway operations that connect to Berlin.
About two months ago....there's this gal who was "kicked" down a flight of stairs of a subway tunnel. Oddly enough....the cops had cameras and it clearly caught the act. The guy who kicked the gal? He just walked away. She was fairly hurt.
Days went by. With the video in their hand....you'd think that the Berlin cops wanted to get the guy. It would make sense.....since he caused her injuries.
Well.....no. They weren't really hyped up to go after the guy.
So, someone....fed up with the prosecution speed or the gimmicks of the leadership of the police....fed the video of the act to Bild (national newspaper). Front page news.
A day later, now the Berlin cops want the guy.
But they also want to prosecute the guy who leaked the camera footage. Oh yeah.
Yep, they are looking at various angles of how the video got out of their possession and hope that they can find the guy....probably a cop....who dumped the video in the public.
A 20-second video simply showing a guy who tripped up this gal is on the priority list of the Berlin cops now. Last week, it wasn't a priority.
The girl injured? Broken arm.
Maybe things like this happen weekly. Maybe Berlin is a violence-prone thug-zone. Maybe the subway area is a place to avoid. But you get this sense that there was some reason that they really didn't want to mess with this case and just let it lay there. It's been about seven weeks and they likely had the video in their hands within 48 hours after the episode occurred. Something about this has a bad smell to it.
Note: An added piece in the last hour (from Die Welt), the guy is a Bulgarian with an arrest record (theft, robbery, hooliganism). He's left Germany (so the story is told). Why was he in Berlin? That might be of another story.
About two months ago....there's this gal who was "kicked" down a flight of stairs of a subway tunnel. Oddly enough....the cops had cameras and it clearly caught the act. The guy who kicked the gal? He just walked away. She was fairly hurt.
Days went by. With the video in their hand....you'd think that the Berlin cops wanted to get the guy. It would make sense.....since he caused her injuries.
Well.....no. They weren't really hyped up to go after the guy.
So, someone....fed up with the prosecution speed or the gimmicks of the leadership of the police....fed the video of the act to Bild (national newspaper). Front page news.
A day later, now the Berlin cops want the guy.
But they also want to prosecute the guy who leaked the camera footage. Oh yeah.
Yep, they are looking at various angles of how the video got out of their possession and hope that they can find the guy....probably a cop....who dumped the video in the public.
A 20-second video simply showing a guy who tripped up this gal is on the priority list of the Berlin cops now. Last week, it wasn't a priority.
The girl injured? Broken arm.
Maybe things like this happen weekly. Maybe Berlin is a violence-prone thug-zone. Maybe the subway area is a place to avoid. But you get this sense that there was some reason that they really didn't want to mess with this case and just let it lay there. It's been about seven weeks and they likely had the video in their hands within 48 hours after the episode occurred. Something about this has a bad smell to it.
Note: An added piece in the last hour (from Die Welt), the guy is a Bulgarian with an arrest record (theft, robbery, hooliganism). He's left Germany (so the story is told). Why was he in Berlin? That might be of another story.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
More on the Freiburg Murder
About two weeks ago, I chatted about a murder suspect down in the Freiburg area....17-year-old Afghan kid. Through DNA analysis....he's suspected of killing a young medical student a month prior in Freiburg.
At the time, I suggested that his age might be questioned and maybe he's older than 17....meaning he'd go through an adult case and face twenty years....instead of ten years.
The prosecutor said a day after I wrote my essay....that things all confirmed out and his identity and age weren't an issue.
Well....Stern magazine has done some digging.
There's this attack back in 2013....on the isle of Corfu (Greece) that involves this guy "Hussein K". The thing is....they caught this Afghan guy....who at the time said he was 17 years old, and sentenced him to ten years in prison. According to Stern's info (still to be questioned)....this Corfu "Hussein K" and this Freiburg guy....are the same person.
How is this possible? Either he escaped (unlikely), got bought out (possible), or there's a bunch of these Hussein K's with the same passport and age listed, and it's just a forgery episode (very possible). But the odds of two guys buying this passport copy and both having murdered young women? That gets the odds way up there.
The local paper there in Freiburg (Badische Zeitung) says the cops are onto this deal and checking out the Greek story.
If it is the same guy? It means he's definitely 20 years old.....maybe older. This will open up some public speculation that there might be more fake passports out there....with people pretending to be teenagers when they aren't.
At the time, I suggested that his age might be questioned and maybe he's older than 17....meaning he'd go through an adult case and face twenty years....instead of ten years.
The prosecutor said a day after I wrote my essay....that things all confirmed out and his identity and age weren't an issue.
Well....Stern magazine has done some digging.
There's this attack back in 2013....on the isle of Corfu (Greece) that involves this guy "Hussein K". The thing is....they caught this Afghan guy....who at the time said he was 17 years old, and sentenced him to ten years in prison. According to Stern's info (still to be questioned)....this Corfu "Hussein K" and this Freiburg guy....are the same person.
How is this possible? Either he escaped (unlikely), got bought out (possible), or there's a bunch of these Hussein K's with the same passport and age listed, and it's just a forgery episode (very possible). But the odds of two guys buying this passport copy and both having murdered young women? That gets the odds way up there.
The local paper there in Freiburg (Badische Zeitung) says the cops are onto this deal and checking out the Greek story.
If it is the same guy? It means he's definitely 20 years old.....maybe older. This will open up some public speculation that there might be more fake passports out there....with people pretending to be teenagers when they aren't.
A Icelandic Summary on Elections
I follow elections around Europe. At the end of October, the Isle of Iceland had their parliamentary election.
There are 63 seats in the parliament, and once you cross the five-percent point as a party....you get a chance at a percentage of seats. If you don't have 51-percent of the seats....then you as the leading party must form a coalition. Maybe it takes two parties....maybe three....maybe four.
This election in late October has been probably one of the more odd elections in European history. The top party to get votes got their period to form a government, and failed. The second-place party? They also had a chance to form a government and failed. The Pirate Party, in third place was given a chance to form a government, and yesterday....failed.
There will be a day or two to discuss this but the odds are heavily favored that another election will occur by the end of February.
How does something like this occur?
In this case, seven parties got five-percent or more....which is a fairly high percentage if you think about it. In addition, five other parties were in the election but failed on the five-percent deal. In fact, the Humanist Party (anti-capitalist and about as far left as you can get)....took 33 votes of the 195,000 (almost eight percent of the nation voted, which is kinda high).
The seven parties?
- The Independence Party (center-right)
- The Green Party
- The Pirate Party
- The Progressive Party (mostly centered on farmers and their agenda)
- The Reform Party (basically a pro-EU group, with a Green agenda, with a differing medical coverage plan which is half-nation coverage and half-co-pay)
- The Bright Future Party (left of center)
- The Social Democrats Party (left of center).
When you analyze the numbers....what you have is one single party that got around 29-percent of the vote. After that....the second place winner took 16-percent. The third-place winner took 14.5-percent of the vote. The four remaining parties took five to eleven percent.
It's hard to assemble a coalition in this type of situation. For the Independence Party....they would need at least two partners.....maybe even four partners. When you look at mostly a right-of-center theme.....they have no real chance.
When you look at the Green Party....they would need four partners.
As the Pirate Party gave up.....they needed four partners and weren't going to get it.
So what happens in the second election? Anyone's guess. Maybe the same results. Maybe two parties might see a reason to merge in the next two weeks and combine their votes for 20-percent opportunity in this next election.
This is the problem with a multi-party situation. Once you say a coalition has to be formed, and the top party doesn't get 35 to 45 percent of the vote....it starts to invent not just one partner, but maybe two or three. Then it gets harder to agree on cabinet posts....legislation....and boundaries for the parties to co-exist.
There are 63 seats in the parliament, and once you cross the five-percent point as a party....you get a chance at a percentage of seats. If you don't have 51-percent of the seats....then you as the leading party must form a coalition. Maybe it takes two parties....maybe three....maybe four.
This election in late October has been probably one of the more odd elections in European history. The top party to get votes got their period to form a government, and failed. The second-place party? They also had a chance to form a government and failed. The Pirate Party, in third place was given a chance to form a government, and yesterday....failed.
There will be a day or two to discuss this but the odds are heavily favored that another election will occur by the end of February.
How does something like this occur?
In this case, seven parties got five-percent or more....which is a fairly high percentage if you think about it. In addition, five other parties were in the election but failed on the five-percent deal. In fact, the Humanist Party (anti-capitalist and about as far left as you can get)....took 33 votes of the 195,000 (almost eight percent of the nation voted, which is kinda high).
The seven parties?
- The Independence Party (center-right)
- The Green Party
- The Pirate Party
- The Progressive Party (mostly centered on farmers and their agenda)
- The Reform Party (basically a pro-EU group, with a Green agenda, with a differing medical coverage plan which is half-nation coverage and half-co-pay)
- The Bright Future Party (left of center)
- The Social Democrats Party (left of center).
When you analyze the numbers....what you have is one single party that got around 29-percent of the vote. After that....the second place winner took 16-percent. The third-place winner took 14.5-percent of the vote. The four remaining parties took five to eleven percent.
It's hard to assemble a coalition in this type of situation. For the Independence Party....they would need at least two partners.....maybe even four partners. When you look at mostly a right-of-center theme.....they have no real chance.
When you look at the Green Party....they would need four partners.
As the Pirate Party gave up.....they needed four partners and weren't going to get it.
So what happens in the second election? Anyone's guess. Maybe the same results. Maybe two parties might see a reason to merge in the next two weeks and combine their votes for 20-percent opportunity in this next election.
This is the problem with a multi-party situation. Once you say a coalition has to be formed, and the top party doesn't get 35 to 45 percent of the vote....it starts to invent not just one partner, but maybe two or three. Then it gets harder to agree on cabinet posts....legislation....and boundaries for the parties to co-exist.
How to Explain "Safe Spaces" to a German
At least once a week, I have some German who wants some expression or some recent happening to be explained....in some way that makes "German-sense" (like common sense but enlightening). I've started to think about this ahead of time....like in the way I wrote the piece on how Hillary lost. So I've started to contemplate the concept of safe spaces which have gotten wide play in the US news, and how it can be explained.
I would imagine the German would ask....what the heck are safe spaces? Are these like places where you'd go in a tornado or hurricane? Well....no.
Are these places to go if someone were to be shooting an assault rifle or pistol? No.
Are these places to go if someone is swinging a knife or machete? No.
Are these places to go if some gang guy is threatening to kill you? No.
Are these places to go if your dad kicked you out of the house one night for stupid behavior? No.
So you'd stop the German at this point....raising a finger, and start to lay out the landscape.
You start with the simple identification of this being a university situation....not some bar in an urban area, or some local town park, or some special building in a Memphis low-income area.
Then you lay out that a fair number (probably in the two-percent range but let's be realistic.....no one ever collects statistics on this stuff to talk reliably)....of university students have arrived and are used to a certain lifestyle....a certain number of political agendas....a certain list of topics to be discussed, and when something comes up that isn't on the accepted list....they are extremely upset.
Your German associate might say that German kids leave home and go to German universities, and they don't have safe spaces.
Well....yeah....that's true.
But this group of American kids....probably two-percent of them....have a bold new world in their mind which cannot be identified as "real". Their world is a combination of fantasy, dreams, and fake politics.
The German will be in some state of disbelief that America has produced tens of thousands of young immature kids who can't handle reality? Yeah.
So the German will ask....what happens when they graduate? This is where you lay out the future. These young college-degreed individuals will go out to hospitals, Fortune-500 companies, and foundations, and become part of some new society. A society which can't handle frustrations. They will come to Germany to work on negotiations, science projects, or business proposals. Germans will state facts, and suddenly find some American on the other side of the table who is doing some kind of weird act....like they can't handle the discussion. Then the guy will ask the German at the table....do you have a safe space for me to retreat to?
My suggestion....to end this whole explanation to your German associate....is to respond to the American idiot asking about a safe space....just say "sure". Take the poor guy or gal to a German pub....ask for a one-liter stein of beer, and start talking about Kaiser Wilhelm, Kase Kuchen (cheese cake), soccer teams, German wars against France, or fake German intellectual topics. In thirty minutes, the American will calm down to some degree. Buy him or her a second one-liter stein of beer, and then just dump them off at the hotel (it only takes two steins to get the typical American drunk). After two or three of those experiences.....the American will lose this safe space gimmick and just learn to drink beer and do pub-talk when frustrated.
I would imagine the German would ask....what the heck are safe spaces? Are these like places where you'd go in a tornado or hurricane? Well....no.
Are these places to go if someone were to be shooting an assault rifle or pistol? No.
Are these places to go if someone is swinging a knife or machete? No.
Are these places to go if some gang guy is threatening to kill you? No.
Are these places to go if your dad kicked you out of the house one night for stupid behavior? No.
So you'd stop the German at this point....raising a finger, and start to lay out the landscape.
You start with the simple identification of this being a university situation....not some bar in an urban area, or some local town park, or some special building in a Memphis low-income area.
Then you lay out that a fair number (probably in the two-percent range but let's be realistic.....no one ever collects statistics on this stuff to talk reliably)....of university students have arrived and are used to a certain lifestyle....a certain number of political agendas....a certain list of topics to be discussed, and when something comes up that isn't on the accepted list....they are extremely upset.
Your German associate might say that German kids leave home and go to German universities, and they don't have safe spaces.
Well....yeah....that's true.
But this group of American kids....probably two-percent of them....have a bold new world in their mind which cannot be identified as "real". Their world is a combination of fantasy, dreams, and fake politics.
The German will be in some state of disbelief that America has produced tens of thousands of young immature kids who can't handle reality? Yeah.
So the German will ask....what happens when they graduate? This is where you lay out the future. These young college-degreed individuals will go out to hospitals, Fortune-500 companies, and foundations, and become part of some new society. A society which can't handle frustrations. They will come to Germany to work on negotiations, science projects, or business proposals. Germans will state facts, and suddenly find some American on the other side of the table who is doing some kind of weird act....like they can't handle the discussion. Then the guy will ask the German at the table....do you have a safe space for me to retreat to?
My suggestion....to end this whole explanation to your German associate....is to respond to the American idiot asking about a safe space....just say "sure". Take the poor guy or gal to a German pub....ask for a one-liter stein of beer, and start talking about Kaiser Wilhelm, Kase Kuchen (cheese cake), soccer teams, German wars against France, or fake German intellectual topics. In thirty minutes, the American will calm down to some degree. Buy him or her a second one-liter stein of beer, and then just dump them off at the hotel (it only takes two steins to get the typical American drunk). After two or three of those experiences.....the American will lose this safe space gimmick and just learn to drink beer and do pub-talk when frustrated.
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