BamF reviews: BamF is the German agency that does immigration and asylum review/approval. After this fake immigrant episode, the government in Berlin kinda suggested a review. So BamF pulled 2,000 applications over the past two years. What they more or less admit in public is that a fair number were approved without proper documentation (pushing them through without a full review). So now? They intend to pull back 85,000 applications (already approved) and ask more questions. This means that some folks (you can only guess at the number) will be asked to produce more, and can't do it. Of this 85,000.....I'll take a guess that a quarter of them are fake ID situations. I'm also going to take a guess that a handful will be duplicate folks who applied in two locations and currently get social-money being two different refugees. It'll take a year for this to conclude (my humble guess) but it might interesting to watch.
Riot over Afghani guy: So, this occurred yesterday in Nuremberg. Cops come to take some Afghan guy who was to be deported. Cops had to come in numbers, and even more got to call....because the students staged an all-out riot. Video at Focus over the incident, worth watching. Again, I note the stupidity of the authorities....picking a public location like this, and not staging a quiet pick-up as the guy left school to go home at the conclusion of the day. The students? Hyped up and on some agenda. Simpy proves the government case that when you fail the application process....you need to be forced to appear in a court where your review will be read, and if you fail....you need to be taken at that point to some deportation center for your exit.
EU regulating vacations: Generally, there's nothing that the EU will not regulate. This week, there's a new regulation coming up over travel and vacations....in particular travel packages being sold. There are a lot of negatives to this, and a number of Berlin political folks are very negative about this. If you are a small independent travel agent group....the odds are that you will dissolve within two or three years because the regulations make it difficult to survive. Good Focus article on the piece.
US spies offer service: Some might laugh over this, but the US offered it's spy services for the German national election in September.....to help Germany prevent the Russians from tampering. Naturally, the Germans said 'no'.
Evil USA: If you watched the German public news last night....it's safe to say that they went turbo negative on Trump and the US. The one thing they missed....in order for President Obama to carry this back and be so proud of the situation....they could NOT call it a treaty. It was simply an agreement, because treaties require the Senate to review and approve. So as much as they talk or use the word treaty....it was never such a vehicle. To suggest the US is breaking a treaty.....well, it's more of a pocket-agreement.
Berlin terrorist update: The guy has been dead now for five months, but this episode from Berlin still draws attention. Yesterday, the news folks discussed another report that came out.....that Amris went and sought an ISIS recruiter just two weeks prior to his act. This was obviously a last-minute thought-up act and very little planning put into this. A guy going from zero to sixty, to suicidal, in a very short period of time.
Military officers fired: Some investigation at the German military university....results in two officers who were trainers or lecture people....being fired for racist comments. Generally, if you work for any German government organization these days, you need to observe your comments carefully and avoiding talking on about a dozen topics unless it's within a confined group.
EU's next regulation: Well, it probably will not please the Germans. The EU is hinting on regulation of toll operations. The Germans (particularly the Bavarians) were looking for a chance to force a toll deal for European drivers crossing into Germany. Merkel was not happy with the deal....opposition parties were divided....but this moved ahead. The German plan probably will be tossed if the EU plan becomes reality. What the EU said was that the German toll program probably ought to end within a decade....but also said member states ought to regulate themselves on this.
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Captain Germany?
In recent months, with the Marvel comic empire....there's been this new twist and change to the Captain America story.
The new slant is that Captain America didn't really come back from WW II as pure and simple Captain America.....but really was head of HYDRA (the evil Nazi apparatus).
In effect, all this good stuff with Captain America for all these years....have been done by an agent of HYRDRA or the official leader of HYRDRA itself.
Why make this so confusing and difficult? I think Marvel has run out of stories, and this is a way to reset the whole thing.
But then, you get to this new question....if he is this evil HYRDRA guy....then shouldn't he be either Captain Germany or Captain Nazi or Captain HYRDRA?
On the list of 398,074 things to worry about.....I tend to classify this as way down on the list, and probably coming after worry over New Coke versus Old Coke or the amount of fluoride in your water.
But after a while, I suspect some folks will take it upon themselves to rename 'Cap' to Captain Germany, and he'll be adopted by his homeland as their one true Marvel character. Up until this point, Germans haven't had a Marvel character. Frankly, I doubt if you can find more than 10,000 Germans who really care about this topic. My son would point out that DC really needs some winged or suped-up character of German heritage.
A proclamation by Chancellor Merkel adopting Captain Germany? Well....no. You see....a Captain Germany would be some HYDRA-character and a neo-Nazi type, and you just can't allow this into German public discussions.
The new slant is that Captain America didn't really come back from WW II as pure and simple Captain America.....but really was head of HYDRA (the evil Nazi apparatus).
In effect, all this good stuff with Captain America for all these years....have been done by an agent of HYRDRA or the official leader of HYRDRA itself.
Why make this so confusing and difficult? I think Marvel has run out of stories, and this is a way to reset the whole thing.
But then, you get to this new question....if he is this evil HYRDRA guy....then shouldn't he be either Captain Germany or Captain Nazi or Captain HYRDRA?
On the list of 398,074 things to worry about.....I tend to classify this as way down on the list, and probably coming after worry over New Coke versus Old Coke or the amount of fluoride in your water.
But after a while, I suspect some folks will take it upon themselves to rename 'Cap' to Captain Germany, and he'll be adopted by his homeland as their one true Marvel character. Up until this point, Germans haven't had a Marvel character. Frankly, I doubt if you can find more than 10,000 Germans who really care about this topic. My son would point out that DC really needs some winged or suped-up character of German heritage.
A proclamation by Chancellor Merkel adopting Captain Germany? Well....no. You see....a Captain Germany would be some HYDRA-character and a neo-Nazi type, and you just can't allow this into German public discussions.
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Is German 'Hate-Speech' Simply 'Opinion'?
Over the past two years....'hate-speech' has been uttered a lot by German journalists. At some point in 2015, you''d hear it or 'xenophobia' at least once or twice each night as part of the news episode.
What is defined as 'hate-speech'? This gets to being a bit hard to reach a clear definition. You could say something about immigrants or migrants, and simply skip over the 'golden-step' that gets you into trouble. You make a simple comment about ghetto creation, and that would get someone all hyped up to accuse of hate-speech. If the prosecution folks hand you paperwork that says you crossed the line and uttered some of the right phrases, well, that's the moment when you realize you went a bit too far.
The German intellectual crowd are a bit worried now over the internet and social media....because in their humble opinion...there's too much hate-speech going on. Their feeling is attached to insults that you might utter (prostitute, idiot, or crazy) might be enough to get the news and intellectual crowd upset. In their world of discussion....you don't utter insults.
Naturally, you get the feeling that their intellectual discussions are typically at a table or on some patio, with a glass of wine, or a cup of freshly-made coffee. Everyone is thoughtful, and agreeable in the end.
I would suggest over the past decade....things have quietly changed, and the intellectual and journalist crowd have been left by the side of the road. It's a bold new world.
1. Twitter, Facebook and social media have openly replaced the common vehicles of delivery for news and discussion. As much as print-media and TV news think they are a big part of your world today.....they probably aren't.
2. If you go and interview a hundred working-class Germans and ask if they read the bulk of a newspaper today...daily....the vast majority will just laugh. I seriously doubt that you will find more than one-third of the group who have a daily paper and read the majority of it. A lot of people might pick up a Bild copy at work and just read through the front page. Some might listen to the news on the radio as they drive into work. There are still some Germans (fewer than a decade ago) who read the news magazines like Spiegel, Focus, etc.
3. Lack of trust. If you go and look at the US atmosphere over the past twenty years....distrust of the news media and journalists is a routine thing now. I think the same trend is going on in Germany. Bias reports....slanted news....are seen in various areas.
4. Because of the efforts of comedians and satirists to condemn just about everyone....people don't have the level of respect that they did from twenty years ago. It doesn't matter if we are talking about business leaders, church leadership, or political characters. When people are condemning these public figures with what seems to be 'hate-speech'....it's mostly the same talk that satirists would use.
In the end, opinion among people (not just Germans) is fairly strong on certain topics. Frustration over change or lack of change drives everyone to be hyped up. Whatever 'crop' has been planted....is simply being harvested at this point..
What is defined as 'hate-speech'? This gets to being a bit hard to reach a clear definition. You could say something about immigrants or migrants, and simply skip over the 'golden-step' that gets you into trouble. You make a simple comment about ghetto creation, and that would get someone all hyped up to accuse of hate-speech. If the prosecution folks hand you paperwork that says you crossed the line and uttered some of the right phrases, well, that's the moment when you realize you went a bit too far.
The German intellectual crowd are a bit worried now over the internet and social media....because in their humble opinion...there's too much hate-speech going on. Their feeling is attached to insults that you might utter (prostitute, idiot, or crazy) might be enough to get the news and intellectual crowd upset. In their world of discussion....you don't utter insults.
Naturally, you get the feeling that their intellectual discussions are typically at a table or on some patio, with a glass of wine, or a cup of freshly-made coffee. Everyone is thoughtful, and agreeable in the end.
I would suggest over the past decade....things have quietly changed, and the intellectual and journalist crowd have been left by the side of the road. It's a bold new world.
1. Twitter, Facebook and social media have openly replaced the common vehicles of delivery for news and discussion. As much as print-media and TV news think they are a big part of your world today.....they probably aren't.
2. If you go and interview a hundred working-class Germans and ask if they read the bulk of a newspaper today...daily....the vast majority will just laugh. I seriously doubt that you will find more than one-third of the group who have a daily paper and read the majority of it. A lot of people might pick up a Bild copy at work and just read through the front page. Some might listen to the news on the radio as they drive into work. There are still some Germans (fewer than a decade ago) who read the news magazines like Spiegel, Focus, etc.
3. Lack of trust. If you go and look at the US atmosphere over the past twenty years....distrust of the news media and journalists is a routine thing now. I think the same trend is going on in Germany. Bias reports....slanted news....are seen in various areas.
4. Because of the efforts of comedians and satirists to condemn just about everyone....people don't have the level of respect that they did from twenty years ago. It doesn't matter if we are talking about business leaders, church leadership, or political characters. When people are condemning these public figures with what seems to be 'hate-speech'....it's mostly the same talk that satirists would use.
In the end, opinion among people (not just Germans) is fairly strong on certain topics. Frustration over change or lack of change drives everyone to be hyped up. Whatever 'crop' has been planted....is simply being harvested at this point..
German Bits and Pieces (Wed morning)
Terror suspect arrested: German cops in Brandenburg arrested a 17-year-old Syrian kid for terror planning. Not a lot said other than it would have been in or around Berlin. More info likely tomorrow.
Pregnancy uniform for German army: Well....some would say that this only took three decades after the US Army or Air Force did it. Bundeswehr finally adapted a military uniform for women who are pregnant. Up until this point, you had to wear civilian clothing during this period. Why so long? Some would say it was a male-dominated society...some would say a lack of fashion experts....what ever. It took roughly 18 months from the idea being approved to the point of a selection and rules adapted for it.
Merkel-Trump chatter: Public TV still carries a hyped up Merkel versus Trump banner. Next big meeting between the two? Hamburg, early July, G-20 meeting. Hard to predict just how far the press will push along this topic. Serious NATO discussions? At some point, I think prior to the German election....Trump will hit the button and mention an evaluation of US forces in Europe...suggesting a decrease.
SPD Schulz a millionaire? : To halt this in the fake news game (or rumors) ARD did a fact-check and says on their analysis....Schulz is NOT a millionaire. The method used? Strictly looking at his legit paycheck for this entire period of the past twenty-odd years. They did suggest that he might be one of the richer candidates for Chancellor in decades, but nothing past that. Speeches given with stipends? Never discussed. I would assume he give at least five or six speeches a year and gets paid something (more than 10,000 Euro in my mind). The necessity of the ARD fact-check? I suspect they just want to put down the rumor. If there was a millionaire running for Chancellor? I think it'd bother a lot of Germans. Wealth is an evil thing.....you know.
Billion Euro a year to India: Well, yeah, Chancellor Merkel did announce today a gift deal to India in the range of one billion Euro. It was an extremely limited article by ARD on this topic, which is rather odd. Some talk about democracy and trade, but it sounds mostly like that Germany wants a big open door with India. Maybe with a lot of the failed asylum guys....they could go off and be accepted in India....it's hard to say.
Varoufakis speaks: It's always interesting when the former Greek Finance Minster speaks. He's hooked up now with a foundation and does public talks across Europe. He is fairly clever. In this piece, he's suggesting the current that the Germans use for their economy is basically failing. When you start to do negative-interest rates....it's a sign of a failed economy....in his belief.
Beer truck flips: About every six months in Germany, you see or hear about a beer truck flipping over. In this case from yesterday, coming off the autobahn....a truck fell over and 2,500 bottles broke. Big scene.
SPD change in dynamics: The Minister-President for Mecklenburg resigned yesterday (SPD figure) for health reasons. The SPD decided to do a number of seat changes, in an effort to rekindle some public support for the political party. Three key people shifted around. It's hard to say if this does much of anything for this campaign season.
German-Turks in jail: When people talk about dual-holders of passports, there's always a story. In this episode by ARD, they've noted now that Erdogan is holding 44 Turk-Germans (people with both passports) in a Turkish jail. So far, none of them are getting much help in getting out. If someone were to publish their pictures and talk about the "44"....it'd likely turn into a big negative with Turks residing in Germany over Erdogan.
Pregnancy uniform for German army: Well....some would say that this only took three decades after the US Army or Air Force did it. Bundeswehr finally adapted a military uniform for women who are pregnant. Up until this point, you had to wear civilian clothing during this period. Why so long? Some would say it was a male-dominated society...some would say a lack of fashion experts....what ever. It took roughly 18 months from the idea being approved to the point of a selection and rules adapted for it.
Merkel-Trump chatter: Public TV still carries a hyped up Merkel versus Trump banner. Next big meeting between the two? Hamburg, early July, G-20 meeting. Hard to predict just how far the press will push along this topic. Serious NATO discussions? At some point, I think prior to the German election....Trump will hit the button and mention an evaluation of US forces in Europe...suggesting a decrease.
SPD Schulz a millionaire? : To halt this in the fake news game (or rumors) ARD did a fact-check and says on their analysis....Schulz is NOT a millionaire. The method used? Strictly looking at his legit paycheck for this entire period of the past twenty-odd years. They did suggest that he might be one of the richer candidates for Chancellor in decades, but nothing past that. Speeches given with stipends? Never discussed. I would assume he give at least five or six speeches a year and gets paid something (more than 10,000 Euro in my mind). The necessity of the ARD fact-check? I suspect they just want to put down the rumor. If there was a millionaire running for Chancellor? I think it'd bother a lot of Germans. Wealth is an evil thing.....you know.
Billion Euro a year to India: Well, yeah, Chancellor Merkel did announce today a gift deal to India in the range of one billion Euro. It was an extremely limited article by ARD on this topic, which is rather odd. Some talk about democracy and trade, but it sounds mostly like that Germany wants a big open door with India. Maybe with a lot of the failed asylum guys....they could go off and be accepted in India....it's hard to say.
Varoufakis speaks: It's always interesting when the former Greek Finance Minster speaks. He's hooked up now with a foundation and does public talks across Europe. He is fairly clever. In this piece, he's suggesting the current that the Germans use for their economy is basically failing. When you start to do negative-interest rates....it's a sign of a failed economy....in his belief.
Beer truck flips: About every six months in Germany, you see or hear about a beer truck flipping over. In this case from yesterday, coming off the autobahn....a truck fell over and 2,500 bottles broke. Big scene.
SPD change in dynamics: The Minister-President for Mecklenburg resigned yesterday (SPD figure) for health reasons. The SPD decided to do a number of seat changes, in an effort to rekindle some public support for the political party. Three key people shifted around. It's hard to say if this does much of anything for this campaign season.
German-Turks in jail: When people talk about dual-holders of passports, there's always a story. In this episode by ARD, they've noted now that Erdogan is holding 44 Turk-Germans (people with both passports) in a Turkish jail. So far, none of them are getting much help in getting out. If someone were to publish their pictures and talk about the "44"....it'd likely turn into a big negative with Turks residing in Germany over Erdogan.
Germans News Bits (Tuesday mid-day)
Helpful hint: SWR wrote up a piece on the problem of Islamic ministers who visit folks in prison. Both CDU and AfD have criticism in B-W over these ministers visiting and that no vetting process has taken place to ensure they are not radical Islamic enthusiasts. SPD Party leads government authority over this. I would suggest that even if they did do vetting....it'd just draw lawsuits to challenge the government in denying access to the prisoners.
German decision on Incirlik shortly: It's likely to be in the next couple of days that the Germans announce that they are taking their Air Force unit out of Turkey and moving elsewhere. The Turks have played the 'control' card enough....that the Berlin-leadership is prepared to move on. Based on various reports, it's assumed to be Jordan where they move operations to. N-TV does a good job on reporting the current status.
French legislative election in two weeks: There will be a couple of days of voting across France....starting on 11 June and ending 18 June. Polling? The Le Pen Party (National Front) is at 19-percent. The center-right party....UDI....is at present around 18-percent. Leader right now is the Macron Progressive Party with around 31-to-33 percent. What the polls show is that Macron's party will take around 300 to 320 seats in this election. If you had said in January of 2016 that a party would emerge out of thin air and elect both a President and vast majority of the French parliament.....people would have laughed at you. Both the center-right and center-left have been decimated by this event.
Welfare fraud: Focus wrote up a piece that originally appeared in Bild. German federal government has launched an investigation. In little more than six years....the social welfare fund for EU foreigners in Germany has jumped to five times what it originally was. They paid out 537-million Euro last year. There is a belief that these foreign residents from EU countries locate into Germany....start their welfare supplement, and just sit back waiting for the monthly checks. Migrants or asylum seekers? No, these are simply citizens of other EU countries who may have figured out who pays the most generous welfare.
Salafists and migrants? So Focus put a piece together which talks about what Berlin-city cops are perceiving....some type of relationship between African migrants and Salafist organizations within the city. Outcome? If you read the piece, you come to suspect some type of mafia arrangement with drug dispersal and sales as the end-result. Hard to imagine that the Salafist Islamic folks would get into organized crime, but one might wonder if drug production has become part of their landscape. If you had suggested this type of relationship four years ago.....Germans would have laughed.
Russian mafia entry into German billing fraud: The basic story is told by BR (Bavarian public TV). So, the cops say that 230 private health care services have been operated by mafia-like organizations in Germany, and massive fraud is going on. Amount? Strangely left out of the story. They've demonstrated one of the big weak points of German health care....in terms of open and transparent services/bills....it's a big question-mark. Likely to invoke another truth-commission to figure out just how bad the problem really is nationally.
ISIS recruiter arrested: German cops apprehended and charged a long-term Turk who has lived in Germany as a ISIS recruitment guy (early AM today). The guy was a Turk Imam and had been active for a fair amount of time. Jail-time? It'll be curious how they charge the guy, and if a conviction can be achieved.
Investigation of an investigation: This is a rather odd story from RBB (Berlin public TV). After the Christmas period terror act (Amri), the city wanted to clear the air with a big investigation. So, after they concluded this....there's some problems. One issue is that files were found to be manipulated during the investigation. So, another investigative team has arrived to investigate the original investigators. Mobile phones and laptops have been seized. The belief? Amri had been arrested or detained on several occasions, and more than enough evidence existed to lock the guy up or to deport him....yet time after time....he kept getting back on the street. Some evidence for the original investigation makes it look purely innocent. One gets the perception that some type of corruption was at play here....maybe a bribe, or some type of insider manipulation. The humor part of this is that you now might require a truth-commission of the truth-commission....to reach the truth-truth of the whole matter.
German decision on Incirlik shortly: It's likely to be in the next couple of days that the Germans announce that they are taking their Air Force unit out of Turkey and moving elsewhere. The Turks have played the 'control' card enough....that the Berlin-leadership is prepared to move on. Based on various reports, it's assumed to be Jordan where they move operations to. N-TV does a good job on reporting the current status.
French legislative election in two weeks: There will be a couple of days of voting across France....starting on 11 June and ending 18 June. Polling? The Le Pen Party (National Front) is at 19-percent. The center-right party....UDI....is at present around 18-percent. Leader right now is the Macron Progressive Party with around 31-to-33 percent. What the polls show is that Macron's party will take around 300 to 320 seats in this election. If you had said in January of 2016 that a party would emerge out of thin air and elect both a President and vast majority of the French parliament.....people would have laughed at you. Both the center-right and center-left have been decimated by this event.
Welfare fraud: Focus wrote up a piece that originally appeared in Bild. German federal government has launched an investigation. In little more than six years....the social welfare fund for EU foreigners in Germany has jumped to five times what it originally was. They paid out 537-million Euro last year. There is a belief that these foreign residents from EU countries locate into Germany....start their welfare supplement, and just sit back waiting for the monthly checks. Migrants or asylum seekers? No, these are simply citizens of other EU countries who may have figured out who pays the most generous welfare.
Salafists and migrants? So Focus put a piece together which talks about what Berlin-city cops are perceiving....some type of relationship between African migrants and Salafist organizations within the city. Outcome? If you read the piece, you come to suspect some type of mafia arrangement with drug dispersal and sales as the end-result. Hard to imagine that the Salafist Islamic folks would get into organized crime, but one might wonder if drug production has become part of their landscape. If you had suggested this type of relationship four years ago.....Germans would have laughed.
Russian mafia entry into German billing fraud: The basic story is told by BR (Bavarian public TV). So, the cops say that 230 private health care services have been operated by mafia-like organizations in Germany, and massive fraud is going on. Amount? Strangely left out of the story. They've demonstrated one of the big weak points of German health care....in terms of open and transparent services/bills....it's a big question-mark. Likely to invoke another truth-commission to figure out just how bad the problem really is nationally.
ISIS recruiter arrested: German cops apprehended and charged a long-term Turk who has lived in Germany as a ISIS recruitment guy (early AM today). The guy was a Turk Imam and had been active for a fair amount of time. Jail-time? It'll be curious how they charge the guy, and if a conviction can be achieved.
Investigation of an investigation: This is a rather odd story from RBB (Berlin public TV). After the Christmas period terror act (Amri), the city wanted to clear the air with a big investigation. So, after they concluded this....there's some problems. One issue is that files were found to be manipulated during the investigation. So, another investigative team has arrived to investigate the original investigators. Mobile phones and laptops have been seized. The belief? Amri had been arrested or detained on several occasions, and more than enough evidence existed to lock the guy up or to deport him....yet time after time....he kept getting back on the street. Some evidence for the original investigation makes it look purely innocent. One gets the perception that some type of corruption was at play here....maybe a bribe, or some type of insider manipulation. The humor part of this is that you now might require a truth-commission of the truth-commission....to reach the truth-truth of the whole matter.
Monday, May 29, 2017
German News Bits and Pieces (Tuesday morning)
Next Chancellor, Merkel version 2.0: Focus wrote up a lengthly piece and chatted about who they perceive as the replacement to Merkel in 2021....the Saarlander Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who recently won the state election in Saarland for the CDU. "AKK" is young enough to be around for at least a dozen more years and likely to get a nod toward a cabinet position (maybe Finance Minister, my humble opinion).
Two-home owners: Focus wrote a fine piece on a trend that's been underway for probably over thirty years....Germans who own two houses. There's a minimum of two million Germans in this category. Some have a place near where they work during the week, and they retreat back to the normal home (probably over 3 hours away) for weekends. Some own a vacation residence somewhere. What they point out toward the end is that it affects the apartment rental prices, and affordable housing ratios. Some social enthusiasts think there needs to be added tax on these people to prevent this, but I don't see where this would go.
Panama Papers drawing criticism: ARD wrote up a piece which centers on the Panama Papers.....which are the leaked bank accounts or secret accounts of various Europeans....with money hid in Panama. What they report is that the Green Party at the EU are dumping some criticism that things aren't progressing on information about the leaked papers. One gets the opinion that there are some fairly noted names in the listing and there could be severe legal consequences down the road....if the EU ever completed their investigation.
Press meets the public: ARD did an hour-long show (I watched maybe twelve minutes of it) with their moderator meeting social media commentators. Effort is to reform harsh tone, and probably to introduce Tagesschau news people to a vast landscape of German commentary. I came back to it toward the last three minutes. It seemed to drain the energy out of the moderator (Reschke). The chief thing that I think ARD's moderator got out of this....some people are absolute in their beliefs and anyone thinking that old fashioned dialog can change opinions....have missed the change in society.
Soccer isn't American football: There was a soccer game from this weekend, where the management and public-TV folks tried to have a half-time show (typically something that you don't see in German games). They brought out Helene Fischer and she did a 8-minute show. Fans at the stadium really didn't care for the singer or the half-time show, and the sound level was distorted. Focus wrote up a piece over this and suggests that commercialization in soccer isn't a thing that fans want.
A day late and a dollar short: SPD Party candidate for Chancellor came out and did a big criticism speech against President Trump (trying to hype up his people and use the normal campaign theme of the party). The problem is that Merkel already did the criticism and used the one silver-bullet existing. Then Schulz did his best to criticize Merkel.
Two-home owners: Focus wrote a fine piece on a trend that's been underway for probably over thirty years....Germans who own two houses. There's a minimum of two million Germans in this category. Some have a place near where they work during the week, and they retreat back to the normal home (probably over 3 hours away) for weekends. Some own a vacation residence somewhere. What they point out toward the end is that it affects the apartment rental prices, and affordable housing ratios. Some social enthusiasts think there needs to be added tax on these people to prevent this, but I don't see where this would go.
Panama Papers drawing criticism: ARD wrote up a piece which centers on the Panama Papers.....which are the leaked bank accounts or secret accounts of various Europeans....with money hid in Panama. What they report is that the Green Party at the EU are dumping some criticism that things aren't progressing on information about the leaked papers. One gets the opinion that there are some fairly noted names in the listing and there could be severe legal consequences down the road....if the EU ever completed their investigation.
Press meets the public: ARD did an hour-long show (I watched maybe twelve minutes of it) with their moderator meeting social media commentators. Effort is to reform harsh tone, and probably to introduce Tagesschau news people to a vast landscape of German commentary. I came back to it toward the last three minutes. It seemed to drain the energy out of the moderator (Reschke). The chief thing that I think ARD's moderator got out of this....some people are absolute in their beliefs and anyone thinking that old fashioned dialog can change opinions....have missed the change in society.
Soccer isn't American football: There was a soccer game from this weekend, where the management and public-TV folks tried to have a half-time show (typically something that you don't see in German games). They brought out Helene Fischer and she did a 8-minute show. Fans at the stadium really didn't care for the singer or the half-time show, and the sound level was distorted. Focus wrote up a piece over this and suggests that commercialization in soccer isn't a thing that fans want.
A day late and a dollar short: SPD Party candidate for Chancellor came out and did a big criticism speech against President Trump (trying to hype up his people and use the normal campaign theme of the party). The problem is that Merkel already did the criticism and used the one silver-bullet existing. Then Schulz did his best to criticize Merkel.
Going on One's Own
It was a political speech delivered by Chancellor Merkel of Germany over the weekend that rippled through the German press. The basic words were....after the G-7 conference....that the US an UK cannot be relied upon by Europe. Europe must go upon it's own.
I thought a great deal about these words today, and eventually came to this one observation.
It is absolutely true. Europe, or Germany....can stand to the side and maneuver upon it's own. Feel free. Take the steps. Gallop with long strides. Jump the hurdles. Don't let anyone hold you back.
These two that are cast aside? Don't worry about them.
History deems this dynamic duo as an odd pair.
When the Nazis chased the British to the coast of Dunkirk in May of 1940....they should have been cornered. Oddly....thousands of Brits came on their private vessels, and loaded up 330,000 troops and removed them. They would fight another day. It should have been impossible, but it's hard to tell a Brit this.
When the Nazis had the coast closely guarded, the Americans came in such force....that Normandy opened the path all the way to Berlin. That also should have been impossible but it's hard to tell an American this.
Things will run fine in Europe without the duo, and if not....then some of Queen's very best and a few crazed Americans will come again.
I thought a great deal about these words today, and eventually came to this one observation.
It is absolutely true. Europe, or Germany....can stand to the side and maneuver upon it's own. Feel free. Take the steps. Gallop with long strides. Jump the hurdles. Don't let anyone hold you back.
These two that are cast aside? Don't worry about them.
History deems this dynamic duo as an odd pair.
When the Nazis chased the British to the coast of Dunkirk in May of 1940....they should have been cornered. Oddly....thousands of Brits came on their private vessels, and loaded up 330,000 troops and removed them. They would fight another day. It should have been impossible, but it's hard to tell a Brit this.
When the Nazis had the coast closely guarded, the Americans came in such force....that Normandy opened the path all the way to Berlin. That also should have been impossible but it's hard to tell an American this.
Things will run fine in Europe without the duo, and if not....then some of Queen's very best and a few crazed Americans will come again.
Social Lottery: Germany?
I sat and watched a show last night on commercial German TV. They had a 12-minute piece with a moderator and three-odd guests.
The topic? Social lottery.
So, there's this gimmick of social lifestyles being discussed in Germany.
There would be a lottery to occur....probably once a year. Those who get their name drawn....would get 1,000 Euro a month for one year. They could spend it on beer, clothing, Pepsi, wild women, a vacation to Greece, a renovation job for the house, or a bunch of tattoos.
The selling point by one of the guests is that you'd get a chance to live an extra 'big' life for twelve months. Then, the money would end.
They didn't really go deep into details. One would imagine that you'd only get a chance to win this once in your life. There would be no limit on the use of the money....so if you wanted 12,000 Euro of pot, or Russian vodka.....well, that's OK. The number of Germans on this yearly win? They left that out for the most part. My humble guess is that it'd have to be more than 10,000. To ensure that everyone in Germany had a chance to win this once in their life.....you might have to play 150,000 to 250,000 winners per year.
I sat and thought about this for a while after the segment ended.
As part of the discussion group, they brought on the head of the Linke Party....aka, the former Communist Party of Germany. You can kinda grin that she's a bold supporter of the plan.
Where would the money come from? Well....more taxes.
At some point, I wondered....why not just find various way to cut income and VAT (sales taxes), and then just hand every family in Germany 120 Euro each month, for the rest of their lives? Why create a fake lottery, when you could just skip that part and make everyone a winner....every single year.
I guess that wouldn't make the social lottery dreamers happy.....giving everyone a chance to win.
One of the issues here that I see is that you'd have welfare or poverty type folks who'd get the one single year of big money, and blow it on mostly beer, cigarettes, marijuana, and fancy dolphin tattoos. Two months after the money runs out.....they'd be at some mental health clinic....all depressed because they were awful happy with the thousand a month, and the mental guy would respond that money doesn't buy happiness.
Another issue that I'd predict on....is that you'd have the same experts on social lottery coming up in ten years to suggest that you need a second lottery to exist with a chance for 300 Germans to win a mega-lottery.....10,000 Euro a month. Five years after that....they'd suggested a super-mega lottery chance for 100 Germans to win 100,000 Euro a month.
Odds of this selling to the pubic? Maybe one in a million. But it's a good topic for nightly TV moderators to talk about because there's no soccer on TV.
The topic? Social lottery.
So, there's this gimmick of social lifestyles being discussed in Germany.
There would be a lottery to occur....probably once a year. Those who get their name drawn....would get 1,000 Euro a month for one year. They could spend it on beer, clothing, Pepsi, wild women, a vacation to Greece, a renovation job for the house, or a bunch of tattoos.
The selling point by one of the guests is that you'd get a chance to live an extra 'big' life for twelve months. Then, the money would end.
They didn't really go deep into details. One would imagine that you'd only get a chance to win this once in your life. There would be no limit on the use of the money....so if you wanted 12,000 Euro of pot, or Russian vodka.....well, that's OK. The number of Germans on this yearly win? They left that out for the most part. My humble guess is that it'd have to be more than 10,000. To ensure that everyone in Germany had a chance to win this once in their life.....you might have to play 150,000 to 250,000 winners per year.
I sat and thought about this for a while after the segment ended.
As part of the discussion group, they brought on the head of the Linke Party....aka, the former Communist Party of Germany. You can kinda grin that she's a bold supporter of the plan.
Where would the money come from? Well....more taxes.
At some point, I wondered....why not just find various way to cut income and VAT (sales taxes), and then just hand every family in Germany 120 Euro each month, for the rest of their lives? Why create a fake lottery, when you could just skip that part and make everyone a winner....every single year.
I guess that wouldn't make the social lottery dreamers happy.....giving everyone a chance to win.
One of the issues here that I see is that you'd have welfare or poverty type folks who'd get the one single year of big money, and blow it on mostly beer, cigarettes, marijuana, and fancy dolphin tattoos. Two months after the money runs out.....they'd be at some mental health clinic....all depressed because they were awful happy with the thousand a month, and the mental guy would respond that money doesn't buy happiness.
Another issue that I'd predict on....is that you'd have the same experts on social lottery coming up in ten years to suggest that you need a second lottery to exist with a chance for 300 Germans to win a mega-lottery.....10,000 Euro a month. Five years after that....they'd suggested a super-mega lottery chance for 100 Germans to win 100,000 Euro a month.
Odds of this selling to the pubic? Maybe one in a million. But it's a good topic for nightly TV moderators to talk about because there's no soccer on TV.
Mutti's Big Adventure
It's a good title for what can be described for Chancellor Merkel, President Trump, the G-7 meeting results, and the next twelve months.
The G-7 insiders wrote up the mandated talking points for this meeting. Climate change. Refugee distribution. Global economy. Foreign policy. All you had to do was attend discuss things, and just agree to the scripted points.
President Trump looked at the climate change talk and he wasn't prepared to sign anything, and various things were up for further study. The refugee distribution thing....he wasn't going to touch. He went off into a direction of non-agreement.
It's a curious thing about G-7 meetings, if you go and drag history professor or long-time journalist into a discussion about the benefits of the meetings. Basically, nothing of any value ever occurs at these meetings. It's just have photo-ops and chit-chat. You go back and have some points with your news media over meeting with world leaders. So, in some ways, this was your normal average G-7 meeting, with minimal results.
For Mutti...Chancellor Merkel....it's a doomed failure and her chance to chat up the new world order....basically Germany and France must lead Europe in the dark days ahead. The US and UK....are outsiders and not going to be helpful for the Europeans.
Typically in a German election period, if there is a Republican sitting President....the SPD Party candidate goes full-blast against US policy, NATO, nukes, or some military affair. It's been that way for forty-odd years. In this case, Merkel converted herself and the CDU over into this anti-US group and took over the SPD-theme. I'm guessing that the SPD is sitting there now (at least the top thirty members), and sipping off a couple of beers....shaking their heads because Merkel stole their theme song.
My observations of this little adventure developing:
1. There's been talk for ten days over this sensitive BND (German CIA) report that BILD got ahold of and indicates that 6-million refugees are going to make way from Libya to open seas in the Med starting in early June and run through the end of August. It sounds bogus from the sheer number suggested....but you just have to wonder.
Here's the thing....the charity ships, Italian and French Navy in the region....would not have the capability to pick up the thousands of rafts that would be dumped with 6-million refugees. Nor would they have the organizational talents to pick-up and dump them at various Italian ports. Who does? The US Navy. My guess is that part of this G-7 discussion over refugees likely touched on this scenario of the 6-million....getting the US to agree to take some of the folks, and to help in the 'rescue'. Since the US is out, the chance of any successful 'rescue' is marginal at best.
2. Once Chancellor Merkel said the magic phrase that she and France's Macron would lead Europe through the darkness....I'm guessing that at least ten European countries sat there and laughed. Greece especially. A French-German tugboat dragging the rest of Europe? It' not on a wish-list for European countries. It may sound good to Merkel, but it's mostly a joke.
3. In some ways, this G-7 meeting simply moved the NATO future to the next level. The two-percent of GDP rule (which has an open period for another five or six years to reach the agreed levels) is a problem for the Trump administration. My guess is that by the end of 2017.....some troop movements or reductions will occur.
My humble guess is that some Army units might end up in Poland, or the UK, and the rest go back to the US. The Air Force might keep Ramstein around to a lesser degree, but move some operations into UK bases. The footprint by 2021 would be greatly reduced. The UK might be the only country in Europe with a fair amount of US basing.
I don't necessarily see this as a negative. The Cold War ended in the early 1990s, and it's a waste to continue the amount of spending.
For Russia? They don't spend near the amount that they did in the 1980s and it's not the threat that one would imagine from the Soviet Union days.
4. For the 2020 election? Germans have to be sitting there in absolute belief that a replacement for Trump will occur. Just run the clock out and wait for January of 2021. Well....unless Trump runs again, or we get another Trump-like character (The Rock says he might run for President).
5. So we come to this odd piece of 2017....the six-million refugees and potentially having Erdogan release a million refugees from Turkey into Greece. As much as Chancellor Merkel seems to be on top of the world right now.....there's this refugee problem sitting there. If someone were to suggest two to three million refugees coming into Germany before the end of 2017.....you'd start to notice at least 50-percent of the German public in some fit of anger.
Merkel has been able to use the table agreement with Erdogan to control the sensitive topic for roughly 15 months. The German public is relieved.
As much as this G-7 end looks great for Merkel.....it's simply short period of relief because of the potential refugee mess that could be arriving shortly.
Not to wish something bad upon anyone but this is a pretty big pit to fall into if the refugee issue starts to occur. All of this anti-Trump talk won't matter in this case.
The G-7 insiders wrote up the mandated talking points for this meeting. Climate change. Refugee distribution. Global economy. Foreign policy. All you had to do was attend discuss things, and just agree to the scripted points.
President Trump looked at the climate change talk and he wasn't prepared to sign anything, and various things were up for further study. The refugee distribution thing....he wasn't going to touch. He went off into a direction of non-agreement.
It's a curious thing about G-7 meetings, if you go and drag history professor or long-time journalist into a discussion about the benefits of the meetings. Basically, nothing of any value ever occurs at these meetings. It's just have photo-ops and chit-chat. You go back and have some points with your news media over meeting with world leaders. So, in some ways, this was your normal average G-7 meeting, with minimal results.
For Mutti...Chancellor Merkel....it's a doomed failure and her chance to chat up the new world order....basically Germany and France must lead Europe in the dark days ahead. The US and UK....are outsiders and not going to be helpful for the Europeans.
Typically in a German election period, if there is a Republican sitting President....the SPD Party candidate goes full-blast against US policy, NATO, nukes, or some military affair. It's been that way for forty-odd years. In this case, Merkel converted herself and the CDU over into this anti-US group and took over the SPD-theme. I'm guessing that the SPD is sitting there now (at least the top thirty members), and sipping off a couple of beers....shaking their heads because Merkel stole their theme song.
My observations of this little adventure developing:
1. There's been talk for ten days over this sensitive BND (German CIA) report that BILD got ahold of and indicates that 6-million refugees are going to make way from Libya to open seas in the Med starting in early June and run through the end of August. It sounds bogus from the sheer number suggested....but you just have to wonder.
Here's the thing....the charity ships, Italian and French Navy in the region....would not have the capability to pick up the thousands of rafts that would be dumped with 6-million refugees. Nor would they have the organizational talents to pick-up and dump them at various Italian ports. Who does? The US Navy. My guess is that part of this G-7 discussion over refugees likely touched on this scenario of the 6-million....getting the US to agree to take some of the folks, and to help in the 'rescue'. Since the US is out, the chance of any successful 'rescue' is marginal at best.
2. Once Chancellor Merkel said the magic phrase that she and France's Macron would lead Europe through the darkness....I'm guessing that at least ten European countries sat there and laughed. Greece especially. A French-German tugboat dragging the rest of Europe? It' not on a wish-list for European countries. It may sound good to Merkel, but it's mostly a joke.
3. In some ways, this G-7 meeting simply moved the NATO future to the next level. The two-percent of GDP rule (which has an open period for another five or six years to reach the agreed levels) is a problem for the Trump administration. My guess is that by the end of 2017.....some troop movements or reductions will occur.
My humble guess is that some Army units might end up in Poland, or the UK, and the rest go back to the US. The Air Force might keep Ramstein around to a lesser degree, but move some operations into UK bases. The footprint by 2021 would be greatly reduced. The UK might be the only country in Europe with a fair amount of US basing.
I don't necessarily see this as a negative. The Cold War ended in the early 1990s, and it's a waste to continue the amount of spending.
For Russia? They don't spend near the amount that they did in the 1980s and it's not the threat that one would imagine from the Soviet Union days.
4. For the 2020 election? Germans have to be sitting there in absolute belief that a replacement for Trump will occur. Just run the clock out and wait for January of 2021. Well....unless Trump runs again, or we get another Trump-like character (The Rock says he might run for President).
5. So we come to this odd piece of 2017....the six-million refugees and potentially having Erdogan release a million refugees from Turkey into Greece. As much as Chancellor Merkel seems to be on top of the world right now.....there's this refugee problem sitting there. If someone were to suggest two to three million refugees coming into Germany before the end of 2017.....you'd start to notice at least 50-percent of the German public in some fit of anger.
Merkel has been able to use the table agreement with Erdogan to control the sensitive topic for roughly 15 months. The German public is relieved.
As much as this G-7 end looks great for Merkel.....it's simply short period of relief because of the potential refugee mess that could be arriving shortly.
Not to wish something bad upon anyone but this is a pretty big pit to fall into if the refugee issue starts to occur. All of this anti-Trump talk won't matter in this case.
Sunday, May 28, 2017
When Chat Doesn't Work
In the last couple of weeks, the folks at Channel One (ARD, public German TV) started up a project. Basically, they want their news folks to go and have open dialog and conversation on social media....discussing...well, it's basically unknown what the handful of journalists attempted to chat on.
What they found after a while (probably less than 15 minutes each) were the insults of 'whore', 'criminal', 'traitor', etc.
There's a fairly long description of the experience which mostly laid out harsh commentary which was dished out to the intellectual journalists of ARD. Obviously, if you read the whole thing....they really avoided letting you know the topic which they jumped into. My humble guess? Something controversial. The fact that it was not raised in this piece of writing....is more than obvious.
So most of this fairly in-depth piece by ARD dwells on social media and that it's loaded with conflict. The ARD intention? They wanted to build some discussion bridge with constructive talk. One almost gets the image of a carrot-stick approach to get positive words and dialog out there within the public sector.
Why? That's a mystery for the most part.
Journalists are typically hired to go and report on events and facts. They typically aren't there to lead a discussion. I can think of some jobs where where you would lead a public group to some chat-position, but this is typically not a job for reporters. To me, this mission was a bit hopeless.
So the journalists came back....with results. They found hatred, lying, loudness of topics, slander, etc.
They also found that there are 30 million Germans using Facebook....which is more than the total population of Germany's two most popular states (B-W, and NRW). They also found that youths (16-to-24) are heavy users....almost 90-percent.
My impression after reading the summary.....these reporters have walked into an area of the 'jungle' that they are totally unfamiliar with and they may have lost perception of their audience.
First, on the topic of conversations....there are typically four types in Germany today. You have the intellectual-to-intellectual type where two folks are sipping wine, and talking high-hat politics and they seem fairly agreeable on half of the topics. You have the working-class-guy with his buddy...who talk mostly over sports, work, and occasional politics. You have the teenie or youth conversation where it's mostly over TV, movies, promis, or school. And you have the frustration topic room where people are mostly angry and hyped up against something (either immigrants, taxes, cost of living, or unfairness in life).
Second, social media has finally allowed people to find like-minded people....some angry over politics....some angry over taxes....and slug out this frustration. If some idiot were to attempt a peaceful talk or try to reason with these folks, it's a WASTE of time. This perception among intellectuals that you can change the attitudes of people is mostly something that existed prior to the 1980s. I don't see this reasoning working well in today's German environment.
Third, why exactly are journalists with ARD being used in this fashion? Social media combat enthusiasts? This seems like some fake mission drawn up by the leadership of ARD with some purpose but it's really not clear. They may perceive that fake news is the trend with social media and they want to attack fake news. If so, they might want to go back and ask where this all started (Russian election in the fall of 2011....the Russians weren't prepared for the social media campaign that appeared out of nowhere).
Finally, I come to this odd issue which I see a fair bit as I walk around Germany. There are a fair number of people who have lived in a fairly good and comfortable life, with certain social and political views attached to them. If you took those folks and pushed them into a pub of Hartz-IV welfare folks, and working-class poverty types....discussing expenditures of government resources, migrants, and unfairness....it would not be a pleasant experience. Just one German talking to another, but from a totally different walk of life. This idea of having an open dialog generally only works in an absolute and precise mixture of participants.
The social media topic? I think it's going to be a long hot summer if this is a prioritized job for the ARD journalists.
What they found after a while (probably less than 15 minutes each) were the insults of 'whore', 'criminal', 'traitor', etc.
There's a fairly long description of the experience which mostly laid out harsh commentary which was dished out to the intellectual journalists of ARD. Obviously, if you read the whole thing....they really avoided letting you know the topic which they jumped into. My humble guess? Something controversial. The fact that it was not raised in this piece of writing....is more than obvious.
So most of this fairly in-depth piece by ARD dwells on social media and that it's loaded with conflict. The ARD intention? They wanted to build some discussion bridge with constructive talk. One almost gets the image of a carrot-stick approach to get positive words and dialog out there within the public sector.
Why? That's a mystery for the most part.
Journalists are typically hired to go and report on events and facts. They typically aren't there to lead a discussion. I can think of some jobs where where you would lead a public group to some chat-position, but this is typically not a job for reporters. To me, this mission was a bit hopeless.
So the journalists came back....with results. They found hatred, lying, loudness of topics, slander, etc.
They also found that there are 30 million Germans using Facebook....which is more than the total population of Germany's two most popular states (B-W, and NRW). They also found that youths (16-to-24) are heavy users....almost 90-percent.
My impression after reading the summary.....these reporters have walked into an area of the 'jungle' that they are totally unfamiliar with and they may have lost perception of their audience.
First, on the topic of conversations....there are typically four types in Germany today. You have the intellectual-to-intellectual type where two folks are sipping wine, and talking high-hat politics and they seem fairly agreeable on half of the topics. You have the working-class-guy with his buddy...who talk mostly over sports, work, and occasional politics. You have the teenie or youth conversation where it's mostly over TV, movies, promis, or school. And you have the frustration topic room where people are mostly angry and hyped up against something (either immigrants, taxes, cost of living, or unfairness in life).
Second, social media has finally allowed people to find like-minded people....some angry over politics....some angry over taxes....and slug out this frustration. If some idiot were to attempt a peaceful talk or try to reason with these folks, it's a WASTE of time. This perception among intellectuals that you can change the attitudes of people is mostly something that existed prior to the 1980s. I don't see this reasoning working well in today's German environment.
Third, why exactly are journalists with ARD being used in this fashion? Social media combat enthusiasts? This seems like some fake mission drawn up by the leadership of ARD with some purpose but it's really not clear. They may perceive that fake news is the trend with social media and they want to attack fake news. If so, they might want to go back and ask where this all started (Russian election in the fall of 2011....the Russians weren't prepared for the social media campaign that appeared out of nowhere).
Finally, I come to this odd issue which I see a fair bit as I walk around Germany. There are a fair number of people who have lived in a fairly good and comfortable life, with certain social and political views attached to them. If you took those folks and pushed them into a pub of Hartz-IV welfare folks, and working-class poverty types....discussing expenditures of government resources, migrants, and unfairness....it would not be a pleasant experience. Just one German talking to another, but from a totally different walk of life. This idea of having an open dialog generally only works in an absolute and precise mixture of participants.
The social media topic? I think it's going to be a long hot summer if this is a prioritized job for the ARD journalists.
German News: Bit and Pieces (Sun Evening)
Afghan youth fight. The Austrian press (Krone.At) reported this incident from late in the week in Linz. What you have are 30-odd teens....all Afghan in nature....who met up one morning to discuss some differences in status and lack of respect within the group. A brawl occurred.....only involving Afghans, not Austrians. Cops arrive but most of the group have dispersed after getting in a few whacks. Juvenile situation but it's a indicator of punks with time on their hands and no real occupation or job. Note, this was not at night but in the mid-morning hours.
Russians in the midst of Germany: Well, it's a Focus-piece which chats about this interesting item that the Germans (the cops and intelligence folks) believe 63 martial arts schools in Germany....are really Russian-intelligence (KGB) operations. Minimum of thirty German cities covered in this 'operation', and most have been in operation for years (not a recent thing). The key phrase in this story is 'sleeper-cells'....which you have to be amused about because it seems to be such an open thing. Do the Russian authorities pay for the operation? Well? The story avoids suggesting that. It appears to be some blame-like reporting, but it's hard to guess who started the story and if it is true to any degree. A fake CIA story? I have my doubts. If you believe in the 63 martial arts school story, then what about the 300 Italian mafia pizzerias, the 150 Chinese-intelligence-run restaurants, and the three Chilean secret-intelligence-run steak houses? Same possibility?
Free German TV at an end: Well, for years, there's been this free deal where you just go and buy a satellite dish and a 30 to 100 Euro receiver, and you got both German public TV (already taxed on you) and German commercial TV.....FREE. If you walked around, you'd generally say that 90-percent of houses in Germany will have a dish (not cable). Well, the two parties in question are ready to go to the next version of delivery (enhanced and better, as they say)....but they want you to pay for the delivery. So they set up a working group and are discussing the method of delivery and the cost factor. My humble guess is that it'll require a special receiver, and a special chip with a code which has to be updated. Cost? Unknown, but I would speculate on a one-time fee (for the receiver and chip) of 100 Euro, and a yearly fee of 30 to 40 Euro. Customer anger? For the public-TV crowd, there's already a tax, so the public won't be receptive to this under-the-table rigged game.
German Army lacking anti-hacking skills: Focus went and did a piece on this sensitive topic with the German Army. For several years, the German Army has been mentioned along side the national effort on cyber warfare. There's a center of operations, and some defensive capability. Beyond that....nothing. The Army admits this, but the issue is mostly due to the crowd of people that they recruit. To be an offensive-like hacker, you need to be of a special character....which is typically NOT the type that you'd recruit to wear a uniform or be military in nature. Hiring up contractors to be in this type environment? The article hints that they've generally failed in this aspect. My guess is that the hacker crowd quoted a yearly salary way beyond 70,000 Euro and the Bundeswehr just laughed. Face the other fact.....if you lined up a hundred German hacker folks and presented this case of joining the German Army for six years....99-percent would grin and just walk away.
Focus update on political polling: Focus updated the numbers....the SPD Party is now at 25-percent....pretty fall.. The CDU (Merkel's Party) is sitting at a very happy 38-percent. And the FDP has moved up to almost 8-percent (even with the Greens). At this point, with around 100 days to go, it would take an awful lot to collapse the CDU and bring any chance of beating Merkel. Massive change since early January.
German youth and politics: ARD wrote up an interesting article on this phenomenon of young Germans and the standard political parties. They point out.....that the script that most of the parties used for decades....doesn't easily attract young voters. One number stands out with the SPD.....large number of new members....17,000....mostly all under the age of thirty-five. One might look at this and suggest that the old-guy leadership will have to find younger dynamic folks to put up for national positions and maybe even Chancellor.
Cherries and higher prices: SWR put up a short article and talked about the early frost in the Pfalz, which messed up cherry production and has greatly increased cost. Same issue with strawberries in Hessen. If you go around and try to buy fresh fruit of any type from the local region....it's 20-to-30 percent more expensive than normal.
Autobahn money story: Last Saturday evening, down on A9 going into Bavaria....some German motorcyclist must have had his billfold fall out and 9,000 Euro flutter into the wind. Cops got called, and were nice enough to shut down the autobahn for a while....letting the guy hunt for the money. In the end, he was still missing 1,500 Euro.
Driving in German heat: Germans are a bit fanatical about driving in summer weather. This is a piece written by SWR on the dozen odd safety rules. Like for example....the rule or suggestion flip-flops and driving....it's a safety concern and strongly suggested to wear actual shoes as the driver. The expanding fuel tank situation is brought up. And then there's that problem of watching for patches of autobahn highway that might heat-up in the summer and loosen.
Russians in the midst of Germany: Well, it's a Focus-piece which chats about this interesting item that the Germans (the cops and intelligence folks) believe 63 martial arts schools in Germany....are really Russian-intelligence (KGB) operations. Minimum of thirty German cities covered in this 'operation', and most have been in operation for years (not a recent thing). The key phrase in this story is 'sleeper-cells'....which you have to be amused about because it seems to be such an open thing. Do the Russian authorities pay for the operation? Well? The story avoids suggesting that. It appears to be some blame-like reporting, but it's hard to guess who started the story and if it is true to any degree. A fake CIA story? I have my doubts. If you believe in the 63 martial arts school story, then what about the 300 Italian mafia pizzerias, the 150 Chinese-intelligence-run restaurants, and the three Chilean secret-intelligence-run steak houses? Same possibility?
Free German TV at an end: Well, for years, there's been this free deal where you just go and buy a satellite dish and a 30 to 100 Euro receiver, and you got both German public TV (already taxed on you) and German commercial TV.....FREE. If you walked around, you'd generally say that 90-percent of houses in Germany will have a dish (not cable). Well, the two parties in question are ready to go to the next version of delivery (enhanced and better, as they say)....but they want you to pay for the delivery. So they set up a working group and are discussing the method of delivery and the cost factor. My humble guess is that it'll require a special receiver, and a special chip with a code which has to be updated. Cost? Unknown, but I would speculate on a one-time fee (for the receiver and chip) of 100 Euro, and a yearly fee of 30 to 40 Euro. Customer anger? For the public-TV crowd, there's already a tax, so the public won't be receptive to this under-the-table rigged game.
German Army lacking anti-hacking skills: Focus went and did a piece on this sensitive topic with the German Army. For several years, the German Army has been mentioned along side the national effort on cyber warfare. There's a center of operations, and some defensive capability. Beyond that....nothing. The Army admits this, but the issue is mostly due to the crowd of people that they recruit. To be an offensive-like hacker, you need to be of a special character....which is typically NOT the type that you'd recruit to wear a uniform or be military in nature. Hiring up contractors to be in this type environment? The article hints that they've generally failed in this aspect. My guess is that the hacker crowd quoted a yearly salary way beyond 70,000 Euro and the Bundeswehr just laughed. Face the other fact.....if you lined up a hundred German hacker folks and presented this case of joining the German Army for six years....99-percent would grin and just walk away.
Focus update on political polling: Focus updated the numbers....the SPD Party is now at 25-percent....pretty fall.. The CDU (Merkel's Party) is sitting at a very happy 38-percent. And the FDP has moved up to almost 8-percent (even with the Greens). At this point, with around 100 days to go, it would take an awful lot to collapse the CDU and bring any chance of beating Merkel. Massive change since early January.
German youth and politics: ARD wrote up an interesting article on this phenomenon of young Germans and the standard political parties. They point out.....that the script that most of the parties used for decades....doesn't easily attract young voters. One number stands out with the SPD.....large number of new members....17,000....mostly all under the age of thirty-five. One might look at this and suggest that the old-guy leadership will have to find younger dynamic folks to put up for national positions and maybe even Chancellor.
Cherries and higher prices: SWR put up a short article and talked about the early frost in the Pfalz, which messed up cherry production and has greatly increased cost. Same issue with strawberries in Hessen. If you go around and try to buy fresh fruit of any type from the local region....it's 20-to-30 percent more expensive than normal.
Autobahn money story: Last Saturday evening, down on A9 going into Bavaria....some German motorcyclist must have had his billfold fall out and 9,000 Euro flutter into the wind. Cops got called, and were nice enough to shut down the autobahn for a while....letting the guy hunt for the money. In the end, he was still missing 1,500 Euro.
Driving in German heat: Germans are a bit fanatical about driving in summer weather. This is a piece written by SWR on the dozen odd safety rules. Like for example....the rule or suggestion flip-flops and driving....it's a safety concern and strongly suggested to wear actual shoes as the driver. The expanding fuel tank situation is brought up. And then there's that problem of watching for patches of autobahn highway that might heat-up in the summer and loosen.
German Non-News News
So I'll have to tell this story in a particular way.
Yesterday, a small bit came up over the radio from the regional public radio service....over an event in a Hessen city where a couple of men were detained from Friday night for really bad behavior (I won't go into details but it's safe to say that women did police reports and it's serious enough that you'd normally get some jail-time), and the moderator of the radio news said the magic phrase 'migrant' or 'non-German'.
I thought this was curious and tried to do a search on the city and the event. There are roughly six sources to the story....newspaper-related, commercial TV news, and public-TV news. Five of the six do not mention 'migrant' to the four guys detained. It simply lists their ages, and the bad behavior situation. So you'd read their description and just wonder why it made it into regional or national news. The sixth news group did mention the 'migrant' side of the story and you can understand the reason why it was written for regional or national news.
So I wanted to take that story and put it up on Facebook via my S-R point, and comment on this. 'URL not found' then occurred when I attempted this. Through the sixth source and FB....they had ensured that it'd be awful hard to cite this and pass it out to others.
This 'URL not found' gimmick has occurred about 20 times now to me over the past month. Generally, its always a controversial story which appears to be OK to report, but not OK to pass.
How did this start up? At some point in 2016, the German press association went and did an update to their membership recommendations. They generally have this list of things that you are supposed to do, when writing up the news. It's not just clear and concise wording, and accuracy that make a good news piece. So they added this phrase, which basically says you need to think about how people might take and use your news for a discussion in an entirely different way. In effect, you need to leave out items to the story if it might read in a negative way over something.
An example would be a story with six facts attached to it. The story relates to some migrant who got arrested for bad behavior or criminal activity. So you write the six facts into this...pull out the press association checklist and eventually agree that the story might be misused and anger some Germans (maybe a lot of Germans). So you decide rather than NOT reporting any of this.....you will report it with five facts and leave out the part that the guy detained was not a German citizen.
Where this dedication takes you? Well, the public will eventually realize that censorship in some fashion is occurring. They can't be sure about your intentions or the truth....so they regard your news activity to be untrustworthy.
Over the last decade in the US, this went from being a routine but minor problem to being a major and daily problem. The news media in the US is laughed at because of their method of telling news stories. No one believes them.
You see the same trend going on in Germany.
As for the detained guys in this German story? Four months down the line, some quiet court appearance will occur, with what I expect to be a zero-journalist coverage activity. The women who reported this to the cops will shake their heads over the situation, and the cops from this city will mostly laugh because they all know the key facts to the story. It's a non-news story to tell to the public though.
Yesterday, a small bit came up over the radio from the regional public radio service....over an event in a Hessen city where a couple of men were detained from Friday night for really bad behavior (I won't go into details but it's safe to say that women did police reports and it's serious enough that you'd normally get some jail-time), and the moderator of the radio news said the magic phrase 'migrant' or 'non-German'.
I thought this was curious and tried to do a search on the city and the event. There are roughly six sources to the story....newspaper-related, commercial TV news, and public-TV news. Five of the six do not mention 'migrant' to the four guys detained. It simply lists their ages, and the bad behavior situation. So you'd read their description and just wonder why it made it into regional or national news. The sixth news group did mention the 'migrant' side of the story and you can understand the reason why it was written for regional or national news.
So I wanted to take that story and put it up on Facebook via my S-R point, and comment on this. 'URL not found' then occurred when I attempted this. Through the sixth source and FB....they had ensured that it'd be awful hard to cite this and pass it out to others.
This 'URL not found' gimmick has occurred about 20 times now to me over the past month. Generally, its always a controversial story which appears to be OK to report, but not OK to pass.
How did this start up? At some point in 2016, the German press association went and did an update to their membership recommendations. They generally have this list of things that you are supposed to do, when writing up the news. It's not just clear and concise wording, and accuracy that make a good news piece. So they added this phrase, which basically says you need to think about how people might take and use your news for a discussion in an entirely different way. In effect, you need to leave out items to the story if it might read in a negative way over something.
An example would be a story with six facts attached to it. The story relates to some migrant who got arrested for bad behavior or criminal activity. So you write the six facts into this...pull out the press association checklist and eventually agree that the story might be misused and anger some Germans (maybe a lot of Germans). So you decide rather than NOT reporting any of this.....you will report it with five facts and leave out the part that the guy detained was not a German citizen.
Where this dedication takes you? Well, the public will eventually realize that censorship in some fashion is occurring. They can't be sure about your intentions or the truth....so they regard your news activity to be untrustworthy.
Over the last decade in the US, this went from being a routine but minor problem to being a major and daily problem. The news media in the US is laughed at because of their method of telling news stories. No one believes them.
You see the same trend going on in Germany.
As for the detained guys in this German story? Four months down the line, some quiet court appearance will occur, with what I expect to be a zero-journalist coverage activity. The women who reported this to the cops will shake their heads over the situation, and the cops from this city will mostly laugh because they all know the key facts to the story. It's a non-news story to tell to the public though.
Saturday, May 27, 2017
German News Bits (Sun Morning)
Because of the increasing amount of 'URL cannot be found' on a number of German news sites when you try to post a story to Facebook....I've come to the decision that it's an unusual timing that this started in the last four weeks. It'll usually revolve around a controversial story which the news media will report, but they don't want you to cite it or pass it around.
So my new strategy is to post one single essay per day with the dozen odd short 'essay-notes' via Schnitzel Republic and just post that 'news collection' in one single Facebook listing. I'd prefer to cite the source of the news. I've become particular about real citings....refusing to use fake news listings.
So for Sunday, the 28th, I noted the following news items:
Boat migrants off Libya: Yahoo-Australia reports 10,000 migrants on rafts have had to be rescued within the past four days off Libya. At least 1,200 were rescued by Libya vessels and taken back to Libya. This may be the start of the summer season migrant bulk-movement that BILD talked about last week. Course, if you paid a $1,000 expecting the charity folks or Italian navy to rescue you...dragging to European land.....you might be kinda upset that you got dragged back to a Libya port.
RV spots booked: SWR reports that most all RV sites around Lake Constance (to the far south) are fully booked up. When you start to notice real warm weather....the RVers go full-blast turbo now for weekends.
Facebook and naked butts: One of the immortal statues around Germany....is the Hercules up at Kassel....on top of the hill. One of the local tourist accounts wanted to post up a picture of the Hercules statues (which has a naked butt) and FB said no.....so they had to invent some swim-wear fake insert....to make sure FB was happy. Picture of the 'before' and 'after' at the HR site. Bit amusing but people really can't handle naked statue butts.
False German narrative. Focus wrote up an entire piece to tell the alternative story to why German car-makers are getting negative coverage in this Trump episode. Oddly, they don't bring up BMW-Mexico.
The best way to explain the effect of BMW-Mexico? Imagine that VW stock dropped big-time (for a fine or diesel troubles) and General Motors decided to take profits and buy control of VW. It would not be a happy event for the Germans. But imagine six months later that VW announces that two new VW vehicles (in planning stages for three years) were to be finally produced...but in Romania, under a creation of VW-Romania. They'd naturally produce the vehicles at 30-percent less cost, and import them into Germany. Hostility at not only losing the job potential, but having these vehicles sold with the profits going to VW-Romania and possibly avoiding the German tax structure. How angry and frustrated would Germany get with that type of commercial activity?
Helene Fischer soccer game 'concert'. Last night, I sat and watched the Frankfurt-Dusseldorf soccer game (championship game) on TV. At the half-time point, they dragged out the legendary Helene for a ten-minute period and she sang a couple of songs. Sound? Extremely lousy. I don't think the guys at the stadium (probably 95-percent men) really cared or not. Total waste to even put on a half-time show at a soccer game. Probably a quarter of the audience is lit up on alcohol or beer anyway.
G7 Coverage. It's safe to say....German public TV (ARD) labeled the G7 meeting a massive failure, and blamed it on Trump. The curious thing though, if you went and examined the last dozen G7 meetings....nothing of any real significance was ever accomplished except a lot of talking and some joint dinner. It's amazing how one can tell the story and think that any of these G7 meetings ever turn into productive work.
Spain and unemployment. Excellent N-TV piece on Spanish protests from yesterday (Sat). For several years, Spain has been sitting in the midst of bad economic times. In the last quarter, they've finally been able to edge the unemployment rate down to 19-percent, which is a positive but it means a heck of a lot of people are just sitting around. Lot of blame goes toward the various political figures that have come and gone.
Former SPD candidate for Chancellor finally speaks. The last guy to run for Chancellor from the SPD Party was Peer Steinbrucke. After that loss, he retired from politics. So, N-TV did an interview with him and he labeled the current SPD-Schulz effort in this campaign as mostly going nowhere. He particularly noted that this idea of a SPD-Linke Party-Green Party coalition was the wrong thing to advertise in the western part of Germany. He's suggesting that this will be a fairly massive loss for the SPD in September as the national election comes.
So my new strategy is to post one single essay per day with the dozen odd short 'essay-notes' via Schnitzel Republic and just post that 'news collection' in one single Facebook listing. I'd prefer to cite the source of the news. I've become particular about real citings....refusing to use fake news listings.
So for Sunday, the 28th, I noted the following news items:
Boat migrants off Libya: Yahoo-Australia reports 10,000 migrants on rafts have had to be rescued within the past four days off Libya. At least 1,200 were rescued by Libya vessels and taken back to Libya. This may be the start of the summer season migrant bulk-movement that BILD talked about last week. Course, if you paid a $1,000 expecting the charity folks or Italian navy to rescue you...dragging to European land.....you might be kinda upset that you got dragged back to a Libya port.
RV spots booked: SWR reports that most all RV sites around Lake Constance (to the far south) are fully booked up. When you start to notice real warm weather....the RVers go full-blast turbo now for weekends.
Facebook and naked butts: One of the immortal statues around Germany....is the Hercules up at Kassel....on top of the hill. One of the local tourist accounts wanted to post up a picture of the Hercules statues (which has a naked butt) and FB said no.....so they had to invent some swim-wear fake insert....to make sure FB was happy. Picture of the 'before' and 'after' at the HR site. Bit amusing but people really can't handle naked statue butts.
False German narrative. Focus wrote up an entire piece to tell the alternative story to why German car-makers are getting negative coverage in this Trump episode. Oddly, they don't bring up BMW-Mexico.
The best way to explain the effect of BMW-Mexico? Imagine that VW stock dropped big-time (for a fine or diesel troubles) and General Motors decided to take profits and buy control of VW. It would not be a happy event for the Germans. But imagine six months later that VW announces that two new VW vehicles (in planning stages for three years) were to be finally produced...but in Romania, under a creation of VW-Romania. They'd naturally produce the vehicles at 30-percent less cost, and import them into Germany. Hostility at not only losing the job potential, but having these vehicles sold with the profits going to VW-Romania and possibly avoiding the German tax structure. How angry and frustrated would Germany get with that type of commercial activity?
Helene Fischer soccer game 'concert'. Last night, I sat and watched the Frankfurt-Dusseldorf soccer game (championship game) on TV. At the half-time point, they dragged out the legendary Helene for a ten-minute period and she sang a couple of songs. Sound? Extremely lousy. I don't think the guys at the stadium (probably 95-percent men) really cared or not. Total waste to even put on a half-time show at a soccer game. Probably a quarter of the audience is lit up on alcohol or beer anyway.
G7 Coverage. It's safe to say....German public TV (ARD) labeled the G7 meeting a massive failure, and blamed it on Trump. The curious thing though, if you went and examined the last dozen G7 meetings....nothing of any real significance was ever accomplished except a lot of talking and some joint dinner. It's amazing how one can tell the story and think that any of these G7 meetings ever turn into productive work.
Spain and unemployment. Excellent N-TV piece on Spanish protests from yesterday (Sat). For several years, Spain has been sitting in the midst of bad economic times. In the last quarter, they've finally been able to edge the unemployment rate down to 19-percent, which is a positive but it means a heck of a lot of people are just sitting around. Lot of blame goes toward the various political figures that have come and gone.
Former SPD candidate for Chancellor finally speaks. The last guy to run for Chancellor from the SPD Party was Peer Steinbrucke. After that loss, he retired from politics. So, N-TV did an interview with him and he labeled the current SPD-Schulz effort in this campaign as mostly going nowhere. He particularly noted that this idea of a SPD-Linke Party-Green Party coalition was the wrong thing to advertise in the western part of Germany. He's suggesting that this will be a fairly massive loss for the SPD in September as the national election comes.
Public TV Pay Scale Story
Rarely are salaries at German public TV ever discussed in public. It's not something that the two main networks or the sub-networks want to be part of any discussion.
Focus came up today and published a story on this.
Oddly, they didn't get it via the normal means. This story started out in a Christian news type publication....Chrismon. Chrismon pulls this from an internal public media document, which wasn't widely publicized....for whatever reason one can imagine.
WDR director Tom Buhrow: 399,000 Euro
BR-director Ulrich Wilhelm: 367,000 Euro
NDR director Lutz Marble: 348,000 Euro
SWR Director Peter Boudgoust: 338,000 Euro
HR Director-General Manfred Krupp: 275,000 Euro
MDR director Karola Wille: 275,000 Euro
RBB Director Patricia Schlesinger: 257,000 Euro
Radio-Bremen director-in-chief Jan Metzger: 257,000 Euro
SR-Director Thomas Kleist: 237,000 Euro
Shocking amount? No. I would not classify as such. Some of the chiefs probably are surprised at the level they are paid compared to an associate under NDR or SWR.....like the HR chief looking at a substantial difference in pay compared to his associate in WDR or BR.
Oddly though....this mention covers everyone outside of the ZDF or ARD empire....just NOT ARD or ZDF themselves. A separate page or document for the big chiefs? Maybe.
To the question why a Christian news media site published this? That also is an odd part to the story. You would think that they wouldn't really deal with stories like this.
Focus came up today and published a story on this.
Oddly, they didn't get it via the normal means. This story started out in a Christian news type publication....Chrismon. Chrismon pulls this from an internal public media document, which wasn't widely publicized....for whatever reason one can imagine.
WDR director Tom Buhrow: 399,000 Euro
BR-director Ulrich Wilhelm: 367,000 Euro
NDR director Lutz Marble: 348,000 Euro
SWR Director Peter Boudgoust: 338,000 Euro
HR Director-General Manfred Krupp: 275,000 Euro
MDR director Karola Wille: 275,000 Euro
RBB Director Patricia Schlesinger: 257,000 Euro
Radio-Bremen director-in-chief Jan Metzger: 257,000 Euro
SR-Director Thomas Kleist: 237,000 Euro
Shocking amount? No. I would not classify as such. Some of the chiefs probably are surprised at the level they are paid compared to an associate under NDR or SWR.....like the HR chief looking at a substantial difference in pay compared to his associate in WDR or BR.
Oddly though....this mention covers everyone outside of the ZDF or ARD empire....just NOT ARD or ZDF themselves. A separate page or document for the big chiefs? Maybe.
To the question why a Christian news media site published this? That also is an odd part to the story. You would think that they wouldn't really deal with stories like this.
One Manchester Detail
If you were looking for a in-depth profile of the Manchester bomber....Salman Abedi....then I would strongly recommend reading over the The Guardian piece from yesterday.
One particular detail which does stand out, and generally always comes up in these bomber attacks....unemployment.
Abedi, 23 years old, never held a regular job in his life.
If you go look at most of these episodes over the past four years....these are mostly individuals who held some shadow-like position as a small-time drug-thug, or pretender-student at some school. Beyond that....very few of these individuals are ever gainfully employed. You will be hard-pressed to find anyone who was a welder, a carpenter, or some trade-craft guy....in the middle of some terror act.
It's an odd trend that you just stand over and observe.
You can write up excuses and say that by attending university or a trade occupation school....you are progressing to a point of getting a job. But if you are mostly a pretender-student, and still unemployed at age 21....what's really going on in your life? Are you a loser? Are you just aiming at some worthless life position?
You can't really write up a decent resume at age 21 and include the fact that over the last year or two....most of your income either came from the family, or via illicit drug sales.
This is the odd continuing aspect of most of these 'gentlemen'.....they've become early-age pot-smokers and gotten into some loser attitude. Then they get all religious and driven into some mental process where nothing makes sense.....except a quick route to some great beyond.
Suicide in this situation simply relieves them of the pain of continuing a loser situation. It's a sad end for a human life, and the fact that they just drag other people along into their misery makes it ten times worse.
One particular detail which does stand out, and generally always comes up in these bomber attacks....unemployment.
Abedi, 23 years old, never held a regular job in his life.
If you go look at most of these episodes over the past four years....these are mostly individuals who held some shadow-like position as a small-time drug-thug, or pretender-student at some school. Beyond that....very few of these individuals are ever gainfully employed. You will be hard-pressed to find anyone who was a welder, a carpenter, or some trade-craft guy....in the middle of some terror act.
It's an odd trend that you just stand over and observe.
You can write up excuses and say that by attending university or a trade occupation school....you are progressing to a point of getting a job. But if you are mostly a pretender-student, and still unemployed at age 21....what's really going on in your life? Are you a loser? Are you just aiming at some worthless life position?
You can't really write up a decent resume at age 21 and include the fact that over the last year or two....most of your income either came from the family, or via illicit drug sales.
This is the odd continuing aspect of most of these 'gentlemen'.....they've become early-age pot-smokers and gotten into some loser attitude. Then they get all religious and driven into some mental process where nothing makes sense.....except a quick route to some great beyond.
Suicide in this situation simply relieves them of the pain of continuing a loser situation. It's a sad end for a human life, and the fact that they just drag other people along into their misery makes it ten times worse.
The 'Evil' Comment by Trump
This week as President Trump visited Germany.....he had a meeting with the top EU official, and hyped up the 'evil' nature of Germany and it's export situation.
How does this get picked up and dramatically hyped in Germany?
First, let's be honest about German exports. Fifty years ago, there would have been a long list of things that might have been imported into the US from Germany. Over the past fifty years....a lot of German companies went down, and various things shifted to China, Asia, or eastern Europe.
The list of the primary things that come from Germany into the US? Four items mostly, cars, chemicals, electrical items, and machinery.
If you want precise equipment for manufacturing purposes....you go to Germany and buy their equipment. If you want high quality cars, you buy German. If you want chemicals that are on the cutting edge of technology, then you mostly buy German.
The typical average American? Other than some Craftsman-like tool set, the average guy has never bought anything German in his life. If you had a decent income, you might have bought a German car.
Second, where the Trump leads onto is this one odd feature of the US-Canada-Mexico trade agreement where BMW built a factory in Mexico. Does BMW-Mexico sell beyond the US? Yes. It's an international situation that has developed. Lower pay scale attracted BMW to Mexico? Yes. BMW vehicles imported into Germany? No.....that will probably never occur. You can ask the Germans about this who are aware of the situation, and they will mostly grin and say nothing.
Third, global manufacturing and trading have created this fairly screwed up situation, which I tend to see as being unfixable. This BMW-500 series vehicle made in Mexico and sold in the US? If you were to compare the German version and the Mexico version.....it's the same vehicle, just made by two different folks. The cost difference is never discussed in public but I would take a humble guess that it's at least 25-percent cheaper if Mexican-made. The thing is....there's nothing wrong with a cheaper manufacturing profile. It's not unethical or illegal.
So, you come to the Trump comment to the EU guy....'evil' is uttered. What Trump refers to is the way that BMW is taking advantage of the trade agreement with Mexico. One might look at the trend, and suggest that in twenty years....dozens of major brand names from Europe will also have Mexico plants and eventually....Mexico might be some dynamic player in car manufacture through North and South America.....at the expense of the US. "Evil" has a way of fitting into this discussion if you look long-term.
Germans hyped up? Well....the German news media, particularly the public news media (ARD/ZDF) might have a fairly negative view. They've yet to go and really profile into the topic of BMW-Mexico and the jobs siphoned off from Germany to Mexico. I doubt if this is something that BMW would openly like to discuss.
US plants in Germany? Well....yes. Ford has been around for decades. Oddly, Ford has increased it's production line in Romania where they find cheaper cost values. So, in the same way....various companies are finding Romania and Bulgaria somewhat like Mexico. Nokia moved it's German cellphone production line out of Germany more than a decade ago....into Romania.
There's a lot of 'evil' stuff going on, and being driven by commercial desires of a cheaper product. It's that simple.
How does this get picked up and dramatically hyped in Germany?
First, let's be honest about German exports. Fifty years ago, there would have been a long list of things that might have been imported into the US from Germany. Over the past fifty years....a lot of German companies went down, and various things shifted to China, Asia, or eastern Europe.
The list of the primary things that come from Germany into the US? Four items mostly, cars, chemicals, electrical items, and machinery.
If you want precise equipment for manufacturing purposes....you go to Germany and buy their equipment. If you want high quality cars, you buy German. If you want chemicals that are on the cutting edge of technology, then you mostly buy German.
The typical average American? Other than some Craftsman-like tool set, the average guy has never bought anything German in his life. If you had a decent income, you might have bought a German car.
Second, where the Trump leads onto is this one odd feature of the US-Canada-Mexico trade agreement where BMW built a factory in Mexico. Does BMW-Mexico sell beyond the US? Yes. It's an international situation that has developed. Lower pay scale attracted BMW to Mexico? Yes. BMW vehicles imported into Germany? No.....that will probably never occur. You can ask the Germans about this who are aware of the situation, and they will mostly grin and say nothing.
Third, global manufacturing and trading have created this fairly screwed up situation, which I tend to see as being unfixable. This BMW-500 series vehicle made in Mexico and sold in the US? If you were to compare the German version and the Mexico version.....it's the same vehicle, just made by two different folks. The cost difference is never discussed in public but I would take a humble guess that it's at least 25-percent cheaper if Mexican-made. The thing is....there's nothing wrong with a cheaper manufacturing profile. It's not unethical or illegal.
So, you come to the Trump comment to the EU guy....'evil' is uttered. What Trump refers to is the way that BMW is taking advantage of the trade agreement with Mexico. One might look at the trend, and suggest that in twenty years....dozens of major brand names from Europe will also have Mexico plants and eventually....Mexico might be some dynamic player in car manufacture through North and South America.....at the expense of the US. "Evil" has a way of fitting into this discussion if you look long-term.
Germans hyped up? Well....the German news media, particularly the public news media (ARD/ZDF) might have a fairly negative view. They've yet to go and really profile into the topic of BMW-Mexico and the jobs siphoned off from Germany to Mexico. I doubt if this is something that BMW would openly like to discuss.
US plants in Germany? Well....yes. Ford has been around for decades. Oddly, Ford has increased it's production line in Romania where they find cheaper cost values. So, in the same way....various companies are finding Romania and Bulgaria somewhat like Mexico. Nokia moved it's German cellphone production line out of Germany more than a decade ago....into Romania.
There's a lot of 'evil' stuff going on, and being driven by commercial desires of a cheaper product. It's that simple.
Friday, May 26, 2017
The Netflix Topic
I'm one of those people in Germany....signed with Netflix. My son (German and 26) is a Netflix-devotee as well.
Why?
My typical logic is that there are various US-produced shows and movies....which simply fit to what I want to watch. At 10 Euro a month, it simply makes sense. I'm not that thrilled or overwhelmed over what German public TV offers....that kinda fits into this logic as well.
My son will say it comes down to three basic issues. First, German public TV has a formula that is roughly fifty years old and designed mostly for people over the age of forty. Second, this documentary and news format amuses him to a fair degree....being biased or designed to bring you to some anticipated conclusions. Third, sports-wise, it's such a wide placement that you just kind of shake your head over 90-percent of what is offered (he has no interest in boxing, Olympics, bike races, track and field, women's soccer, or ski events).
I kinda agree with the fundamental issue of German public TV and the movie creation crowd. They basically go out and find the top sixty romance/murder/comedy books sold over the last year or two, and buy the movie rights. Then they assign a couple of German actors to the project, tape up a 90-minute movie, and out of a hundred average Germans....you find roughly fifteen to twenty who might be curious enough to watch. The bulk of German society....has zero interest.
What Netflix did is a challenge to the German public TV crowd. They went to writers and producers, and asked....what's the gravy-project that you'd really like to make into a movie? So they have shows like Fargo and Orange is the New Black....which German public TV managers can look at and just shake their heads over. Netflix is like a decade ahead of the power curve. For that matter....shows like Arrow, Flash, and Big Bang Theory.....are all way beyond the imagination capability of the German public TV crowd. They can't produce what the 15-to-25 year old Germans want.
It's an odd thing. German teens now....ask for birthday gifts of a year's subscription to Netflix or Amazon. They want choice. They want imagination.
I sat today....amazed over a EU regulation which got dreamed up and apparently passed this week. They want to force Amazon and Netflix to carry 30-percent of it's inventory....as EU-produced shows. Fines would be tossed into the mix, if they don't cooperate.
Can Netflix fit into this? If you go and look....around 15-percent (my humble guess) of the offerings are European movies or German comedians. There are various projects in the books at present to make some German TV shows in the future. Thirty-percent? It might difficult to meet that requirement....unless Netflix just goes out and buys viewing rights to some 1980s Polish soap operas, or 1990s Italian 'Baywatch-like' series. Netflix viewers won't watch the crap but the EU regulation doesn't care.
Why did the EU go and do this? They seem to think that American influence will occur via the television shows offered. To some degree, I think they also worry that US production companies will benefit more than European companies....unless you regulate this.
A new Marvel series based on some German super-hero, produced by Netflix? One might laugh about that. It's practically impossible to get German public TV to make a science fiction series....hasn't been done since the 1960s. Space Patrol Orion....one season....seven episodes....1966. That's it. You can go and ask the public TV mafia about this and they just can't imagine making anything like that....ever again.
It's two entirely different cultures at work. Netflix has creativity and dreamers.....German public TV has a 50-year formula and no desire to change. One has virtually everyone under 25, and the other everyone over forty.
Why?
My typical logic is that there are various US-produced shows and movies....which simply fit to what I want to watch. At 10 Euro a month, it simply makes sense. I'm not that thrilled or overwhelmed over what German public TV offers....that kinda fits into this logic as well.
My son will say it comes down to three basic issues. First, German public TV has a formula that is roughly fifty years old and designed mostly for people over the age of forty. Second, this documentary and news format amuses him to a fair degree....being biased or designed to bring you to some anticipated conclusions. Third, sports-wise, it's such a wide placement that you just kind of shake your head over 90-percent of what is offered (he has no interest in boxing, Olympics, bike races, track and field, women's soccer, or ski events).
I kinda agree with the fundamental issue of German public TV and the movie creation crowd. They basically go out and find the top sixty romance/murder/comedy books sold over the last year or two, and buy the movie rights. Then they assign a couple of German actors to the project, tape up a 90-minute movie, and out of a hundred average Germans....you find roughly fifteen to twenty who might be curious enough to watch. The bulk of German society....has zero interest.
What Netflix did is a challenge to the German public TV crowd. They went to writers and producers, and asked....what's the gravy-project that you'd really like to make into a movie? So they have shows like Fargo and Orange is the New Black....which German public TV managers can look at and just shake their heads over. Netflix is like a decade ahead of the power curve. For that matter....shows like Arrow, Flash, and Big Bang Theory.....are all way beyond the imagination capability of the German public TV crowd. They can't produce what the 15-to-25 year old Germans want.
It's an odd thing. German teens now....ask for birthday gifts of a year's subscription to Netflix or Amazon. They want choice. They want imagination.
I sat today....amazed over a EU regulation which got dreamed up and apparently passed this week. They want to force Amazon and Netflix to carry 30-percent of it's inventory....as EU-produced shows. Fines would be tossed into the mix, if they don't cooperate.
Can Netflix fit into this? If you go and look....around 15-percent (my humble guess) of the offerings are European movies or German comedians. There are various projects in the books at present to make some German TV shows in the future. Thirty-percent? It might difficult to meet that requirement....unless Netflix just goes out and buys viewing rights to some 1980s Polish soap operas, or 1990s Italian 'Baywatch-like' series. Netflix viewers won't watch the crap but the EU regulation doesn't care.
Why did the EU go and do this? They seem to think that American influence will occur via the television shows offered. To some degree, I think they also worry that US production companies will benefit more than European companies....unless you regulate this.
A new Marvel series based on some German super-hero, produced by Netflix? One might laugh about that. It's practically impossible to get German public TV to make a science fiction series....hasn't been done since the 1960s. Space Patrol Orion....one season....seven episodes....1966. That's it. You can go and ask the public TV mafia about this and they just can't imagine making anything like that....ever again.
It's two entirely different cultures at work. Netflix has creativity and dreamers.....German public TV has a 50-year formula and no desire to change. One has virtually everyone under 25, and the other everyone over forty.
Spiegel Article
Spiegel article worth a read.
Heavy on Trump criticism. Odd thing about this German article though.
Trump had a private conversation with EU's chief, Juncker. Angry comments over German export profits. Well, three months ago....France was uttering the exact same thing. A lot of European countries are angry over the German profits and how it screws them. Some pretender comments about Trump being the only one talking over German exports.
Note one other thing....if you tried to go and just link this direct to Facebook....it won't work. It says the URL is not there. Another comical effort to lessen the passage of German articles around in public. So you just type up a five-liner essay, and link it via Blogger.
Heavy on Trump criticism. Odd thing about this German article though.
Trump had a private conversation with EU's chief, Juncker. Angry comments over German export profits. Well, three months ago....France was uttering the exact same thing. A lot of European countries are angry over the German profits and how it screws them. Some pretender comments about Trump being the only one talking over German exports.
Note one other thing....if you tried to go and just link this direct to Facebook....it won't work. It says the URL is not there. Another comical effort to lessen the passage of German articles around in public. So you just type up a five-liner essay, and link it via Blogger.
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Apartment Regulation Efforts
There's a piece in Focus today which talks on the issue of affordable apartments.
So for probably a decade, there's been this issue brewing in metropolitan cities in Germany...affordable apartment dwindling. This goes toward three central issues. First, while rural regions of Germany are decreasing in size....it's the opposite effect in cities like Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, etc. Second, building owners have figured out that if you renovate a building (say for the first time since 1960)....you can probably double the rental income of 700 Euro a month (which tends to make the place unaffordable to half of the normal city residents). Third, whether the politicians like to admit it or not....income levels over the past twenty years have been mostly stagnant....even in urbanized zones.
Up in Koln, folks have noticed this odd trend. There are tons of applications to build apartments in the region. If you look back two years ago as an example in Berlin, they had 22,000 apartments on the city books to be built. A large majority of these would have been in the affordable category.
But here's this funny thing....just because you have a permit to build on such-and-such property....an apartment building, it does NOT mean that you will build in the time cycle that you described, and that you might take the slow path to such a degree....that maybe someone will see a better speculation deal, and offer to buy the lot, and get the permit with the deal....then build non-affordable apartments or condos.
So there is this suggestion....once you earn a permit to build...it needs to state a period (probably two years but that is only suggested).
The chance to speculate or stall? Gone....if this were to be adapted by the city.
There are continual efforts to invent city regulations and rules throughout Germany....to satisfy the need for affordable apartments. It's safe to say that very few of these efforts are working.
Getting cities to do their own investing and building (like they did decades ago in Vienna)? You'd end up borrowing a fair amount of money via a bond program, and the affordability rates would be in relationship to what people can actually pay. You might start to see ghetto-like neighborhoods go up because that was the customers that the housing was designed for. None of the political parties really want that reputation hooked to them.
This rule change to hinder the companies hooked onto speculation? I suspect that they'd go and find great legal ways to challenge the time limits and have the legal system draw this out for three to seven years.
So for probably a decade, there's been this issue brewing in metropolitan cities in Germany...affordable apartment dwindling. This goes toward three central issues. First, while rural regions of Germany are decreasing in size....it's the opposite effect in cities like Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, etc. Second, building owners have figured out that if you renovate a building (say for the first time since 1960)....you can probably double the rental income of 700 Euro a month (which tends to make the place unaffordable to half of the normal city residents). Third, whether the politicians like to admit it or not....income levels over the past twenty years have been mostly stagnant....even in urbanized zones.
Up in Koln, folks have noticed this odd trend. There are tons of applications to build apartments in the region. If you look back two years ago as an example in Berlin, they had 22,000 apartments on the city books to be built. A large majority of these would have been in the affordable category.
But here's this funny thing....just because you have a permit to build on such-and-such property....an apartment building, it does NOT mean that you will build in the time cycle that you described, and that you might take the slow path to such a degree....that maybe someone will see a better speculation deal, and offer to buy the lot, and get the permit with the deal....then build non-affordable apartments or condos.
So there is this suggestion....once you earn a permit to build...it needs to state a period (probably two years but that is only suggested).
The chance to speculate or stall? Gone....if this were to be adapted by the city.
There are continual efforts to invent city regulations and rules throughout Germany....to satisfy the need for affordable apartments. It's safe to say that very few of these efforts are working.
Getting cities to do their own investing and building (like they did decades ago in Vienna)? You'd end up borrowing a fair amount of money via a bond program, and the affordability rates would be in relationship to what people can actually pay. You might start to see ghetto-like neighborhoods go up because that was the customers that the housing was designed for. None of the political parties really want that reputation hooked to them.
This rule change to hinder the companies hooked onto speculation? I suspect that they'd go and find great legal ways to challenge the time limits and have the legal system draw this out for three to seven years.
The Six-Million Story
This week, BILD (the German daily newspaper that is fairly accurate on reporting) came out with a sensitive piece from an insider to the German government....with a BND (German CIA) report. The report essentially says that roughly six-million migrants are massing in North Africa, and will be helped by smugglers in June, July and August....to reach Europe.
Accuracy? Unknown.
How would this work? I've sat and spent around four hours thinking over the process.
First, there's simply no way that the whole six-million group could be in the Libya coastal area at present. There might be in the range of half-a-million there in some stage of waiting for the smuggler operation to start up. The rest? They'd have to be brought in by bus or truck from central Africa, over a period of four to eight weeks.
Second, the number of rafts required? The smugglers tend to use 100-man Chinese-made rafts. You can do the math....but they'd require 60,000 of these rafts on hand. Whoever the manufacturer of the rafts might be....they'd have to have this order on hand at least a year ago, and in some process of March-April having sent the rafts into Libya for sales and positioning.
Third, the charity-rescue crowd don't have the capability of handing 750,000 people per week (my estimate in this possible scheme). To be honest, the handful of ships in the region who are dedicated to this endeavor....at best....might be able to rescue 100,000 per week. So, my guess is that the charity groups have insider information and have a dozen or more additional ships that they are preparing in some French or Italian port, for this massive rescue mission.
Fourth, the typical scenario of the smuggler is that they haul a hundred people out to some point near Lampedusa Island (about 300 km north of Libya). You can figure at least 24 hours to get close to somewhat close to Lampedusa. I suspect that the smugglers would have to run dozens of boats around the clock to dump 750,000 a week in the region.
Fifth, the 'take' for the smugglers? If you figure the going rate of $1,000 per person and 6-million....they stand to make 6-billion dollars. Course, you have to subtract the bribes on the Libyan officials to look the other way, the cost of the vessel operations, and the rubber rafts. My guess is that they'd take home around 85-percent of the 6-billion dollars.
So, then you come to this odd discussion about the EU and their reaction. Frankly, I suspect it'd take at least a month (one-million-plus arrivals) before they'd wake-up and get fairly worried. The fact that the BND report exists, and the EU has been likely warned? Well....I doubt if they really believe it's possible to move six-million people in this manner.
It puts the EU into a difficult position. At best, they might be willing to go and accept maybe a hundred-thousand. Italy? They aren't in any position to bring in six-million migrants for some refugee-camp mega-operation.
The odds that Erdogan of Turkey will watch this develop and release his held-back migrants and refugees? Well....it's best not to bring this topic up with German political folks.
So you turn to Merkel and the Berlin leadership. For a long time, they've just kinda gazed at this whole migrant-immigrant-asylum thing and pretended that you didn't need to manage it. It would just handle itself.
At this point, how do you shuffle six-million around Europe? The answer is that while five or six countries might be willing to take on a hundred-thousand each....the idea of two-million shuffling into Germany by October is a wild scenario that no one can imagine.
You turn and look back at this BILD news report and the suggestion of this BND secret intelligence. True or not? How did they come to arrive at the six-million number? Sixty-thousand rafts ordered and delivered? Trucks and buses being positioned back in March and April for a mass movement into Libya? People within the smuggling operations feeding information to the charity operations and the Italian Mafia? Something of a significant nature came into view of the BND if this story is accurate.
The problem with this whole scenario is that if the six-million did make to European shores....then you'd start to interest another six million or more for the summer of 2018. This starts to bring up political unrest in Europe and people asking stupid questions over asylum and immigration. It's not what you'd want for a stable environment.
Starting up shortly? If you look at weather patterns in the Med and this kind of scenario....you'd think that numbers would start to creep up over the next ten days, and be obvious by the middle of June. Settle back and see if the BILD report is true.
Accuracy? Unknown.
How would this work? I've sat and spent around four hours thinking over the process.
First, there's simply no way that the whole six-million group could be in the Libya coastal area at present. There might be in the range of half-a-million there in some stage of waiting for the smuggler operation to start up. The rest? They'd have to be brought in by bus or truck from central Africa, over a period of four to eight weeks.
Second, the number of rafts required? The smugglers tend to use 100-man Chinese-made rafts. You can do the math....but they'd require 60,000 of these rafts on hand. Whoever the manufacturer of the rafts might be....they'd have to have this order on hand at least a year ago, and in some process of March-April having sent the rafts into Libya for sales and positioning.
Third, the charity-rescue crowd don't have the capability of handing 750,000 people per week (my estimate in this possible scheme). To be honest, the handful of ships in the region who are dedicated to this endeavor....at best....might be able to rescue 100,000 per week. So, my guess is that the charity groups have insider information and have a dozen or more additional ships that they are preparing in some French or Italian port, for this massive rescue mission.
Fourth, the typical scenario of the smuggler is that they haul a hundred people out to some point near Lampedusa Island (about 300 km north of Libya). You can figure at least 24 hours to get close to somewhat close to Lampedusa. I suspect that the smugglers would have to run dozens of boats around the clock to dump 750,000 a week in the region.
Fifth, the 'take' for the smugglers? If you figure the going rate of $1,000 per person and 6-million....they stand to make 6-billion dollars. Course, you have to subtract the bribes on the Libyan officials to look the other way, the cost of the vessel operations, and the rubber rafts. My guess is that they'd take home around 85-percent of the 6-billion dollars.
So, then you come to this odd discussion about the EU and their reaction. Frankly, I suspect it'd take at least a month (one-million-plus arrivals) before they'd wake-up and get fairly worried. The fact that the BND report exists, and the EU has been likely warned? Well....I doubt if they really believe it's possible to move six-million people in this manner.
It puts the EU into a difficult position. At best, they might be willing to go and accept maybe a hundred-thousand. Italy? They aren't in any position to bring in six-million migrants for some refugee-camp mega-operation.
The odds that Erdogan of Turkey will watch this develop and release his held-back migrants and refugees? Well....it's best not to bring this topic up with German political folks.
So you turn to Merkel and the Berlin leadership. For a long time, they've just kinda gazed at this whole migrant-immigrant-asylum thing and pretended that you didn't need to manage it. It would just handle itself.
At this point, how do you shuffle six-million around Europe? The answer is that while five or six countries might be willing to take on a hundred-thousand each....the idea of two-million shuffling into Germany by October is a wild scenario that no one can imagine.
You turn and look back at this BILD news report and the suggestion of this BND secret intelligence. True or not? How did they come to arrive at the six-million number? Sixty-thousand rafts ordered and delivered? Trucks and buses being positioned back in March and April for a mass movement into Libya? People within the smuggling operations feeding information to the charity operations and the Italian Mafia? Something of a significant nature came into view of the BND if this story is accurate.
The problem with this whole scenario is that if the six-million did make to European shores....then you'd start to interest another six million or more for the summer of 2018. This starts to bring up political unrest in Europe and people asking stupid questions over asylum and immigration. It's not what you'd want for a stable environment.
Starting up shortly? If you look at weather patterns in the Med and this kind of scenario....you'd think that numbers would start to creep up over the next ten days, and be obvious by the middle of June. Settle back and see if the BILD report is true.
Germany and Ramadan
Starting tomorrow night (Friday evening, 26th)....Ramadan starts up. Up until three years ago, I wouldn't have really noticed or cared. Here in Germany, I've started to note various things.
For the Muslim guys, it's a pretty difficult period. From sun-up to sun-down each day (starting Saturday morning on the 27th and going to the evening of the 24th of June.....you can't drink liquids, eat or smoke during the daylight hours.
For years, I thought the rule was mostly over coffee, soda, beer, etc. Then three years ago, I came to realize the rule meant even water. So it presents a pretty difficult situation.
Imagine, the sun starts to rise in mid-June around 5:00 AM, and does not set until 9:35 PM in June around the middle of Germany.
To make this a successful Ramadan, if you were a strict Muslim, you'd have to get up by 4 AM.....sip off a ton of water (minimum of 1.5 liters), smoke as much as you possibly can, and eat a minimum of 1,000 calories. Then you'd have to hope that the temperature didn't go past 32-degrees Celsius (89 degrees F)....avoid physical activity as much as possible....and make it to 9:36 PM where you could guzzle down 1.5 liters of water to re-hydrate yourself, smoke five or six cigarettes, and consume at least 1,500 calories. You'd repeat this for roughly four weeks straight...every single day.
Provided that the temperature would stay at 32 C or less, and you did very little in terms of physical effort....you could probably slide through this with limited issues. A 35 C day and two hours out in the sun walking from one point to another? You probably will have issues.
If you described this practice to a health expert, without saying the term Ramadan....he'd tell you that this is severely taxing the kidneys and if you did this for thirty years....you'd likely have serious kidney problems by your fifties. Once you utter Ramadan with the description, he'll likely avoid saying much of anything.
I sat and watched an interview of a guy who spent his first thirty years of life in Iraq and observed the Ramadan situation year after year. In the old country, most all construction projects came to closure as Ramadan started up. Trash and basic services might continue on but it typically started at 5 AM and halted by 10 AM. Most guys that he knew....slept throughout the day....to preserve their hydration situation. Upon arriving in Germany, this guy found that the German lifestyle, expected work hours, and general summer heat....made observing Ramadan a harsh experience.
Typically, there's a lot of peer pressure....even here in Germany....for Muslim guys. They push each other to stay on course, and avoid hydrating. The smokers are the ones with the most problems. A pack-a-day Muslim smoker is usually getting aggravated by noon and is often frustrated.
My general belief is that for the long-term effect, at least fifty percent of these individuals will be facing kidney compromise by age 50, and requiring some type of medical help for the remainder of their life....probably even shortening their life span by a decade. If they had remained in the old country and observed the no-work philosophy for daylight hours, it'd probably less than 20-percent with kidney issues.
In a way, moving into Europe, which has a longer sun-up and sun-down cycle.....is a big deal. In three or four years.....Ramadan will be in January, with only eight hours of sunlight, and the temperature will make hydration better. But by 2025, we will be back to the August heat and another impossible-to-stand Ramadan period.
For the guys up in Sweden? Well, it's really bad news. Sun-rise starts to occur around 2:30 AM and it doesn't really set until around 10:30 PM. Their hydration issues are probably even worse.
The fix? There's a short sentence handed down by the Koran that says....if you were living around non-members, you could eat or live under their conditions. You would think that after a while, this 'waiver' of sorts would be pulled out and prevent all these health issues and potential kidney damage, but the peer pressure thing kicks in and everyone wants to pretend the old country rules can still work in the new country.
It is an interesting health problem.
For the Muslim guys, it's a pretty difficult period. From sun-up to sun-down each day (starting Saturday morning on the 27th and going to the evening of the 24th of June.....you can't drink liquids, eat or smoke during the daylight hours.
For years, I thought the rule was mostly over coffee, soda, beer, etc. Then three years ago, I came to realize the rule meant even water. So it presents a pretty difficult situation.
Imagine, the sun starts to rise in mid-June around 5:00 AM, and does not set until 9:35 PM in June around the middle of Germany.
To make this a successful Ramadan, if you were a strict Muslim, you'd have to get up by 4 AM.....sip off a ton of water (minimum of 1.5 liters), smoke as much as you possibly can, and eat a minimum of 1,000 calories. Then you'd have to hope that the temperature didn't go past 32-degrees Celsius (89 degrees F)....avoid physical activity as much as possible....and make it to 9:36 PM where you could guzzle down 1.5 liters of water to re-hydrate yourself, smoke five or six cigarettes, and consume at least 1,500 calories. You'd repeat this for roughly four weeks straight...every single day.
Provided that the temperature would stay at 32 C or less, and you did very little in terms of physical effort....you could probably slide through this with limited issues. A 35 C day and two hours out in the sun walking from one point to another? You probably will have issues.
If you described this practice to a health expert, without saying the term Ramadan....he'd tell you that this is severely taxing the kidneys and if you did this for thirty years....you'd likely have serious kidney problems by your fifties. Once you utter Ramadan with the description, he'll likely avoid saying much of anything.
I sat and watched an interview of a guy who spent his first thirty years of life in Iraq and observed the Ramadan situation year after year. In the old country, most all construction projects came to closure as Ramadan started up. Trash and basic services might continue on but it typically started at 5 AM and halted by 10 AM. Most guys that he knew....slept throughout the day....to preserve their hydration situation. Upon arriving in Germany, this guy found that the German lifestyle, expected work hours, and general summer heat....made observing Ramadan a harsh experience.
Typically, there's a lot of peer pressure....even here in Germany....for Muslim guys. They push each other to stay on course, and avoid hydrating. The smokers are the ones with the most problems. A pack-a-day Muslim smoker is usually getting aggravated by noon and is often frustrated.
My general belief is that for the long-term effect, at least fifty percent of these individuals will be facing kidney compromise by age 50, and requiring some type of medical help for the remainder of their life....probably even shortening their life span by a decade. If they had remained in the old country and observed the no-work philosophy for daylight hours, it'd probably less than 20-percent with kidney issues.
In a way, moving into Europe, which has a longer sun-up and sun-down cycle.....is a big deal. In three or four years.....Ramadan will be in January, with only eight hours of sunlight, and the temperature will make hydration better. But by 2025, we will be back to the August heat and another impossible-to-stand Ramadan period.
For the guys up in Sweden? Well, it's really bad news. Sun-rise starts to occur around 2:30 AM and it doesn't really set until around 10:30 PM. Their hydration issues are probably even worse.
The fix? There's a short sentence handed down by the Koran that says....if you were living around non-members, you could eat or live under their conditions. You would think that after a while, this 'waiver' of sorts would be pulled out and prevent all these health issues and potential kidney damage, but the peer pressure thing kicks in and everyone wants to pretend the old country rules can still work in the new country.
It is an interesting health problem.
When News Isn't News
I sat last night and watch ZDF (Channel Two from the German public TV offerings) news. At some point, they went and did a 7-minute piece on Trump. About 30 seconds into it....you could hear the 'evil' music in the background. Some enchanting but demonic-like music. They'd move the sound up and down as they shifted through the interviews. Then at some point, they went to demon-music number two.
Why the use of music in the middle of a news piece? Generally, at least to me, that's one of the ten signs of a fake news piece via TV.
Since the end of 2015, with these Trump pieces by German public TV, I can probably count at least 15 episodes where they added the 'evil' or 'demonic' music into the extended news piece.
Most of the time, these are 7-minute or more reports. It's where they've got a couple of days to compile various clips or interviews into one report, and there's some music designer who sits with the film editor to weave the music into the right points and mess with the tone enough to make it all fit.
Thirty years ago....it wouldn't have been done. We have progressed enough with news that it's always got some artistic slant or 'curve' to it. News is no longer designed to just be simple and pure news. They have pushed it into the art-zone and need people to admire the slant to the story.
At some point of innovation, I expect some German guy to devise a box that you attach to your TV and it recognizes images and plays your own soundtrack. For example, an image of a Mercedes comes up....so it shifts to "Mercedes Benz" by Janis Joplin. An image of Margaret Thatcher comes up, so it shifts to "She's a Lady" by Tom Jones.
The thing about this ZDF effort is that up until the early 1990s....it was just a simple nightly broadcast with some 60-year-old guy or gal reading text off his sheet and some marginal graphic display in the background (usually a map or a picture). Today, it's like some minor Hollywood production piece with a soundtrack and fancy graphics. In some way, it's enhancing the news to the point where it's just not news anymore...it's some hyped up objective of some type.
Why the use of music in the middle of a news piece? Generally, at least to me, that's one of the ten signs of a fake news piece via TV.
Since the end of 2015, with these Trump pieces by German public TV, I can probably count at least 15 episodes where they added the 'evil' or 'demonic' music into the extended news piece.
Most of the time, these are 7-minute or more reports. It's where they've got a couple of days to compile various clips or interviews into one report, and there's some music designer who sits with the film editor to weave the music into the right points and mess with the tone enough to make it all fit.
Thirty years ago....it wouldn't have been done. We have progressed enough with news that it's always got some artistic slant or 'curve' to it. News is no longer designed to just be simple and pure news. They have pushed it into the art-zone and need people to admire the slant to the story.
At some point of innovation, I expect some German guy to devise a box that you attach to your TV and it recognizes images and plays your own soundtrack. For example, an image of a Mercedes comes up....so it shifts to "Mercedes Benz" by Janis Joplin. An image of Margaret Thatcher comes up, so it shifts to "She's a Lady" by Tom Jones.
The thing about this ZDF effort is that up until the early 1990s....it was just a simple nightly broadcast with some 60-year-old guy or gal reading text off his sheet and some marginal graphic display in the background (usually a map or a picture). Today, it's like some minor Hollywood production piece with a soundtrack and fancy graphics. In some way, it's enhancing the news to the point where it's just not news anymore...it's some hyped up objective of some type.
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
An Immigrant City
RBB posted an interesting short piece today.
Roughly 28-percent of Berlin is now an immigrant.....meaning from Russia, Poland, Italy, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, etc.
52,000 are from Russia alone.
An affect on Berlin? It would be curious to ask the long-term residents (people living there since the 1960s) if this is changing the character of the city.
Politically, each of these groups are drawn to a particular political affiliation.....not necessarily SPD or CDU. In the last election, a fair number of Russian votes were drawn to the AfD Party.
What happens if the trend continues over the next decade, and forty-percent of the city is immigrant? No one really asks about the trend or the long-term affect.
Roughly 28-percent of Berlin is now an immigrant.....meaning from Russia, Poland, Italy, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, etc.
52,000 are from Russia alone.
An affect on Berlin? It would be curious to ask the long-term residents (people living there since the 1960s) if this is changing the character of the city.
Politically, each of these groups are drawn to a particular political affiliation.....not necessarily SPD or CDU. In the last election, a fair number of Russian votes were drawn to the AfD Party.
What happens if the trend continues over the next decade, and forty-percent of the city is immigrant? No one really asks about the trend or the long-term affect.
The Asylum Story
It's a curious German story over immigration that has a lot of implications.
It's been cited over numerous German newspapers, and lays out some significant problems for future migrants.
So, Mr X was a Syrian. He made his way to Greece. By the Dubin Agreement, if you declare yourself for asylum in any member state or signee of the agreement, then that's your country, and you remain there.
Generally, most of the news sources are careful not to say when he arrived in Greece, but it appears to have been in 2014.
After a while, Mr X came to discover that the Greeks don't offer much of anything to an asylum seeker. The benefits package is marginal at best.
So, Mr X took off and in 2015.....arrived in Germany (where they have outstanding benefit packages for asylum seekers). He did admit to having been in Greece, and having signed some asylum papers there, but he just couldn't survive with what they were giving out.
Time passed, and the BamF folks (the immigration crowd) said 'no'. You can't stay because you've already signed for asylum in Greece.....that's your home country until you become a citizen.
So court case has been brewing and yesterday came to a semi-conclusion. The German court says he must stay....because if Greece doesn't provide enough to survive, then it only makes sense to leave. Then the court did an odd thing.....they handed the case back down to a lesser court and instructed them to find proof that Greek benefits were non-existent for migrants.
How long will this phase last? I'm guessing a minimum of a year. The Greek response will probably be that they want people working immediately upon arrival, and that Greeks don't believe in hand-outs. If the guy wants charity in Greece, he needs to go to some charitable organization.
The Germans? The lesser court will report back with this info, and a remarkable situation will have been created. Hundreds, if not thousands, of immigrants sitting in Greece and having signed the papers for asylum there....will probably pack up and head off to Germany. If you look strictly at 2016 numbers for Greece, there's roughly 40,000 applicants noted (Eurostat numbers).
But this opens up this whole discussion. There are two countries in Europe generally noted for five-star benefit programs for migrants and asylum-seekers (Sweden and Germany). After that, comes the four-star crowd (UK, France, Netherlands, Austria), then the three-and-two-star crowd, and you will eventually reach the one-star crowd (Greece). This has been noted a lot over the past four years.
The EU probably would like to have one single benefits program but the bulk of the EU will absolutely not agree to that type of situation. Even the Germans might be shocked that the EU might settle upon a scheme that is half of what the Germans hand out presently.
It's been cited over numerous German newspapers, and lays out some significant problems for future migrants.
So, Mr X was a Syrian. He made his way to Greece. By the Dubin Agreement, if you declare yourself for asylum in any member state or signee of the agreement, then that's your country, and you remain there.
Generally, most of the news sources are careful not to say when he arrived in Greece, but it appears to have been in 2014.
After a while, Mr X came to discover that the Greeks don't offer much of anything to an asylum seeker. The benefits package is marginal at best.
So, Mr X took off and in 2015.....arrived in Germany (where they have outstanding benefit packages for asylum seekers). He did admit to having been in Greece, and having signed some asylum papers there, but he just couldn't survive with what they were giving out.
Time passed, and the BamF folks (the immigration crowd) said 'no'. You can't stay because you've already signed for asylum in Greece.....that's your home country until you become a citizen.
So court case has been brewing and yesterday came to a semi-conclusion. The German court says he must stay....because if Greece doesn't provide enough to survive, then it only makes sense to leave. Then the court did an odd thing.....they handed the case back down to a lesser court and instructed them to find proof that Greek benefits were non-existent for migrants.
How long will this phase last? I'm guessing a minimum of a year. The Greek response will probably be that they want people working immediately upon arrival, and that Greeks don't believe in hand-outs. If the guy wants charity in Greece, he needs to go to some charitable organization.
The Germans? The lesser court will report back with this info, and a remarkable situation will have been created. Hundreds, if not thousands, of immigrants sitting in Greece and having signed the papers for asylum there....will probably pack up and head off to Germany. If you look strictly at 2016 numbers for Greece, there's roughly 40,000 applicants noted (Eurostat numbers).
But this opens up this whole discussion. There are two countries in Europe generally noted for five-star benefit programs for migrants and asylum-seekers (Sweden and Germany). After that, comes the four-star crowd (UK, France, Netherlands, Austria), then the three-and-two-star crowd, and you will eventually reach the one-star crowd (Greece). This has been noted a lot over the past four years.
The EU probably would like to have one single benefits program but the bulk of the EU will absolutely not agree to that type of situation. Even the Germans might be shocked that the EU might settle upon a scheme that is half of what the Germans hand out presently.
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Speeding Tickets
In the twenty-odd years that I've been around Germany (off and on)....I've gotten a total of two speeding tickets. Oddly, both have occurred in the same village and within the past twelve months. Today, the second ticket came in the mail.
Back in the 1980s....you'd usually have a German cop with a speed-gun and he trip you up on some curve. Whatever he said....was the final word. He'd write out a ticket and you'd usually just pay him on the spot.
At some point in the late 1980s....blitz cameras became very popular. You'd go out as a community, village, or city, and do a contract. The camera would be installed and the shots would be recorded on film and the cops would develop the film and check the database....mailing you the photo and the fine. Around fifteen years ago....the cameras all started to go digital.
In Wiesbaden now, where there were five or six cameras in the 1980s....there must be near 30 cameras now.
In my little village of 4,000 people....zero cameras. It's one of those topics that no one wants to have come up....no one wants cameras.
But over the hill, into the next big suburb of 20,000 people, there's four cameras now set up....on each access road into the city. For a long time, the main entry that I would take to enter that village would be set at 50 kph (31 mph). About 300 feet past the 'welcome' sign to the village, is that blitz camera.
Well, back in early April, this village went and did an unusual thing.....they reset the speed as you enter the village.....from 50 kph to 30 kph (18 mph). I never noticed the speed sign change, and blasted through at a few klicks less than the 50...then I saw the flash of light.
The ticket today? 15 Euro fine.
I'm guessing since April, the village there has picked up at least 6,000 speeding tickets. Some were 15 Euro, and some were 50 Euro.
The thing that bothers me is that I went years without getting a speeding ticket in Germany. The first ticket? About a year ago, entering this same village.....I was doing 54 in a 50-zone....same deal....another 15-Euro fine. It's like a magnet now....I can feel a slight anxiety as I enter this one particular village. I'm watching for every single speed sign in anticipation of another change....going down in speed, and catching me once again.
Back in the 1980s....you'd usually have a German cop with a speed-gun and he trip you up on some curve. Whatever he said....was the final word. He'd write out a ticket and you'd usually just pay him on the spot.
At some point in the late 1980s....blitz cameras became very popular. You'd go out as a community, village, or city, and do a contract. The camera would be installed and the shots would be recorded on film and the cops would develop the film and check the database....mailing you the photo and the fine. Around fifteen years ago....the cameras all started to go digital.
In Wiesbaden now, where there were five or six cameras in the 1980s....there must be near 30 cameras now.
In my little village of 4,000 people....zero cameras. It's one of those topics that no one wants to have come up....no one wants cameras.
But over the hill, into the next big suburb of 20,000 people, there's four cameras now set up....on each access road into the city. For a long time, the main entry that I would take to enter that village would be set at 50 kph (31 mph). About 300 feet past the 'welcome' sign to the village, is that blitz camera.
Well, back in early April, this village went and did an unusual thing.....they reset the speed as you enter the village.....from 50 kph to 30 kph (18 mph). I never noticed the speed sign change, and blasted through at a few klicks less than the 50...then I saw the flash of light.
The ticket today? 15 Euro fine.
I'm guessing since April, the village there has picked up at least 6,000 speeding tickets. Some were 15 Euro, and some were 50 Euro.
The thing that bothers me is that I went years without getting a speeding ticket in Germany. The first ticket? About a year ago, entering this same village.....I was doing 54 in a 50-zone....same deal....another 15-Euro fine. It's like a magnet now....I can feel a slight anxiety as I enter this one particular village. I'm watching for every single speed sign in anticipation of another change....going down in speed, and catching me once again.
The 98-Percent Story
It was an interesting news item from the National Review.
The Harvard University Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy went out and did a research project....the tone of news media with the first hundred days of the Trump administration. I expected someone to do a survey, it's just surprising in the end that it comes out of Harvard.
So their measurement was simple....either the news item was for Trump, or against Trump.
What they came to say in yesterday's announcement is that overall....it was a 80-percent negative slant on Trump news.
CNN and NBC? Near 93-percent negative. Fox News? Near 48-52-percent negative.
ARD, Channel One, public-TV from Germany? 98-percent negative. Yes, just two-percent positive.
Amusingly enough....ARD was five points more negative than CNN or NBC.
Why? That explanation was left out.
I usually watch ARD's 8PM news piece nightly, and two or three nights a week will catch the 9:45PM news review (which goes into more detail and lasts around 30 minutes). So I can speak to this odd negativity piece.
If you sat around from 2008 to 2012, ARD news carried a fair number of pieces on Secretary of State Clinton. If she was making any kind of speech in Europe, the highlights would be featured on their nightly news. At the conclusion of 2012, as she was leaving her job....she'd written another book and was doing a tour through Europe. ARD actually put her on live for around an hour (two other guests with her) and did a pump-up on her book.
In my mind, the journalists of ARD were firmly set to the eventual 2016 election being a guaranteed thing with Hillary Clinton winning. Their sister network...ZDF...did a couple of negative pieces on Trump in the spring of 2016....once even using a cartoon-like voice to translate his comments into German.
They were all set on election night to proclaim Hillary the winner, and prepared to show some 10-to-15 point win.
The tone of ARD's reporting was set on the day after the election....total shock, frustration, and anger. Someone had cheated their candidate out of the election.
Within 10 days, fake news and Russian manipulation were the accused players in Hillary's loss. For weeks, all you heard were negativity on Trump and fake news chatter. It simply snowballed in January after Trump took office.
The fake news thing took off and they devote a fair amount of effort to proclaim fake news or to instruct people on how to recognize fake news.
The odd thing out of this whole episode is that you can go back to the summer of 2014 and view past news episodes from ARD on the immigration business. That was 99-percent positive. At best, maybe once a week, you might have viewed one single news item with some negativity.
At some point, ARD was accused by various anti-immigrant groups of being too-pro immigrant. ARD simply went after the anti-immigrant groups and accused them of being xenophobic. All through 2015, the xenophobic accusations came and went. Then in the middle of the first week of January of 2016....the whole Koln riot episode from New Year's Eve came out and highly embarrassed ARD in their effort to avoid telling the story (over 1,000 police reports, all centered on immigrant bad behavior). For ARD, their position eroded quickly. All the 99-percent positive stories? They rapidly disappeared.
Today, you might see six to ten stories per week on immigrants or migration. They will be told by ARD in a way that simply lays out the story. Occasionally, they will take a pro-position. It's a massive change that occurred almost overnight.
The thing that you have to factor in with this whole ARD thing, is that there are a large number of Germans (particularly in the 15 to 25 year old age group) that don't watch ARD news. Toss in skeptics of the ARD news media who do watch it....and you've got probably half the adult population who aren't exactly pro-ARD.
Where this goes? It's hard to say. Maybe ARD can keep the trend up (98-percent negative) for four years...maybe eight if Trump runs a second time and wins). Trump visiting Germany? I have my doubts that this will ever occur. There will be state visits to countries like Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, and probably the UK....but I just don't see Trump visiting Germany.
The amusing thing out of this....is that as negative as CNN has been on Trump....they were actually beaten in negativity by ARD. That says a good bit.
The Harvard University Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy went out and did a research project....the tone of news media with the first hundred days of the Trump administration. I expected someone to do a survey, it's just surprising in the end that it comes out of Harvard.
So their measurement was simple....either the news item was for Trump, or against Trump.
What they came to say in yesterday's announcement is that overall....it was a 80-percent negative slant on Trump news.
CNN and NBC? Near 93-percent negative. Fox News? Near 48-52-percent negative.
ARD, Channel One, public-TV from Germany? 98-percent negative. Yes, just two-percent positive.
Amusingly enough....ARD was five points more negative than CNN or NBC.
Why? That explanation was left out.
I usually watch ARD's 8PM news piece nightly, and two or three nights a week will catch the 9:45PM news review (which goes into more detail and lasts around 30 minutes). So I can speak to this odd negativity piece.
If you sat around from 2008 to 2012, ARD news carried a fair number of pieces on Secretary of State Clinton. If she was making any kind of speech in Europe, the highlights would be featured on their nightly news. At the conclusion of 2012, as she was leaving her job....she'd written another book and was doing a tour through Europe. ARD actually put her on live for around an hour (two other guests with her) and did a pump-up on her book.
In my mind, the journalists of ARD were firmly set to the eventual 2016 election being a guaranteed thing with Hillary Clinton winning. Their sister network...ZDF...did a couple of negative pieces on Trump in the spring of 2016....once even using a cartoon-like voice to translate his comments into German.
They were all set on election night to proclaim Hillary the winner, and prepared to show some 10-to-15 point win.
The tone of ARD's reporting was set on the day after the election....total shock, frustration, and anger. Someone had cheated their candidate out of the election.
Within 10 days, fake news and Russian manipulation were the accused players in Hillary's loss. For weeks, all you heard were negativity on Trump and fake news chatter. It simply snowballed in January after Trump took office.
The fake news thing took off and they devote a fair amount of effort to proclaim fake news or to instruct people on how to recognize fake news.
The odd thing out of this whole episode is that you can go back to the summer of 2014 and view past news episodes from ARD on the immigration business. That was 99-percent positive. At best, maybe once a week, you might have viewed one single news item with some negativity.
At some point, ARD was accused by various anti-immigrant groups of being too-pro immigrant. ARD simply went after the anti-immigrant groups and accused them of being xenophobic. All through 2015, the xenophobic accusations came and went. Then in the middle of the first week of January of 2016....the whole Koln riot episode from New Year's Eve came out and highly embarrassed ARD in their effort to avoid telling the story (over 1,000 police reports, all centered on immigrant bad behavior). For ARD, their position eroded quickly. All the 99-percent positive stories? They rapidly disappeared.
Today, you might see six to ten stories per week on immigrants or migration. They will be told by ARD in a way that simply lays out the story. Occasionally, they will take a pro-position. It's a massive change that occurred almost overnight.
The thing that you have to factor in with this whole ARD thing, is that there are a large number of Germans (particularly in the 15 to 25 year old age group) that don't watch ARD news. Toss in skeptics of the ARD news media who do watch it....and you've got probably half the adult population who aren't exactly pro-ARD.
Where this goes? It's hard to say. Maybe ARD can keep the trend up (98-percent negative) for four years...maybe eight if Trump runs a second time and wins). Trump visiting Germany? I have my doubts that this will ever occur. There will be state visits to countries like Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, and probably the UK....but I just don't see Trump visiting Germany.
The amusing thing out of this....is that as negative as CNN has been on Trump....they were actually beaten in negativity by ARD. That says a good bit.
Friday, May 19, 2017
The Right-Wing Report: The Rest of the Story
It was an interesting report that ARD (German public Channel One) produced this week. The topic is....why does so much right-wing behavior and xenophobic action occur in eastern sections of Germany?
This centers around a study that was sponsored by the Eastern Commissioners of the German Federal Government. Their conclusion in the final product was that statistics show a increase in violent acts by right-wing militants. The term "menacing social development" was uttered at some point in the report.
To make the investigation and report work....they centered the analysis and target areas to two cities: a suburban area of Dresden (Freital and Heidenau) and a suburb of Erfurt (Herrenberg).
Why only these two sections or areas? Basically, they cherry-picked the result areas so that it would confirm to their expectations. I won't call it a false or fake report, but they avoided vast sections of eastern Germany. For that matter, they avoided using hundreds of sections of Germany (north, south, east and west). In terms of avoiding biased results....they screwed up.
The areas of Freital and Heidennau? If you've ever been to Dresden....it's an odd city. In the 1700s and 1800s....you would have described as very successful farming region that had successful banks, capital growth within the city, a major university, and a thriving cultural scene. If you lived within a hundred miles of Dresden....it was the place where you wanted to socialize, spend money, and send your kids off to the university.
The Dresden of 1900 to 1940....was thriving city with research institutes, commerce development, and cultural exchanges. In the mid-1930s....they were nearing 650,000 residents. Without the war, they would easily reach 1.5 million residents today (my humble opinion).
As much as the cultural class of Dresden (that has developed since 1945) will state their claim to fame and proud leadership of the city itself.....this is a city that developed primarily because of agricultural belt around the 'beltway' of the city. The farming district, successful banks, and the business sector are what paid for the cultural developments that the intellectuals of Dresden chat about today. The intellectuals didn't pay for the statues, architecture, or the opera hall....it was built on the backs of the working class and less-than-intellectual crowd.
Freital is a neighborhood to the SW of town. For a long part of it's history....coal-mining (working-class Germans) were the primary business of the region (just 8 km SW of Dresden).
Heidennau? It's mostly south of Dresden....about 10-to-12 kilometers. For decades, this was a small town of industrialized operations. It's where you could get capital out of Dresden banks, find cheap labor, and performa a start-up operation. Added to the common worker theme....this is a town that was made up of Slavic groups who immigrated into the region back 1,300 years ago.
As for the third area used in this report? Herrenberg (outside of Erfurt)? It's a dead and dying community. Back during the Wall-period (around 1990), the city population stood at 15,000. Today? It's near 7,700 residents. A loss of fifty-percent of the population in a 27-year period? Yeah.
The committee here that wanted to paint the neighborhood of Erfurt as racist and xenophobic didn't really mention that one odd characteristic of the area. Three kilometers SE of Erfurt....you'd best describe the area as the end-of-the-line. I won't call it a ghetto area, but it's a low-income residential area where little of the billions pumped into East Germany since the DDR days have been put to use. The politicians, the intellectuals, and the social reform crowd never came to Herrenberg to stage an intervention or renovate the neighborhood. Now? They'd like to come and chat over right-wing behavior.
There are a number of amusing parts to this right-wing story. If you go into urbanized areas of Berlin, Koln, or Mannheim.....you will find a fair number of immigrants who are part of the communities, and the general location perception (the Germans) are more pro-immigrant than anti-immigrant. Oddly, you can get into a car and drive 50 kilometers away...into a more rural environment....find few if any immigrants....and find the general attitude being either neutral or anti-immigrant (I'm not referring to these east Germany regions but Germany as a whole).
Urbanized problems versus rural mentalities? Yes.
A lot of play occurred over the past day or two since the release of this right-wing report. Various news media types came out to hype up the report and target xenophobia once again. Different political folks (particular from the opposition parties) chatted over the sad nature of these Germans.
I've pointed out on numerous occasions that in the period 1800....if you'd pulled out a map of the Germanic region....you'd find 200 separate states, city-states, empires, kingdoms, etc. It is not one state or one group of people in 1800. It is a mixture of various cultures and societies. Unification, as much as you can call it....didn't really start to occur until 1870s. Today, it is still a collection of cultural groups and states. They may talk a unified structure and one Germanic society, but it's never reached some peak where everyone is of one society.
The other thing missing from this report? Oddly, left-wing fanatics. As far as this effort was concerned.....there are only right-wing extremists in Germany. One can be amused by this suggestion but it just makes the overall report more of a question-mark.
This centers around a study that was sponsored by the Eastern Commissioners of the German Federal Government. Their conclusion in the final product was that statistics show a increase in violent acts by right-wing militants. The term "menacing social development" was uttered at some point in the report.
To make the investigation and report work....they centered the analysis and target areas to two cities: a suburban area of Dresden (Freital and Heidenau) and a suburb of Erfurt (Herrenberg).
Why only these two sections or areas? Basically, they cherry-picked the result areas so that it would confirm to their expectations. I won't call it a false or fake report, but they avoided vast sections of eastern Germany. For that matter, they avoided using hundreds of sections of Germany (north, south, east and west). In terms of avoiding biased results....they screwed up.
The areas of Freital and Heidennau? If you've ever been to Dresden....it's an odd city. In the 1700s and 1800s....you would have described as very successful farming region that had successful banks, capital growth within the city, a major university, and a thriving cultural scene. If you lived within a hundred miles of Dresden....it was the place where you wanted to socialize, spend money, and send your kids off to the university.
The Dresden of 1900 to 1940....was thriving city with research institutes, commerce development, and cultural exchanges. In the mid-1930s....they were nearing 650,000 residents. Without the war, they would easily reach 1.5 million residents today (my humble opinion).
As much as the cultural class of Dresden (that has developed since 1945) will state their claim to fame and proud leadership of the city itself.....this is a city that developed primarily because of agricultural belt around the 'beltway' of the city. The farming district, successful banks, and the business sector are what paid for the cultural developments that the intellectuals of Dresden chat about today. The intellectuals didn't pay for the statues, architecture, or the opera hall....it was built on the backs of the working class and less-than-intellectual crowd.
Freital is a neighborhood to the SW of town. For a long part of it's history....coal-mining (working-class Germans) were the primary business of the region (just 8 km SW of Dresden).
Heidennau? It's mostly south of Dresden....about 10-to-12 kilometers. For decades, this was a small town of industrialized operations. It's where you could get capital out of Dresden banks, find cheap labor, and performa a start-up operation. Added to the common worker theme....this is a town that was made up of Slavic groups who immigrated into the region back 1,300 years ago.
As for the third area used in this report? Herrenberg (outside of Erfurt)? It's a dead and dying community. Back during the Wall-period (around 1990), the city population stood at 15,000. Today? It's near 7,700 residents. A loss of fifty-percent of the population in a 27-year period? Yeah.
The committee here that wanted to paint the neighborhood of Erfurt as racist and xenophobic didn't really mention that one odd characteristic of the area. Three kilometers SE of Erfurt....you'd best describe the area as the end-of-the-line. I won't call it a ghetto area, but it's a low-income residential area where little of the billions pumped into East Germany since the DDR days have been put to use. The politicians, the intellectuals, and the social reform crowd never came to Herrenberg to stage an intervention or renovate the neighborhood. Now? They'd like to come and chat over right-wing behavior.
There are a number of amusing parts to this right-wing story. If you go into urbanized areas of Berlin, Koln, or Mannheim.....you will find a fair number of immigrants who are part of the communities, and the general location perception (the Germans) are more pro-immigrant than anti-immigrant. Oddly, you can get into a car and drive 50 kilometers away...into a more rural environment....find few if any immigrants....and find the general attitude being either neutral or anti-immigrant (I'm not referring to these east Germany regions but Germany as a whole).
Urbanized problems versus rural mentalities? Yes.
A lot of play occurred over the past day or two since the release of this right-wing report. Various news media types came out to hype up the report and target xenophobia once again. Different political folks (particular from the opposition parties) chatted over the sad nature of these Germans.
I've pointed out on numerous occasions that in the period 1800....if you'd pulled out a map of the Germanic region....you'd find 200 separate states, city-states, empires, kingdoms, etc. It is not one state or one group of people in 1800. It is a mixture of various cultures and societies. Unification, as much as you can call it....didn't really start to occur until 1870s. Today, it is still a collection of cultural groups and states. They may talk a unified structure and one Germanic society, but it's never reached some peak where everyone is of one society.
The other thing missing from this report? Oddly, left-wing fanatics. As far as this effort was concerned.....there are only right-wing extremists in Germany. One can be amused by this suggestion but it just makes the overall report more of a question-mark.
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