I noticed from late Monday news that there is a debate going on in Hamburg over the stabber dude. While on one side....he is noted as an Islamist individual and yelled a threat of such as the stabbing took place a couple of days ago.....cops note that he's mentally unstable and won't refer to him as a terrorist.
You have to stand back for a moment and ask yourself a couple of questions. Some folks from the refugee center where this guy had lived for 27 months.....indicate that he was a regular user of marijuana. One individual even suggested that the guy probably smoked it at least ten times a day (a hefty amount, if true).
Depending on the grade of marijuana that he was utilizing and the quantity that he smoked each day....I think it's very possible that a paranoid schizophrenic guy could mask his behavior and just pretend to be some dope-head. The same type of character might embrace some weird philosophy, a religion, or a lifestyle....as a way of focusing on an 'anchor'.
One odd feature if you go and examine most of the attacks of the past three years with individuals who are labeled as Islamic in nature....they typically sold drugs, and consumed drug. Maybe not in all cases, but the consumption of drugs was generally a part of every story.
Do we have a case of too many paranoid schizophrenic folks? It's not a question that political folks would entertain or prefer to answer.
Monday, July 31, 2017
Germany Monday News
Hamburg stabber labeled with mental issues. ARD article. It has come out over the weekend....over this stabber in Hamburg....that months ago, the local cops/authorities felt that the guy should have a mental exam. He was showing signs of problems Back in the fall of 2016, the immigration folks in Hamburg wanted to have a chat with the guy....which had to be carried out (oddly enough) in English and Swedish. He'd spent a fair amount of time in Sweden, and had actually learned that language, before leaving for Hamburg. While one can agree that he might be mentally unstable....no one in Germany is willing to go and sign papers to institutionalize folks. If you did start this trend....how many of the migrants and immigrants of the past four years would need an evaluation and be removed from society for a mental hospital? A dozen? A hundred?
Fear in Hamburg. NDR article. Journalists have gone into the refugee center that this Hamburg stabber was staying in, and some in the facility are noting fear now. One of the folks says that the stabber was routinely ("ten times a day") smoking marijuana. One might ask how he could afford that much marijuana, but I doubt if journalists will ever get that far. It's not just the Germans who have a fear....even these immigrants look around and they aren't that sure over their immigrant neighbors or their emotional state.
Lake Constance disco shooting: SWR article. Cops filling in the rest of the story. The shooter was a Kurd (from Iraq region)....came into Germany fifteen years ago. He was also the brother-in-law of the owner of the disco. He had a dispute of some type with the brother-in-law (no one says over what). The gun used? Journalists say M-16, but I'm guessing an AR-15. They also note that in the exchange of gunfire with the cops....one of the cops was shot in the head, but his newly delivered helmet (special type) saved him. Oh, and cops will say that they've dealt with this guy before but won't say what his previous run-ins were about.
Diesel summit: ARD article. Big meeting discussed with all political parties from Berlin-leadership. Likely to be in next two or three weeks. They have to find some way of halting the city-by-city diesel ban. Won't be a thrill for the car companies involved. I think the political folks would like a car company-solution to come up and the type that can be implemented in six months.
Fear in Hamburg. NDR article. Journalists have gone into the refugee center that this Hamburg stabber was staying in, and some in the facility are noting fear now. One of the folks says that the stabber was routinely ("ten times a day") smoking marijuana. One might ask how he could afford that much marijuana, but I doubt if journalists will ever get that far. It's not just the Germans who have a fear....even these immigrants look around and they aren't that sure over their immigrant neighbors or their emotional state.
Lake Constance disco shooting: SWR article. Cops filling in the rest of the story. The shooter was a Kurd (from Iraq region)....came into Germany fifteen years ago. He was also the brother-in-law of the owner of the disco. He had a dispute of some type with the brother-in-law (no one says over what). The gun used? Journalists say M-16, but I'm guessing an AR-15. They also note that in the exchange of gunfire with the cops....one of the cops was shot in the head, but his newly delivered helmet (special type) saved him. Oh, and cops will say that they've dealt with this guy before but won't say what his previous run-ins were about.
Diesel summit: ARD article. Big meeting discussed with all political parties from Berlin-leadership. Likely to be in next two or three weeks. They have to find some way of halting the city-by-city diesel ban. Won't be a thrill for the car companies involved. I think the political folks would like a car company-solution to come up and the type that can be implemented in six months.
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Lake Constance Area Shooting
If you go and glean through what is said by the cops....it comes down a pretty simple story.
1. Cops are called around 4:30 AM to a disco (yes, they still exist) in the Lake Constance area (far, far south of Germany).
2. Iraqi 34-year old guy came in....automatic weapon....killed the bouncer/security guy at the door, and then peppered the disco. He then leaves. Cops intercept him at some point later (doesn't appear to be anywhere near the club). Shootout, and he's dead via the cops.
3. Cops say they had run-in's with the guy before....but didn't say why.
4. Iraqi had been in Germany since 2002....he's NOT a refugee or migrant.
End of the story via the cops. You can speculate about this. Disco operations in Germany typically have some type of drug environment going on, and ectasty is the primary drug sold. Meth has creeped up in recent years and might also be part of the dealers operation.
One might get the impression of a small-time drug-kingpin.....knocked out of entry into the club or his guys weren't allowed in to sell their stuff. He's a user of the stuff....overreacts.....does some unplanned action, and does some really stupid action.
The guy isn't a migrant or such. So far, no one can identify his occupation, and that would lead one to think he's a kingpin of some type.
End of the story? The cops will look at the weapon used and try to figure out where it came from. The gang? They will be taken aside and looked at closely. Then the cops will wrap up this report.
1. Cops are called around 4:30 AM to a disco (yes, they still exist) in the Lake Constance area (far, far south of Germany).
2. Iraqi 34-year old guy came in....automatic weapon....killed the bouncer/security guy at the door, and then peppered the disco. He then leaves. Cops intercept him at some point later (doesn't appear to be anywhere near the club). Shootout, and he's dead via the cops.
3. Cops say they had run-in's with the guy before....but didn't say why.
4. Iraqi had been in Germany since 2002....he's NOT a refugee or migrant.
End of the story via the cops. You can speculate about this. Disco operations in Germany typically have some type of drug environment going on, and ectasty is the primary drug sold. Meth has creeped up in recent years and might also be part of the dealers operation.
One might get the impression of a small-time drug-kingpin.....knocked out of entry into the club or his guys weren't allowed in to sell their stuff. He's a user of the stuff....overreacts.....does some unplanned action, and does some really stupid action.
The guy isn't a migrant or such. So far, no one can identify his occupation, and that would lead one to think he's a kingpin of some type.
End of the story? The cops will look at the weapon used and try to figure out where it came from. The gang? They will be taken aside and looked at closely. Then the cops will wrap up this report.
Germany Sunday News
German military death: Focus article. Here in mid-July (19 July) a young solder on a Bundeswehr march....collapsed. Ambulance came....went to the hospital....he dies ten days later in the local hospital. Another report comes up....different army group on a march....three of their guys collapsed. Those three appear to be ok after a day or two in the hospital unit. German army investigating. Temperature was moderate (27 degrees C).
Name change priority. WDR article. New government coalition up in NRW state (CDU-FDP). So, they threw this unique idea up on a board to discuss.....improving the rules on name changes, for the benefit of new immigrants. The government has analyzed things and found that some immigrants (no number attached) would like to change their name....upon complete Germanization. They would feel better integrated....with a German-like name. Note, it is already legal to have a name-change in Germany....I suspect this effort is done in a way that an entire family could walk in, and have the paperwork done in just a couple of weeks. I admit....it's hard to imagine some family from Syria walking up, and asking to have their last name changed to Schmidt or to name their 2nd son to Fritz. Another element of this is that it'd be across the board....so even these Chinese people who immigrate into Germany could accomplish the same idea.
NRW leadership focused on diesel solutions. WDR article. The CDU's chief in NRW (Laschet) is calling upon the car companies to get active and progress toward bringing the cars affected (mostly all diesel-five category) to the diesel-six modification. This would at least improve the particle issue. He wants the car companies to pay for this (which they really don't want the cost upon them). Zero leadership talk from Berlin on this topic, yet it's becoming topic number one in Germany.
Extent of political parties: WDR article. For this election in four weeks.....NRW noted in the news that they'd approved 23 political parties for the election. Five of them have potential to get significant votes.....the rest are marginal groups.
Election topic of limited number of immigrants: N-TV article. CSU's Seehofer....from Bavaria....has commented that a maximum limit (yearly) of immigrants needs to be established....something that the CDU and Merkel have avoided. The number that Seehofer generally talks about....200,000 a year. Why bring this up now in the campaign? There might be this odd scenario developing where AfD votes don't count, and you remove that 9-percent, with the 10-percent of votes for marginal parties.....the CDU/CSU partnership might actually come near 50-percent of the voting. In this scenario.....Seehofer could lay down the ace that he'll only partner up if the 200,000 number is the agreed upon level. Odds of this? A month ago....I would have said zero. Since this odd AfD episode has unfolded, I'd give this scenario a 25-percent chance of happening.
Name change priority. WDR article. New government coalition up in NRW state (CDU-FDP). So, they threw this unique idea up on a board to discuss.....improving the rules on name changes, for the benefit of new immigrants. The government has analyzed things and found that some immigrants (no number attached) would like to change their name....upon complete Germanization. They would feel better integrated....with a German-like name. Note, it is already legal to have a name-change in Germany....I suspect this effort is done in a way that an entire family could walk in, and have the paperwork done in just a couple of weeks. I admit....it's hard to imagine some family from Syria walking up, and asking to have their last name changed to Schmidt or to name their 2nd son to Fritz. Another element of this is that it'd be across the board....so even these Chinese people who immigrate into Germany could accomplish the same idea.
NRW leadership focused on diesel solutions. WDR article. The CDU's chief in NRW (Laschet) is calling upon the car companies to get active and progress toward bringing the cars affected (mostly all diesel-five category) to the diesel-six modification. This would at least improve the particle issue. He wants the car companies to pay for this (which they really don't want the cost upon them). Zero leadership talk from Berlin on this topic, yet it's becoming topic number one in Germany.
Extent of political parties: WDR article. For this election in four weeks.....NRW noted in the news that they'd approved 23 political parties for the election. Five of them have potential to get significant votes.....the rest are marginal groups.
Election topic of limited number of immigrants: N-TV article. CSU's Seehofer....from Bavaria....has commented that a maximum limit (yearly) of immigrants needs to be established....something that the CDU and Merkel have avoided. The number that Seehofer generally talks about....200,000 a year. Why bring this up now in the campaign? There might be this odd scenario developing where AfD votes don't count, and you remove that 9-percent, with the 10-percent of votes for marginal parties.....the CDU/CSU partnership might actually come near 50-percent of the voting. In this scenario.....Seehofer could lay down the ace that he'll only partner up if the 200,000 number is the agreed upon level. Odds of this? A month ago....I would have said zero. Since this odd AfD episode has unfolded, I'd give this scenario a 25-percent chance of happening.
Saturday, July 29, 2017
More on the Hamburg Stabber
Focus did a fairly good round-up this afternoon.
This asylum guy had been in Germany for roughly 27 months. Toward November of last year (2016), they failed his visa application (no comment by the government on the reason). One might suspect that the lack of a passport or ID document was probably the driving issue to this.
So the cops filled in the rest of his history. He'd been identified long ago as an Islamist. He had an anti-social behavior. They'd pick him up on at least one occasion (maybe more) on shoplifting.
Some indicators exist that he was a hefty-drinker (alcoholic is uttered by the news folks).
He seems to have dealt in drugs to some degree....probably using them as well.
Cops say.....maybe with conversations with the crowd at the immigration center that he wanted some exit out of Germany but didn't show any plan or indication of where to go next. Typically, if you use the Dublin Agreement....apply for asylum or immigration in any EU country and fail....you can't go to the next EU country and try again. One failure is for all 28 members.
As much as the guy didn't want to live in the Middle East....it's apparent that restarting anywhere else just wasn't going to work. Drugs, alcohol, no exit.....loser status.
Alive now....court action likely in five or six months. A mental exam will occur. I'm guessing they will say he's got various issues. Time in prison? One individual dead....others wounded. I would guess that the best they can do is maybe twenty-five years of prison time.
The thing that will come out of this is some likely truth-commission discussing the idea of rounding up the failed visa-applicants and placing them all in two or three guarded compounds around Germany until they can be disposed of. It's a harsh solution but the public will start asking more questions about safety.
This asylum guy had been in Germany for roughly 27 months. Toward November of last year (2016), they failed his visa application (no comment by the government on the reason). One might suspect that the lack of a passport or ID document was probably the driving issue to this.
So the cops filled in the rest of his history. He'd been identified long ago as an Islamist. He had an anti-social behavior. They'd pick him up on at least one occasion (maybe more) on shoplifting.
Some indicators exist that he was a hefty-drinker (alcoholic is uttered by the news folks).
He seems to have dealt in drugs to some degree....probably using them as well.
Cops say.....maybe with conversations with the crowd at the immigration center that he wanted some exit out of Germany but didn't show any plan or indication of where to go next. Typically, if you use the Dublin Agreement....apply for asylum or immigration in any EU country and fail....you can't go to the next EU country and try again. One failure is for all 28 members.
As much as the guy didn't want to live in the Middle East....it's apparent that restarting anywhere else just wasn't going to work. Drugs, alcohol, no exit.....loser status.
Alive now....court action likely in five or six months. A mental exam will occur. I'm guessing they will say he's got various issues. Time in prison? One individual dead....others wounded. I would guess that the best they can do is maybe twenty-five years of prison time.
The thing that will come out of this is some likely truth-commission discussing the idea of rounding up the failed visa-applicants and placing them all in two or three guarded compounds around Germany until they can be disposed of. It's a harsh solution but the public will start asking more questions about safety.
The Traveling Migrant Story
I sat this morning and poured over Focus and their coverage of the Hamburg guy who stabbed a few folks in a grocery yesterday.
What the cops will say....is that this was a migrant guy, who lived out of their local refugee center. Original country? It's a confusing piece. The mayor has said Palestine. The cops say he grew up in UAE....or his story is that at present. No passport and no ID upon entry into the country....so one might be skeptical of the life-story.
The odd thing is that he's noted in three other EU countries before he finally arrives in the Hamburg area. He was identified in Norway, Sweden and Spain. When you look over this situation....it means he traveled around through Austria, Denmark, France, Netherlands, and Belgium. In Spain, Sweden and Norway.....he was stopped and asked to file out asylum paperwork (as the Dublin Agreement mandates)....each time, he declined.
In some way, he was shopping around, or just traveling the migrant role. I am reminded of the German word.....Tipplebruder....which means a hobo-drifter (the US version).
Presently? He's being asked questions. A sanity test will be applied at some point (my humble guess).
The refugee center? Cops stormed it this morning....in search of something. No one says much. No one else arrested....just a search.
The odd thing about this whole story is that he's been in Germany for roughly 27 months. One might ask.....what exactly has he been doing for the 27 months? It might be an interesting tale....but I doubt you ever get to that story.
What the cops will say....is that this was a migrant guy, who lived out of their local refugee center. Original country? It's a confusing piece. The mayor has said Palestine. The cops say he grew up in UAE....or his story is that at present. No passport and no ID upon entry into the country....so one might be skeptical of the life-story.
The odd thing is that he's noted in three other EU countries before he finally arrives in the Hamburg area. He was identified in Norway, Sweden and Spain. When you look over this situation....it means he traveled around through Austria, Denmark, France, Netherlands, and Belgium. In Spain, Sweden and Norway.....he was stopped and asked to file out asylum paperwork (as the Dublin Agreement mandates)....each time, he declined.
In some way, he was shopping around, or just traveling the migrant role. I am reminded of the German word.....Tipplebruder....which means a hobo-drifter (the US version).
Presently? He's being asked questions. A sanity test will be applied at some point (my humble guess).
The refugee center? Cops stormed it this morning....in search of something. No one says much. No one else arrested....just a search.
The odd thing about this whole story is that he's been in Germany for roughly 27 months. One might ask.....what exactly has he been doing for the 27 months? It might be an interesting tale....but I doubt you ever get to that story.
This Diesel Ban Map
(Provided via the Umwelt Bundesamt).
Purple dots are the worst....red follow. Any blue dots are areas where there's some content but not an issue. Yellow starts to approach an issue.
So you analyze this for a while and start to compare to a real map....real cities.
Along the northern one-third of Germany....it's the Hamburg and Essen region that have issues.
Bavaria? Nuremberg, Augsburg, Munich, Regensburg, and Wurzburg. What you would call the job-centers of Bavaria.
Baden-Wurttemberg? It's one of the two states with significant particles issues. The red and purple cluster? All around Stuttgart mostly.
What you can say is that industrialized areas draw people to jobs, and they have chosen to live a fair distance (more than 20 kilometers usually). You can go up to a pub of a hundred working-class Germans and ask who drives forty or more kilometers to work, and from the group who raises their hands....the majority will tell you that they drive a diesel car. In the case where both the husband and wife have jobs and both drive hefty distances....yes, both will own and operate a diesel car.
So if this Stuttgart diesel ban were to play out and the public were to be affected....you can take a guess what urban zones would be tossed into massive chaos. You can also go and look at city leadership (the party which runs that government) and guess their affiliation.
Friday, July 28, 2017
The End of Diesel in Germany
Based on the court action of this week.....there is a massive confrontation coming. The court has agreed for the moment that the Stuttgart can ban diesel cars within it's city limits. The ban, unless a higher court steps in....would start in January of 2018 (just six months from now).
Why the ban? The VW fraud with the diesel started people to go back and look at actual information (not the fake stuff). Particles added up, and in a high-traffic zone....it's enough to be hazardous for your health.
The solution to this? Political players have spent the last twelve months on this topic and their quiet-solution was a added feature to the muffler system to collect the particles. The science is there....it's just not advanced enough. What is generally said is that the device can be designed and built but the exact amount of filtering is in question....and the cost? 1,500 Euro is usually uttered....which leads to the topic of who would pay? The owner, the government, or the car-manufacture group? Most owners think it ought to be some deal where a tax credit is offered and the car company pays the rest. The car companies have zero interest in this topic.
Who could step up and stall this whole thing? Oddly, this is NOT the state of Baden-Wurttemberg or the German federal government. Either of these could step up as leaders and shape a policy to forbid cities the privilege of banning cars....neither have done so. You can't find anyone within the CDU or SPD who is active on the scene and trying to halt the ban.
Is this a lone-city episode? No. At least five additional cities (Frankfurt and Essen are among them) are working up the same ban, and their regional courts will likely be involved as well. On top of that....at least ten additional cities are in the talking stage of a ban on diesel cars.
If this gets all the way to January, without the Bundestag acting or some solution? Stuttgart is a fairly active city with business operations. You can assume at least a million cars a day will enter into the city or drive from it. Businessmen who come to swing a deal. Workers will drive 100 kilometers from their home to the office in the city. You can figure that roughly 40-percent of those cars will be diesel. If you can't enter the city....then what? No one from the city has shown any planning on public transportation. You'd have to create giant parking lots on the outskirts of the city that could park tens of thousands of cars, and a remarkable U-Bahn/S-Bahn system would have to accept double the number of passengers that it currently handles (which it can't). In other words, the destruction of civilization will have arrived in the midst of winter for Stuttgart.
Why this active position by the city? When you go back a decade ago....Stuttgart-21 was visualized, and the Green Party took the opposition to the railway and subway project. They hyped up the negatives, and took the city by storm. It shocked the public, and suddenly....you found that long-time SPD supporters dissolved and became Green Party members. The Green Party can count on 30-percent of the local vote in city election....the SPD much less so. A lot of the people affected by the potential diesel ban are NOT city residents, so they can't vote or send a message to the city leadership.
Why Merkel won't step in? It's anyone's guess. It's a massive and chaotic mess that is just laying there and bold leadership needs to step forward to use the filtering box concept....but you'd have to approve the box as the solution....then manufacture these....then allow at least six months for everyone to adapt to the box. You can figure that it'd be well toward the end of 2018 before this could all happen. Yet we haven't even crossed the point where people think this will be the best idea.
What happens in January with the ban in effect in Stuttgart? The belief is that the particles will rapidly go down, and in six to eight weeks....be a healthy limit. They have to allow diesel trucks and delivery vehicles to continue.....as well as buses. They also can have no affect on the autobahn system....so diesel vehicles will pass via the autobahns of the region.
Could the diesel owners send a message? If the owners could forge some alliance....a group of half-a-million diesel owners in the local region could say.....we won't buy anything within the city of Stuttgart.....no coffee....no pizza....no furniture....no groceries....no fuel....nothing, then you might see some reaction out of the city leadership. It'd be taken as a joke by the news media and political side. Around thirty to forty-five days into the non-buying trend....the merchants of the city would be begging for some relief.
For VW and the rest of the diesel car manufacturers? It's the end for diesel car engines in the country. You can figure that the general public is angry. Resale value on diesel cars is a joke.
The one solution that some might go to....is converting their diesel car over to LPG-gas. You can figure that it'll cost 2,000 Euro to 4,000 Euro....but it would give some relief.
In the end.....Germany needs true leadership to bring this to a successful close....and they lack that.
Why the ban? The VW fraud with the diesel started people to go back and look at actual information (not the fake stuff). Particles added up, and in a high-traffic zone....it's enough to be hazardous for your health.
The solution to this? Political players have spent the last twelve months on this topic and their quiet-solution was a added feature to the muffler system to collect the particles. The science is there....it's just not advanced enough. What is generally said is that the device can be designed and built but the exact amount of filtering is in question....and the cost? 1,500 Euro is usually uttered....which leads to the topic of who would pay? The owner, the government, or the car-manufacture group? Most owners think it ought to be some deal where a tax credit is offered and the car company pays the rest. The car companies have zero interest in this topic.
Who could step up and stall this whole thing? Oddly, this is NOT the state of Baden-Wurttemberg or the German federal government. Either of these could step up as leaders and shape a policy to forbid cities the privilege of banning cars....neither have done so. You can't find anyone within the CDU or SPD who is active on the scene and trying to halt the ban.
Is this a lone-city episode? No. At least five additional cities (Frankfurt and Essen are among them) are working up the same ban, and their regional courts will likely be involved as well. On top of that....at least ten additional cities are in the talking stage of a ban on diesel cars.
If this gets all the way to January, without the Bundestag acting or some solution? Stuttgart is a fairly active city with business operations. You can assume at least a million cars a day will enter into the city or drive from it. Businessmen who come to swing a deal. Workers will drive 100 kilometers from their home to the office in the city. You can figure that roughly 40-percent of those cars will be diesel. If you can't enter the city....then what? No one from the city has shown any planning on public transportation. You'd have to create giant parking lots on the outskirts of the city that could park tens of thousands of cars, and a remarkable U-Bahn/S-Bahn system would have to accept double the number of passengers that it currently handles (which it can't). In other words, the destruction of civilization will have arrived in the midst of winter for Stuttgart.
Why this active position by the city? When you go back a decade ago....Stuttgart-21 was visualized, and the Green Party took the opposition to the railway and subway project. They hyped up the negatives, and took the city by storm. It shocked the public, and suddenly....you found that long-time SPD supporters dissolved and became Green Party members. The Green Party can count on 30-percent of the local vote in city election....the SPD much less so. A lot of the people affected by the potential diesel ban are NOT city residents, so they can't vote or send a message to the city leadership.
Why Merkel won't step in? It's anyone's guess. It's a massive and chaotic mess that is just laying there and bold leadership needs to step forward to use the filtering box concept....but you'd have to approve the box as the solution....then manufacture these....then allow at least six months for everyone to adapt to the box. You can figure that it'd be well toward the end of 2018 before this could all happen. Yet we haven't even crossed the point where people think this will be the best idea.
What happens in January with the ban in effect in Stuttgart? The belief is that the particles will rapidly go down, and in six to eight weeks....be a healthy limit. They have to allow diesel trucks and delivery vehicles to continue.....as well as buses. They also can have no affect on the autobahn system....so diesel vehicles will pass via the autobahns of the region.
Could the diesel owners send a message? If the owners could forge some alliance....a group of half-a-million diesel owners in the local region could say.....we won't buy anything within the city of Stuttgart.....no coffee....no pizza....no furniture....no groceries....no fuel....nothing, then you might see some reaction out of the city leadership. It'd be taken as a joke by the news media and political side. Around thirty to forty-five days into the non-buying trend....the merchants of the city would be begging for some relief.
For VW and the rest of the diesel car manufacturers? It's the end for diesel car engines in the country. You can figure that the general public is angry. Resale value on diesel cars is a joke.
The one solution that some might go to....is converting their diesel car over to LPG-gas. You can figure that it'll cost 2,000 Euro to 4,000 Euro....but it would give some relief.
In the end.....Germany needs true leadership to bring this to a successful close....and they lack that.
Finally a Decent Idea
For almost four years, I've been waiting for one single intelligent idea on immigration, asylum, and migration to come up. The Germans, for the most part.....the crowd who developed BMW cars, lectured that young Einstein kid to a degree, and sent the Von Braun guy to NASA....have been mostly dismal at new ideas or leading some effort to fix the migration problem.
So, today.....here in the European news....is President Macron from France who threw a concept into the mix.
The France have this nifty idea. They want to set up these centers (rented buildings) in Libya, and you just walk in and register yourself. You present a passport....fill out a form, and get into a system. This would lead to an entry into Europe.
At that point, no one speculated anything else.
Macron didn't say that this got you a free pass into Europe....a visa to Germany....or anything.
I sat thinking over the idea. Let's say that you started with a dozen Eur-Vis shops....staffed by individuals with various languages.
You offer up coffee to anyone coming in, and they fill out the form. If you made the 'cut' and were selected....you'd offer them a ferry ticket from Libya to France or Italy, and a visa-entry form for only one single country. Right off the bat, you (if selected) could skip the $1000 or $2000 fee that smugglers charge. Smugglers would suddenly find a door closed on operations.
But this would go one step further....this visa-entry form? It'd say that you were going to Poland....whether you liked it or not, and that you'd likely have to stay a minimum of three years and gain citizenship through X-number of courses. Failure? You get sent back to your original country (which you happened to show the passport for at the Libya center when the paperwork started).
This also does another curious thing. They let you know after examining your background that they found out about your criminal record and have no desire for you. Even if you sneak into Europe....they'd check the record and find your former application.
Those who fail? You'd go over the whole thing and be blunt. You don't have a driver's license....nothing more than a basic education....no French or German language....no degree? They'd tell you that you really need to sharpen up your resume. Go back home....take some German classes, and get a certificate for some skill. Improve your odds on the next application.
After six months...move the Eur-Vis shops into every country of Africa and the Mid-East. Repeat the same process.
As for the EU folks? Well....they'd have to start a quota system (as much as everyone hates that topic)....but you'd make this simple....only 100,000 people per year coming into Europe. You can figure that France and Germany would take roughly 400,000 of these folks.
The best and brightest? Well....that's the other part of this story. If you stressing that it's a free deal....no smuggling fee....no life risk in the Med....then you'd force a bunch of people to put time into education and certification....to get some free exit out of Africa. In fact, the EU could sponsor some university operations (nursing comes to mind) and jump-start the whole concept.
So, today.....here in the European news....is President Macron from France who threw a concept into the mix.
The France have this nifty idea. They want to set up these centers (rented buildings) in Libya, and you just walk in and register yourself. You present a passport....fill out a form, and get into a system. This would lead to an entry into Europe.
At that point, no one speculated anything else.
Macron didn't say that this got you a free pass into Europe....a visa to Germany....or anything.
I sat thinking over the idea. Let's say that you started with a dozen Eur-Vis shops....staffed by individuals with various languages.
You offer up coffee to anyone coming in, and they fill out the form. If you made the 'cut' and were selected....you'd offer them a ferry ticket from Libya to France or Italy, and a visa-entry form for only one single country. Right off the bat, you (if selected) could skip the $1000 or $2000 fee that smugglers charge. Smugglers would suddenly find a door closed on operations.
But this would go one step further....this visa-entry form? It'd say that you were going to Poland....whether you liked it or not, and that you'd likely have to stay a minimum of three years and gain citizenship through X-number of courses. Failure? You get sent back to your original country (which you happened to show the passport for at the Libya center when the paperwork started).
This also does another curious thing. They let you know after examining your background that they found out about your criminal record and have no desire for you. Even if you sneak into Europe....they'd check the record and find your former application.
Those who fail? You'd go over the whole thing and be blunt. You don't have a driver's license....nothing more than a basic education....no French or German language....no degree? They'd tell you that you really need to sharpen up your resume. Go back home....take some German classes, and get a certificate for some skill. Improve your odds on the next application.
After six months...move the Eur-Vis shops into every country of Africa and the Mid-East. Repeat the same process.
As for the EU folks? Well....they'd have to start a quota system (as much as everyone hates that topic)....but you'd make this simple....only 100,000 people per year coming into Europe. You can figure that France and Germany would take roughly 400,000 of these folks.
The best and brightest? Well....that's the other part of this story. If you stressing that it's a free deal....no smuggling fee....no life risk in the Med....then you'd force a bunch of people to put time into education and certification....to get some free exit out of Africa. In fact, the EU could sponsor some university operations (nursing comes to mind) and jump-start the whole concept.
Diesel-Car 'Hell' Approaching
This morning, if you follow German news, there's another step taken with the idea of banning diesel cars from some cities.
As SWR (regional public TV) tells the story....the court down in the Stuttgart region has said that it will review the case of diesel vehicles, and if a city by itself (not the state or the federal German gov't) can ban diesel cars.
If you talk to diesel owners.....they are livid over the possibility of this occurring. Car companies? Probably shaking in fear because it'll mean worthless cars and millions of law suits.
The push right now? The government and the car companies would like to find devices that could fit on any type of diesel car and satisfy the public on reducing the particles coming out. A one-type of solution? Don't bet on it. Cost? Some people throw numbers around.....like 1,000 Euro to 1,500 Euro. Who pays? Well.....the owner.
The real question on this court action is who can issue the ban? A city by itself? A state? Or the Berlin federal government? There are at least six major cities in Germany discussing the ban (Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Essen, Koln, Aachen, Bonn). If any of them reach a successful conclusion....the race would be on for dozens of other cities to jump into the ban.
If you go and review car sales in Germany over the past decade.....diesel car sales typically make up around fifty-percent of the vehicle sales. Last year, 2016, Germany had around 45-percent of it's new car sales related to diesel....down a notch mostly due to the VW public view.
How much destruction would this trigger on most of the German car companies? That's really the bigger of the topics. Most would prefer to just shell out some part of the 1,500 Euro and have some government tax credit to cover the remaining situation. If you don't reach this type of compromise, then you are faced with angry owners who can't drive into the city of their employment with the vehicle....meaning court action will occur.
A guy standing back and looking at the landscape....would say diesel car sales are probably dead from this point on. If you were a dealer.....you would not want any on your lot or be stuck with dozens of vehicles with no value. If you were an owner.....you'd like to sell the diesel car you have but the resale value probably isn't anywhere near what it should be. Fuel companies? There's some dramatic shift coming and massive change to the diesel sales probably anticipated.
As SWR (regional public TV) tells the story....the court down in the Stuttgart region has said that it will review the case of diesel vehicles, and if a city by itself (not the state or the federal German gov't) can ban diesel cars.
If you talk to diesel owners.....they are livid over the possibility of this occurring. Car companies? Probably shaking in fear because it'll mean worthless cars and millions of law suits.
The push right now? The government and the car companies would like to find devices that could fit on any type of diesel car and satisfy the public on reducing the particles coming out. A one-type of solution? Don't bet on it. Cost? Some people throw numbers around.....like 1,000 Euro to 1,500 Euro. Who pays? Well.....the owner.
The real question on this court action is who can issue the ban? A city by itself? A state? Or the Berlin federal government? There are at least six major cities in Germany discussing the ban (Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Essen, Koln, Aachen, Bonn). If any of them reach a successful conclusion....the race would be on for dozens of other cities to jump into the ban.
If you go and review car sales in Germany over the past decade.....diesel car sales typically make up around fifty-percent of the vehicle sales. Last year, 2016, Germany had around 45-percent of it's new car sales related to diesel....down a notch mostly due to the VW public view.
How much destruction would this trigger on most of the German car companies? That's really the bigger of the topics. Most would prefer to just shell out some part of the 1,500 Euro and have some government tax credit to cover the remaining situation. If you don't reach this type of compromise, then you are faced with angry owners who can't drive into the city of their employment with the vehicle....meaning court action will occur.
A guy standing back and looking at the landscape....would say diesel car sales are probably dead from this point on. If you were a dealer.....you would not want any on your lot or be stuck with dozens of vehicles with no value. If you were an owner.....you'd like to sell the diesel car you have but the resale value probably isn't anywhere near what it should be. Fuel companies? There's some dramatic shift coming and massive change to the diesel sales probably anticipated.
The Method of German Voting
If you go and ask most Germans (probably over 90-percent) about the voting process and Article 39 of the Basic Law (their Constitution).....most will give you a funny look and then go and have to look it up.
Article 39 is the basic rule on how voting will occur.
German law says that there is NOT a particular day that elections must occur (shocking for most Americans to grasp).
The 39th Article dictates that a national Bundestag election will occur between 46 and 48 months after the last election.
If there is a failure of the government (meaning that the coalition has failed), then the date shifts around. You could easily have one election on 1 March of one year, and twelve months later....face a failure of government, and have another election 1 June of the second year. Rarely do coalitions fail (as you might see in Italy frequently).
Several little unwritten rules fall into this play as well (not in Article 39)....for example....you rarely will ever have an election during school holiday periods or near Christmas.
You might want to also note that it's the Federal President (not the Chancellor) who orders the election date. The Chancellor might make the suggestion, but the President could go against that suggestion.
Always on a Sunday? Yes. This guarantees the bulk of society a chance to vote. Polling stations will open at 8AM and close by 6PM.
Locations of the polling stations? Generally, it's concreted down and you can ask people in your village or city about the location....it's the same place where it's been for forty-odd years.
Everyone who is registered....will get a letter about four to six weeks prior, and it'll make them aware of the date and the location. It'll also tell them to bring their national ID card. Giving some fake talk that you forgot your national ID? Well....it's kinda written down that when you leave the presence of your house and go anywhere.....you need that ID (on a bus, in a car, or hiking some trail). If the cops stop you....they will ask for it, and you have to present it. So, fake-chat on no ID....doesn't work.
If you did go and observe the 'flow' of traffic into a station....it's safe to say that most Germans will vote prior to noon. No one collects data much on this but I would take an educated guess that fifty to seventy percent of voters make the morning trip....instead of the afternoon trip.
Article 39 is the basic rule on how voting will occur.
German law says that there is NOT a particular day that elections must occur (shocking for most Americans to grasp).
The 39th Article dictates that a national Bundestag election will occur between 46 and 48 months after the last election.
If there is a failure of the government (meaning that the coalition has failed), then the date shifts around. You could easily have one election on 1 March of one year, and twelve months later....face a failure of government, and have another election 1 June of the second year. Rarely do coalitions fail (as you might see in Italy frequently).
Several little unwritten rules fall into this play as well (not in Article 39)....for example....you rarely will ever have an election during school holiday periods or near Christmas.
You might want to also note that it's the Federal President (not the Chancellor) who orders the election date. The Chancellor might make the suggestion, but the President could go against that suggestion.
Always on a Sunday? Yes. This guarantees the bulk of society a chance to vote. Polling stations will open at 8AM and close by 6PM.
Locations of the polling stations? Generally, it's concreted down and you can ask people in your village or city about the location....it's the same place where it's been for forty-odd years.
Everyone who is registered....will get a letter about four to six weeks prior, and it'll make them aware of the date and the location. It'll also tell them to bring their national ID card. Giving some fake talk that you forgot your national ID? Well....it's kinda written down that when you leave the presence of your house and go anywhere.....you need that ID (on a bus, in a car, or hiking some trail). If the cops stop you....they will ask for it, and you have to present it. So, fake-chat on no ID....doesn't work.
If you did go and observe the 'flow' of traffic into a station....it's safe to say that most Germans will vote prior to noon. No one collects data much on this but I would take an educated guess that fifty to seventy percent of voters make the morning trip....instead of the afternoon trip.
The Non-Scientific Scientific Report
Back in May, I commented upon this new study that the German government had commissioned and delivered to the public. The topic of this report was right-wing extremism in eastern Germany.
The theme of the report was centered around scientific efforts to quantify answers given to the data crew, and produce a quantitative study. Every single 'brick' of science and independent survey was put into place.
At the time, some folks sat....read the report....then put criticism onto the report because it looked more like a 'witch-hunt' than a scientific document.
Time has passed, and it's a bit shocking this week....that the eastern commissioners of the German federal government are backing away from the survey report. They aren't saying fraud....but they do use the word 'sloppy'.
All of this leads back to the Institute for Democratic Research over at the University of Gottingen. This project was funded for 129,000 Euro by the German federal government. One might get the opinion that the team started out with an agenda, and then filled in the data-sets with anything that helped to prove their agenda.
To get folks over the criticism....oddly enough....the team has built a second (newer) version of the report, and reworked the phrases. I suspect the criticism from May has affected their view of the topic.
What was amusing was that the 'blame' for this right-wing extremism was placed on social behavior folks in a couple of communities that fell into the survey area. Then the scientific team cited a lack of political education (meaning lack of intellectualism) and a deprivation awareness that existed within these 'special' people.
In some ways....they poured fraudulent, fabricated, and cherry-picked data into a report....to get the report that they desired. After publishing, the natural agenda would have been some mass media effort to educate the poor 'slobs' in eastern Germany, some special school topics for kids, and some political figures talking over the terrible right-wing folks in eastern Germany. Somehow, there were enough people to read the report and pronounce it as 'fake', and the rest is history now.
The only real loss? 129,000 Euro of German tax revenue thrown down some hole for a fake science report.
The theme of the report was centered around scientific efforts to quantify answers given to the data crew, and produce a quantitative study. Every single 'brick' of science and independent survey was put into place.
At the time, some folks sat....read the report....then put criticism onto the report because it looked more like a 'witch-hunt' than a scientific document.
Time has passed, and it's a bit shocking this week....that the eastern commissioners of the German federal government are backing away from the survey report. They aren't saying fraud....but they do use the word 'sloppy'.
All of this leads back to the Institute for Democratic Research over at the University of Gottingen. This project was funded for 129,000 Euro by the German federal government. One might get the opinion that the team started out with an agenda, and then filled in the data-sets with anything that helped to prove their agenda.
To get folks over the criticism....oddly enough....the team has built a second (newer) version of the report, and reworked the phrases. I suspect the criticism from May has affected their view of the topic.
What was amusing was that the 'blame' for this right-wing extremism was placed on social behavior folks in a couple of communities that fell into the survey area. Then the scientific team cited a lack of political education (meaning lack of intellectualism) and a deprivation awareness that existed within these 'special' people.
In some ways....they poured fraudulent, fabricated, and cherry-picked data into a report....to get the report that they desired. After publishing, the natural agenda would have been some mass media effort to educate the poor 'slobs' in eastern Germany, some special school topics for kids, and some political figures talking over the terrible right-wing folks in eastern Germany. Somehow, there were enough people to read the report and pronounce it as 'fake', and the rest is history now.
The only real loss? 129,000 Euro of German tax revenue thrown down some hole for a fake science report.
Documentary Show
I sat last night and watched late-night on ZDF (Channel Two from German public TV). The documentary piece? "Europe and the Refugees". It was an independent 'film' which looked at the 2015 and how the refugee crisis fully developed. I would have to admit, it's the most even-handed explanation detailed out on German public TV since the crisis period started in 2013.
The journalist in charge of the effort....Katja Nellissen....did a four-star effort in telling the story, with full-up interviews with print-media journalists, a number of political figures, and some university professors. She compacted it down into a forty-five minute piece.....which might be the only weakness to the film (she might have had two hours of real material). The thing is....it was on at roughly 10:15PM at night. You can take a wild guess but I doubt if there were more than 300,000 Germans who might have watched the show....out of eighty-two million.
What you get, which I've pointed dozens of times....is a chaotic group of characters from Berlin (the Chancellor and the group around her)....who were making up rules and exceptions as each day passed. There was no long-term strategy....no exit point....no corrective measures. It was a bad poker game where you just kept doubling down and thinking a better hand would come up sooner.....or later.
Chancellor Merkel in this film? My judgement would be that she comes across in a negative way, and for some....if they watched it.....they would not be happy with her performance. Showing the film four weeks prior to the election? This is the odd part of this story. Maybe if the SPD's candidate were neck and neck with Merkel....this would have helped him to some degree.
It's probably the first time in three years that I've seen a segment on German public TV that really drilled down into the topic and laid out all the pieces to the crisis. There are lessons learned, and maybe that's what you can take out of this documentary.
The journalist in charge of the effort....Katja Nellissen....did a four-star effort in telling the story, with full-up interviews with print-media journalists, a number of political figures, and some university professors. She compacted it down into a forty-five minute piece.....which might be the only weakness to the film (she might have had two hours of real material). The thing is....it was on at roughly 10:15PM at night. You can take a wild guess but I doubt if there were more than 300,000 Germans who might have watched the show....out of eighty-two million.
What you get, which I've pointed dozens of times....is a chaotic group of characters from Berlin (the Chancellor and the group around her)....who were making up rules and exceptions as each day passed. There was no long-term strategy....no exit point....no corrective measures. It was a bad poker game where you just kept doubling down and thinking a better hand would come up sooner.....or later.
Chancellor Merkel in this film? My judgement would be that she comes across in a negative way, and for some....if they watched it.....they would not be happy with her performance. Showing the film four weeks prior to the election? This is the odd part of this story. Maybe if the SPD's candidate were neck and neck with Merkel....this would have helped him to some degree.
It's probably the first time in three years that I've seen a segment on German public TV that really drilled down into the topic and laid out all the pieces to the crisis. There are lessons learned, and maybe that's what you can take out of this documentary.
Thursday, July 27, 2017
2017 German Election: Typical Turnout
The number of voters (from the registered grouping) is always an interesting topic.
The history:(note, I'm using West German numbers, and Germany-united)
1953: first election after WW II, 83-percent turn-out
1957: 87-percent turn-out
1961: 87-percent turn-out
1965: 86-percent turn-out
1969: 86-percent turn-out
1972: 92-percent turn-out
1976: 90-percent turn-out
1980: 88-percent turn-out
1983: 89-percent turn-out
1987: 84-percent turn-out
1990: 78-percent turn-out
1994: 79-percent turn-out
1998: 82-percent turn-out
2002: 79-percent turn-out
2005: 77-percent turn-out
2009: 71-percent turn-out
2013; 71.5-percent turn-out
2017: ?
(source: Wiki)
I sat and watched some political chat forum on German public TV back in mid-June, and one of the older guys on the forum commented that he'd never seen such a low-intensity campaign.....such as it is right now in Germany. There's virtually no hyped up topics....no public enthusiasm....nothing which would typically get people to show up and vote.
There are roughly 62-million Germans registered to vote.....meaning that twenty million residents in Germany....either are foreign citizens with no vote, or just Germans who have zero interest in politics (yes, there are some).
If you go back to the numbers of the 1950s and 1960s....it's an amazing number....over 90-percent of folks showing up and voting.
Since the Wall came down? That's the interesting thing....you can say that roughly 10-to-15 percent of the usual crowd of voters....aren't showing up for the past six elections.
As for the election in roughly four weeks? I'd take an educated guess that it will be the lowest vote situation since WW II...somewhere between 66-and-70 percent.
The history:(note, I'm using West German numbers, and Germany-united)
1953: first election after WW II, 83-percent turn-out
1957: 87-percent turn-out
1961: 87-percent turn-out
1965: 86-percent turn-out
1969: 86-percent turn-out
1972: 92-percent turn-out
1976: 90-percent turn-out
1980: 88-percent turn-out
1983: 89-percent turn-out
1987: 84-percent turn-out
1990: 78-percent turn-out
1994: 79-percent turn-out
1998: 82-percent turn-out
2002: 79-percent turn-out
2005: 77-percent turn-out
2009: 71-percent turn-out
2013; 71.5-percent turn-out
2017: ?
(source: Wiki)
I sat and watched some political chat forum on German public TV back in mid-June, and one of the older guys on the forum commented that he'd never seen such a low-intensity campaign.....such as it is right now in Germany. There's virtually no hyped up topics....no public enthusiasm....nothing which would typically get people to show up and vote.
There are roughly 62-million Germans registered to vote.....meaning that twenty million residents in Germany....either are foreign citizens with no vote, or just Germans who have zero interest in politics (yes, there are some).
If you go back to the numbers of the 1950s and 1960s....it's an amazing number....over 90-percent of folks showing up and voting.
Since the Wall came down? That's the interesting thing....you can say that roughly 10-to-15 percent of the usual crowd of voters....aren't showing up for the past six elections.
As for the election in roughly four weeks? I'd take an educated guess that it will be the lowest vote situation since WW II...somewhere between 66-and-70 percent.
The EU versus Poland
This is a fairly interesting topic.
In 2015, an election was held in Poland and a fair shift occurred....the Law and Order Party (nifty name) took around 38-percent of the national vote. Because of the five-percent or more vote required to enter the Parliament....with a dozen-odd parties taking less than five-percent....in the end, the Law and Order Party had 51-percent control of the Parliament. No coalition necessary. You could say that this 25 October 2015 election....had consequences.
So you move forward, and in just a few weeks....the new leadership wrote up a law to replace five of the judges on the Constitutional Court. They hyped up a bunch of folks because now...there was this opportunity to rewrite some of the rules and laws. The counter to the angry folks? Some of the judges were hold-overs from the Communist era....which may or may not be true, depending on who you hear the story.
As things progressed and more changes occurred in 2016....the EU started to get involve and issue warnings.
The last episode came in the past week, with the EU now saying that they can deny vote-status to Poland because of Article 7 of the EU treaty. Well, here's the funny thing about Article 7....you have to have every single nation in the EU vote and agree to deny Poland vote status. Hungary has now said it won't vote in agreement. Using the strong arm of the European Court system? With what? Poland can simply say that the EU has no place in ordering Poland to comply.
While several national leaders around the EU are hyping up the Poland problems and going negative against them.....all of this is drawing some critical review by the general public. It's hard to say if the public is really buying into the anti-Poland slant. And the real question....with the EU election set for 2019....could this bring frustration to the public and trigger a anti-EU vote sentiment (bringing in alt-right or right-wing players to the EU)?
In 2015, an election was held in Poland and a fair shift occurred....the Law and Order Party (nifty name) took around 38-percent of the national vote. Because of the five-percent or more vote required to enter the Parliament....with a dozen-odd parties taking less than five-percent....in the end, the Law and Order Party had 51-percent control of the Parliament. No coalition necessary. You could say that this 25 October 2015 election....had consequences.
So you move forward, and in just a few weeks....the new leadership wrote up a law to replace five of the judges on the Constitutional Court. They hyped up a bunch of folks because now...there was this opportunity to rewrite some of the rules and laws. The counter to the angry folks? Some of the judges were hold-overs from the Communist era....which may or may not be true, depending on who you hear the story.
As things progressed and more changes occurred in 2016....the EU started to get involve and issue warnings.
The last episode came in the past week, with the EU now saying that they can deny vote-status to Poland because of Article 7 of the EU treaty. Well, here's the funny thing about Article 7....you have to have every single nation in the EU vote and agree to deny Poland vote status. Hungary has now said it won't vote in agreement. Using the strong arm of the European Court system? With what? Poland can simply say that the EU has no place in ordering Poland to comply.
While several national leaders around the EU are hyping up the Poland problems and going negative against them.....all of this is drawing some critical review by the general public. It's hard to say if the public is really buying into the anti-Poland slant. And the real question....with the EU election set for 2019....could this bring frustration to the public and trigger a anti-EU vote sentiment (bringing in alt-right or right-wing players to the EU)?
The Current Unemployment Rate Around Europe
Italy: 11.3-percent
France: 9.3-percent
Germany: 3.9-percent
Sweden: 7.2-percent
Spain: 17.2-percent
Denmark: 4.3-percent
Poland: 7.2-percent
Austria: 7.6-percent
Netherlands: 4.9-percent
Belgium: 6.8-percent
Greece: 21.7-percent
If you go and look at the rates....several countries are in a 'hiring' mode and several are in a public discontent mode. Germany, Netherlands, and Denmark might actively seek more migrants. Spain, Italy and Greece? There's zero chance that they really want more migrants unless it's for black-work.
Source for rates: TradingEconomics.com
France: 9.3-percent
Germany: 3.9-percent
Sweden: 7.2-percent
Spain: 17.2-percent
Denmark: 4.3-percent
Poland: 7.2-percent
Austria: 7.6-percent
Netherlands: 4.9-percent
Belgium: 6.8-percent
Greece: 21.7-percent
If you go and look at the rates....several countries are in a 'hiring' mode and several are in a public discontent mode. Germany, Netherlands, and Denmark might actively seek more migrants. Spain, Italy and Greece? There's zero chance that they really want more migrants unless it's for black-work.
Source for rates: TradingEconomics.com
The Real Chess-Game Begins
If you follow the news, in the past day....there's a right-wing or alt-right, or just a group with an agenda....that rented a boat in the Med. Focus wrote the basic article to cover this.
So, the game-plan is to take this small ship (probably 120 ft in length)....registered and flagged under Mongolia (yeah, the land without a coast)....and go 'rescue' migrants adrift in the Med. Unlike the other five or six ships in the Med on missions like this....they will not take the migrants to an Italian port. They will instead take them back to Libya where they started.
The group running this operation? "Identity Movement".
What is said is that they expect trouble ('armed tugs' was the phrase used). So, they've got some kind of private security (one might assumed weapons) onboard.
One of the Italian mayors from the island typically used to receive migrants rescued.....has employed methods to ensure the ship can't enter their port, and I suspect all of Italy's seaports will be blocking this one ship from entry.
One can sense two scenarios coming out of this mess:
1. On the first 'rescue' and attempt to land the loaded craft in Libya....the Libya navy blocks them. My guess is that they have rafts on board and will force the migrants to board small rafts and just leave them in the middle of nowhere.
2. Some of the pro-migrant rescue vessels might try to block or ram the vessel.....thus getting fairly negative coverage of their aggressive behavior.
Who is paying for this? That's the funny thing.....no one knows much. Most say that some US blogger is paying out $140k from crowd-sourcing. If you had free labor....that would probably cover six months of fuel and food for the craft and its team. The thing is that they could patrol for weeks and never see a single raft. This particular area of the Med is fairly large if you gaze at a map.
Identity Movement? If you go read material from the left-wing....they refer to the movement as a cult. It started originally in France....about fifteen years ago. The idea was to become some reverse jihad group (as crazy as it sounds). It started to drift in and appear in Germany in the last five years, and has some minor support. One might imagine that if you were a neo-Nazi or alt-right....this movement might fit into your agenda.
As for the ship in this whole game of affecting migrant movement? It's been suggested by the Italian cops that some smugglers have a direct connection to the Italian mafia and the pro-rescue charity-ship operations. On more then one occasion, it's been suggested that coordinates are given to the rescue ships to come and pick up a floating raft at such-and-such point.
The one odd factor in this whole episode.....if there is a ramming attempt....then the Med will become a heated affair and some naval ships (probably Spain, Italy, France, and Germany) will have to patrol on a active basis, and enforce some stability.
So, the game-plan is to take this small ship (probably 120 ft in length)....registered and flagged under Mongolia (yeah, the land without a coast)....and go 'rescue' migrants adrift in the Med. Unlike the other five or six ships in the Med on missions like this....they will not take the migrants to an Italian port. They will instead take them back to Libya where they started.
The group running this operation? "Identity Movement".
What is said is that they expect trouble ('armed tugs' was the phrase used). So, they've got some kind of private security (one might assumed weapons) onboard.
One of the Italian mayors from the island typically used to receive migrants rescued.....has employed methods to ensure the ship can't enter their port, and I suspect all of Italy's seaports will be blocking this one ship from entry.
One can sense two scenarios coming out of this mess:
1. On the first 'rescue' and attempt to land the loaded craft in Libya....the Libya navy blocks them. My guess is that they have rafts on board and will force the migrants to board small rafts and just leave them in the middle of nowhere.
2. Some of the pro-migrant rescue vessels might try to block or ram the vessel.....thus getting fairly negative coverage of their aggressive behavior.
Who is paying for this? That's the funny thing.....no one knows much. Most say that some US blogger is paying out $140k from crowd-sourcing. If you had free labor....that would probably cover six months of fuel and food for the craft and its team. The thing is that they could patrol for weeks and never see a single raft. This particular area of the Med is fairly large if you gaze at a map.
Identity Movement? If you go read material from the left-wing....they refer to the movement as a cult. It started originally in France....about fifteen years ago. The idea was to become some reverse jihad group (as crazy as it sounds). It started to drift in and appear in Germany in the last five years, and has some minor support. One might imagine that if you were a neo-Nazi or alt-right....this movement might fit into your agenda.
As for the ship in this whole game of affecting migrant movement? It's been suggested by the Italian cops that some smugglers have a direct connection to the Italian mafia and the pro-rescue charity-ship operations. On more then one occasion, it's been suggested that coordinates are given to the rescue ships to come and pick up a floating raft at such-and-such point.
The one odd factor in this whole episode.....if there is a ramming attempt....then the Med will become a heated affair and some naval ships (probably Spain, Italy, France, and Germany) will have to patrol on a active basis, and enforce some stability.
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
The Rule of Law
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) came out late yesterday and shocked a lot of people. They basically confirmed that the Dublin Convention (the agreement among EU members that where ever a migrant/immigrant/asylum seeker lands in (within Europe)....that is the country that they must settle upon, and not 'shop' to find the best deal and crossing borders to reach that state.
The migrants sitting in Italy that were rescued? The 200,000. They now belong to Italy unless the EU can cook up another deal, with the 28 member of the EU agreeing.
For the Chancellor Merkel crowd, who are pro-migrant and wanted an open-door policy? Well....they've been pushed back. The rule of law will apply.
What happens now? My guess is Chancellor Merkel (after the election) will put on the EU hat, and try to get France's Macron to push through some EU rule on quotas and distribution of migrants. They will find push-back from at least three or four members, and major questions over the future from another dozen countries.
The real issue for them now is that as you view Africa and the migrant development....potentially, there could be 100-million people seeking to transit to the EU. If they were successful in getting a rule-change...that only helps for 2017. By the summer of 2018, you'd likely see half-a-million migrants in Libya attempting the boat-rescue deal in the Med, and you'd have to distribute them. And by the summer of 2019....perhaps a million or more migrants playing out the boat-rescue deal. For the smuggling crowd, there's hundreds of millions to be made....off the amusing EU process.
In some ways, the court decision really turned up the pressure on the migrant topic. A decision, whether good or bad, will have to be developed over the next couple of months, and it likely will be chaotic.
The migrants sitting in Italy that were rescued? The 200,000. They now belong to Italy unless the EU can cook up another deal, with the 28 member of the EU agreeing.
For the Chancellor Merkel crowd, who are pro-migrant and wanted an open-door policy? Well....they've been pushed back. The rule of law will apply.
What happens now? My guess is Chancellor Merkel (after the election) will put on the EU hat, and try to get France's Macron to push through some EU rule on quotas and distribution of migrants. They will find push-back from at least three or four members, and major questions over the future from another dozen countries.
The real issue for them now is that as you view Africa and the migrant development....potentially, there could be 100-million people seeking to transit to the EU. If they were successful in getting a rule-change...that only helps for 2017. By the summer of 2018, you'd likely see half-a-million migrants in Libya attempting the boat-rescue deal in the Med, and you'd have to distribute them. And by the summer of 2019....perhaps a million or more migrants playing out the boat-rescue deal. For the smuggling crowd, there's hundreds of millions to be made....off the amusing EU process.
In some ways, the court decision really turned up the pressure on the migrant topic. A decision, whether good or bad, will have to be developed over the next couple of months, and it likely will be chaotic.
Fixing the Dublin Agreement
ARD (German public TV, Channel One) had a good piece on the Dublin Agreement, which is fairly talked about structure for immigration.
Back in the 1980s....Europe talked about immigration and eventually came to write an agreement or convention....entitled the Dublin Agreement. It basically said that when some immigrant just suddenly arrives on the shores or within some country....he is to sign in and go through their immigration process there. He is NOT supposed to just grin....wave....and walk onto the country of his choice in Europe.
If you sit and think about it....this put most countries on the Med side in some problem area. They needed to hinder or prevent folks from landing. Back in the 1990s....immigration wasn't a big deal. In the past five years....it's become a big deal. The two countries with issues now are Greece and Italy.
Two years ago....Chancellor Merkel admitted that the agreement is a total failure.
The key phrase in the solution crowd today is 'fair redistribution'. What they hint is that the two problem countries....Italy and Greece....need a way to ship these migrants or asylum seekers out, and the EU has to become that vehicle. So, the 27 members (excluding the UK)......need to cooperate and just take people.
Naturally, some folks ask.....when would the door close, or be set to a limit? Well....the EU just grins when you ask that because they can't admit there is a limit, or that the door might close on people sneaking in.
Some nations look at this and would just prefer you apply at their embassy in the refugee's home country and show education or job potential. They really don't care to get 10,000 burger-flippers or marginally educated individuals. They also might ask why all 10,000 have to be young males (the typical thought process that people have when they see the rescue vessels and 90-percent of the crowd are male).
In a way, the replacement issue of the Dublin Agreement is now becoming the most important issue of the past twenty years (after creating the Euro) for the EU. What the EU wants to do (primarily with France and Germany leading the discussion) is just force everyone to cooperate, and take some sum of people. Countries like Hungary don't see 'force' as having much of an application. The trouble is you might get away with this for a brief year, and then wake up in 2020 to realize that the next crowd have arrived in Italy, and you have to accept another 12,000 migrants, and repeat this in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
The other issue here, which few within the EU might discuss....is that migrants might sit down and get smart on benefit packages, and living conditions....then realize that half of the EU are not the places they want to arrive into. At that point, the cards in the EU deck for playing this whole game are very limited. Borders cease to exist.
If you were looking for the number one issue for 2018.....fixing the Dublin Agreement comes right after BREXIT.
Back in the 1980s....Europe talked about immigration and eventually came to write an agreement or convention....entitled the Dublin Agreement. It basically said that when some immigrant just suddenly arrives on the shores or within some country....he is to sign in and go through their immigration process there. He is NOT supposed to just grin....wave....and walk onto the country of his choice in Europe.
If you sit and think about it....this put most countries on the Med side in some problem area. They needed to hinder or prevent folks from landing. Back in the 1990s....immigration wasn't a big deal. In the past five years....it's become a big deal. The two countries with issues now are Greece and Italy.
Two years ago....Chancellor Merkel admitted that the agreement is a total failure.
The key phrase in the solution crowd today is 'fair redistribution'. What they hint is that the two problem countries....Italy and Greece....need a way to ship these migrants or asylum seekers out, and the EU has to become that vehicle. So, the 27 members (excluding the UK)......need to cooperate and just take people.
Naturally, some folks ask.....when would the door close, or be set to a limit? Well....the EU just grins when you ask that because they can't admit there is a limit, or that the door might close on people sneaking in.
Some nations look at this and would just prefer you apply at their embassy in the refugee's home country and show education or job potential. They really don't care to get 10,000 burger-flippers or marginally educated individuals. They also might ask why all 10,000 have to be young males (the typical thought process that people have when they see the rescue vessels and 90-percent of the crowd are male).
In a way, the replacement issue of the Dublin Agreement is now becoming the most important issue of the past twenty years (after creating the Euro) for the EU. What the EU wants to do (primarily with France and Germany leading the discussion) is just force everyone to cooperate, and take some sum of people. Countries like Hungary don't see 'force' as having much of an application. The trouble is you might get away with this for a brief year, and then wake up in 2020 to realize that the next crowd have arrived in Italy, and you have to accept another 12,000 migrants, and repeat this in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
The other issue here, which few within the EU might discuss....is that migrants might sit down and get smart on benefit packages, and living conditions....then realize that half of the EU are not the places they want to arrive into. At that point, the cards in the EU deck for playing this whole game are very limited. Borders cease to exist.
If you were looking for the number one issue for 2018.....fixing the Dublin Agreement comes right after BREXIT.
German News, Wednesday
German church tax woes: ARD article. It's pointed out on statistical info....that the number of members in either the Catholic or Protestant Churches of Germany is decreasing. Presently, 55-percent of Germans identify with one of the two groups (in terms of taxation), where it used to be 62-percent (2005-level). It's been written as a taxation rule for decades and helps to fund the churches to exist (money comes directly out of you paycheck). Decrease? Mostly due to older member dying off and continued trend of people quitting the church.
Plastic bags out: N-TV article. Aldi came out and announced that in the coming year....they are dumping not only the plastic bags....but the paper bags as well...for the grocery chain. The only bags you can then buy at the check-out point, will be reusable bags. The public? It's hard to say if this will be a positive thing. The grocery thinks that people will just accept this. My gut feeling is that people will go and order a entire box of 200 grocery plastic bags, and keep the box in the trunk of the car. At least for the public TV situations.....the chain can go and claim they are working in favor of the environment.
Britain to end diesel/gas in 2040: N-TV report. The UK is looking at the idea of banning all gas/diesel cars on the roads as of 2040. Not just to halt new car sales (gas and diesel), but to go the extra step of banning all except battery cars. What is curious here is that both Mercedes and VW (of Germany) intend to produce a quarter of their cars in battery-only by 2025 (eight years in the future). Right now, there just isn't any real interest in the pure battery-car sales (hybrids are a different discussion in this matter). One has to wonder why much electrical grid cost will go up over the next decade or two, and if you aren't paying double for your battery-car versus the gas-car by 2030.
Plastic bags out: N-TV article. Aldi came out and announced that in the coming year....they are dumping not only the plastic bags....but the paper bags as well...for the grocery chain. The only bags you can then buy at the check-out point, will be reusable bags. The public? It's hard to say if this will be a positive thing. The grocery thinks that people will just accept this. My gut feeling is that people will go and order a entire box of 200 grocery plastic bags, and keep the box in the trunk of the car. At least for the public TV situations.....the chain can go and claim they are working in favor of the environment.
Britain to end diesel/gas in 2040: N-TV report. The UK is looking at the idea of banning all gas/diesel cars on the roads as of 2040. Not just to halt new car sales (gas and diesel), but to go the extra step of banning all except battery cars. What is curious here is that both Mercedes and VW (of Germany) intend to produce a quarter of their cars in battery-only by 2025 (eight years in the future). Right now, there just isn't any real interest in the pure battery-car sales (hybrids are a different discussion in this matter). One has to wonder why much electrical grid cost will go up over the next decade or two, and if you aren't paying double for your battery-car versus the gas-car by 2030.
Massive Defeat for SPD Approaching
If you follow the polls for the German national election (roughly six weeks away)....it is appearing pretty dire for the SPD Party. Some suggest that it might be the worst defeat for the party since WW II.
ARD covered the topic and put up a couple of poll graphics at their site.
What went wrong?
1. The economy is at one of the high points of the past twenty years. Unemployment is extremely low (3.9-percent as of early May). Go and look for working-class Germans who are disgruntled about the economy and blaming Merkel/CDU....you might find a dozen out of a thousand voters.
2. SPD's Schulz was hyped up for three years by the German public TV media. At least once a week, he was brought in from Brussels to be added to some forum or give some insight to the EU topic. As much as they gave him a platform for easy introduction into the campaign....it didn't really sell that well. One might get the impression of a EU-bureaucrat rather than some German national leader after all that hype.
3. Merkel's CDU platform is a fairly twisted situation....where you'd almost say they were a combination of right-of-center and left-of-center...having taken a dozen-odd topics from a decade ago that belonged to the SPD or Green Party, and blended them into the CDU.
4. The talk of a major coalition of the SPD Party, the Green Party, and the Linke Party.....really didn't appeal to a fair number of SPD members. This idea was hyped up in the summer of 2016....that when the SPD won....they absolutely would NOT partner with the CDU. In order to sell the new platform.....everyone in the SPD stood up and said this was the way ahead (at least nationally). One might go out and to ask about this with working-class Germans....finding a Linke Party connection hard to agree with.
5. 2017's election will likely be called the dullest campaign in German history. There is no hype. There's virtually no real indicator that an election is going on other than campaign speeches.
What happens after the defeat for the SPD? Schulz will be around for a year or two in some leadership role, and I suspect he'll retire. Somewhere out there....the party needs to find some youthful character for the 2021 election....which will not feature Chancellor Merkel. This continual talk of a coalition which includes the Linke Party....probably needs some work accomplished before it's pumped up again for a national campaign.
ARD covered the topic and put up a couple of poll graphics at their site.
What went wrong?
1. The economy is at one of the high points of the past twenty years. Unemployment is extremely low (3.9-percent as of early May). Go and look for working-class Germans who are disgruntled about the economy and blaming Merkel/CDU....you might find a dozen out of a thousand voters.
2. SPD's Schulz was hyped up for three years by the German public TV media. At least once a week, he was brought in from Brussels to be added to some forum or give some insight to the EU topic. As much as they gave him a platform for easy introduction into the campaign....it didn't really sell that well. One might get the impression of a EU-bureaucrat rather than some German national leader after all that hype.
3. Merkel's CDU platform is a fairly twisted situation....where you'd almost say they were a combination of right-of-center and left-of-center...having taken a dozen-odd topics from a decade ago that belonged to the SPD or Green Party, and blended them into the CDU.
4. The talk of a major coalition of the SPD Party, the Green Party, and the Linke Party.....really didn't appeal to a fair number of SPD members. This idea was hyped up in the summer of 2016....that when the SPD won....they absolutely would NOT partner with the CDU. In order to sell the new platform.....everyone in the SPD stood up and said this was the way ahead (at least nationally). One might go out and to ask about this with working-class Germans....finding a Linke Party connection hard to agree with.
5. 2017's election will likely be called the dullest campaign in German history. There is no hype. There's virtually no real indicator that an election is going on other than campaign speeches.
What happens after the defeat for the SPD? Schulz will be around for a year or two in some leadership role, and I suspect he'll retire. Somewhere out there....the party needs to find some youthful character for the 2021 election....which will not feature Chancellor Merkel. This continual talk of a coalition which includes the Linke Party....probably needs some work accomplished before it's pumped up again for a national campaign.
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Hamburg Analysis of G-20 Riot Players
NDR (the regional public TV network) went out and did a interview with various thug-groups and individuals who were part of the Hamburg G-20 Summit riot 'squad'.
Interesting piece....I strongly recommend watching it (all in German though).
Twenty-nine minute segment, which features fair amount of video from Hamburg riots, and lays out some multi-dimensional planning segment. This was way past the capability of the local cops, and you would have needed the national intelligence apparatus viewing this a year out and really concentrating on picking people up and putting real focus on preventing violence.
Worth watching.
Interesting piece....I strongly recommend watching it (all in German though).
Twenty-nine minute segment, which features fair amount of video from Hamburg riots, and lays out some multi-dimensional planning segment. This was way past the capability of the local cops, and you would have needed the national intelligence apparatus viewing this a year out and really concentrating on picking people up and putting real focus on preventing violence.
Worth watching.
The Populism Topic
I sat this morning and gazed at a German public TV article (ARD-production)....over populism. German intellectuals, politicians, and the privileged....often worry about populism.
In general, populism is this 'trend' where the common people have found some fault or frustration, and turn to face more privileged crowd. Questions get asked....stories get told....some fraud accusations get tossed back and forth from the two groups....then someone says they got a solution (sometimes both the privileged crowd and the common people find this magical solution), and then you go to some vote sequence, which has consequences that no one truly understood when they started this process.
If you were to gaze over this topic, and the counter-discussion against populism....you reach a stage where you think it's a performance or act, and that populism group 'A' is simply playing against populism group 'B'.
With the German view....it's generally good versus evil....that the common man is lacking intelligence or the understanding to stand against populism.
A great demonstration is the episode that occurred over the weekend in Germany where the Chancellor candidate for the SPD (Schulz)....got all hyped up over the upcoming (his belief) crisis in Italy over migrants and immigrants. He made a dramatic speech and begged for voters to see his view, and move toward a solution. Naturally, without saying a lot.....his solution is to force all EU member states to take a portion of the 200,000 migrants sitting in Italy. No one in the commentary did he discuss the fact that as you remove the 200,000 migrants in Italy....a steady flow will occur, and that group will be replaced within six to twelve months by another 200,000 or more.
If you go and look over a typical year of political talk in Germany....virtually every single party is hyping a concern or emergency, and each goes through a standard chat of exaggeration, with the help of the news media. Journalists and intellectuals then lead a chat-forum situation....to win over the views of the general public.
To say that populists are a one-sided group? No....it's a 360-degree circle. You get some drama every single day by some political agenda. It's up to you to interpret the focus topic....determine the extent of the emergency....and then react or refuse to react.
In general, populism is this 'trend' where the common people have found some fault or frustration, and turn to face more privileged crowd. Questions get asked....stories get told....some fraud accusations get tossed back and forth from the two groups....then someone says they got a solution (sometimes both the privileged crowd and the common people find this magical solution), and then you go to some vote sequence, which has consequences that no one truly understood when they started this process.
If you were to gaze over this topic, and the counter-discussion against populism....you reach a stage where you think it's a performance or act, and that populism group 'A' is simply playing against populism group 'B'.
With the German view....it's generally good versus evil....that the common man is lacking intelligence or the understanding to stand against populism.
A great demonstration is the episode that occurred over the weekend in Germany where the Chancellor candidate for the SPD (Schulz)....got all hyped up over the upcoming (his belief) crisis in Italy over migrants and immigrants. He made a dramatic speech and begged for voters to see his view, and move toward a solution. Naturally, without saying a lot.....his solution is to force all EU member states to take a portion of the 200,000 migrants sitting in Italy. No one in the commentary did he discuss the fact that as you remove the 200,000 migrants in Italy....a steady flow will occur, and that group will be replaced within six to twelve months by another 200,000 or more.
If you go and look over a typical year of political talk in Germany....virtually every single party is hyping a concern or emergency, and each goes through a standard chat of exaggeration, with the help of the news media. Journalists and intellectuals then lead a chat-forum situation....to win over the views of the general public.
To say that populists are a one-sided group? No....it's a 360-degree circle. You get some drama every single day by some political agenda. It's up to you to interpret the focus topic....determine the extent of the emergency....and then react or refuse to react.
Monday, July 24, 2017
Tuesday German News
Election campaign invoking new refugee crisis: ARD article. It's hard to imagine a candidate trying to hype up another refugee crisis but SPD chief Schulz has gone onto talking points....warning of a new crisis. In a ARD interview he noted that the Mediterranean situation is now "dramatic". The general public? If anything....they are going to ask what the limit will be and how the EU stops this crisis....like the refugee episode involving Turkey. One might suggest that Schulz is way out of step with the general public on this topic.
Chainsaw attack. ARD article. Basically....one single guy in the Swiss village of Schaffhausen....took a chainsaw into the village and injured five folks (two of them pretty badly). It was a health-insurance agency....but no one says if he had complaints or the trigger to the event. Cops looking for the guy....he just walked away. Cop comment: It's not a terror act. Terror now equates to strictly Islamic issues....not nut-cases.
VW recall has an end-date: Focus article. If you own a diesel VW under the recall situation for the manipulated engine....you have until early August. At that point, VW turns the listing over, and the cops can come and claim your tags....making the car non-op. Pretty serious jeopardy. No one cites numbers, but you have to wonder about how many people are refusing the software update.
Schulz and the million-refugees comment: ARD article. There was a reference in some speech where SPD's Schulz talked over the 2015 million refugees who came into Germany. The reference got picked up and analyzed. In the beginning of 2016....people used the one-million number as a fact. By the middle of 2016....the government had analyzed the data and corrected itself....saying that 890,000 had officially (registered) into Germany for 2015. People have stood by the 890,000 number since then. The prior number (1,091,000)? It is curious that no one ever went back to explain the 200,000 that were wiped off the facts. Just passing through.....duplicates in the records....or a glitch in the system? Unknown. In Schulz's defense....he was making a broad comment and warning of the growing issue of migrants in Italy and that a solution needed to be found.
Ryanair looking to buy into Air Italia: BBC article. There are at present, 18 offers on the table for Alitalia. What RyanAir says is that they would be interested and have the money to buy the airline, but they want restructuring (meaning that personnel cuts would be a part of the deal). I might guess that all 18 offers on the table state virtually the same thing.....personnel cuts have to come. Alitalia is in serious jeopardy.....perhaps now for an entire decade. What RyanAir will do with the airline? I think they are in some belief that no treaty will occur for BREXIT and there will be serious trouble in getting rights to land in the EU. If they owned Alitalia...they'd have a card to lay on the table. Long-term use of Alitalia? A lot of business analysts have said that if you really took the personnel rooster and made some serious cuts....it could be a profitable airline.
Bertelsmann Study on populist issue: ARD article. Foundation study complete....saying that one-third of all Germans fall into the populist category. Naturally, they want to cite that lack of education and knowledge is part of the problem. The end recommendation is that 'big' parties should avoid populist themes or topics, and thus protect the democracy. The weak part of this story is that you end up with very difficult coalitions where the 'big' parties really aren't that strong in number, and the general public is frustrated with a marginalized coalition.
Chainsaw attack. ARD article. Basically....one single guy in the Swiss village of Schaffhausen....took a chainsaw into the village and injured five folks (two of them pretty badly). It was a health-insurance agency....but no one says if he had complaints or the trigger to the event. Cops looking for the guy....he just walked away. Cop comment: It's not a terror act. Terror now equates to strictly Islamic issues....not nut-cases.
VW recall has an end-date: Focus article. If you own a diesel VW under the recall situation for the manipulated engine....you have until early August. At that point, VW turns the listing over, and the cops can come and claim your tags....making the car non-op. Pretty serious jeopardy. No one cites numbers, but you have to wonder about how many people are refusing the software update.
Schulz and the million-refugees comment: ARD article. There was a reference in some speech where SPD's Schulz talked over the 2015 million refugees who came into Germany. The reference got picked up and analyzed. In the beginning of 2016....people used the one-million number as a fact. By the middle of 2016....the government had analyzed the data and corrected itself....saying that 890,000 had officially (registered) into Germany for 2015. People have stood by the 890,000 number since then. The prior number (1,091,000)? It is curious that no one ever went back to explain the 200,000 that were wiped off the facts. Just passing through.....duplicates in the records....or a glitch in the system? Unknown. In Schulz's defense....he was making a broad comment and warning of the growing issue of migrants in Italy and that a solution needed to be found.
Ryanair looking to buy into Air Italia: BBC article. There are at present, 18 offers on the table for Alitalia. What RyanAir says is that they would be interested and have the money to buy the airline, but they want restructuring (meaning that personnel cuts would be a part of the deal). I might guess that all 18 offers on the table state virtually the same thing.....personnel cuts have to come. Alitalia is in serious jeopardy.....perhaps now for an entire decade. What RyanAir will do with the airline? I think they are in some belief that no treaty will occur for BREXIT and there will be serious trouble in getting rights to land in the EU. If they owned Alitalia...they'd have a card to lay on the table. Long-term use of Alitalia? A lot of business analysts have said that if you really took the personnel rooster and made some serious cuts....it could be a profitable airline.
Bertelsmann Study on populist issue: ARD article. Foundation study complete....saying that one-third of all Germans fall into the populist category. Naturally, they want to cite that lack of education and knowledge is part of the problem. The end recommendation is that 'big' parties should avoid populist themes or topics, and thus protect the democracy. The weak part of this story is that you end up with very difficult coalitions where the 'big' parties really aren't that strong in number, and the general public is frustrated with a marginalized coalition.
Sunday, July 23, 2017
Germany and the Reproduction Rate
It's a story that doesn't get much hype or explanation.....so I'll try to do this in simple way.
If you ask the German government about the rate....they will tell that it's risen in the past two years (mostly due to incoming immigrants). Before 2013, it was near 1.43 births that came from German women over their lifetime from age 15 to age 45. In the past two years....it rose to 1.5 births. Not exactly a significant number, but it's better than 1.43.
Why the low rate? There are basically four elements to the story.
1. About a hundred years ago....several German 'charity' groups got around to publishing birth-control information. If you asked for it.....you got it. Naturally, this upset political folks and a fair number of men. Knowledge is power.....if applied. Fortunley, the war (WW I) came along, and two million German men didn't come back from the war. While recovery took a few years....German Industry and manpower needs eventually came to be an open-door for German women.
The same episode repeated in the late 1930s, and by 1945....3.6 million German men did not come back. Women at that point were firmly planted in occupations and having a career path that hadn't existed before. Having some desire to just stay home and have four or five kids? There was no desire. As you proceed through the 1960s, with the pill now available and more birth-control options in the 1970s and 1980s....the information factor simply doubled up.
2. Cost of living. Ever looked around at the typical cost of living or the cost of affordable housing in Germany? Go and try to price a three or four bedroom apartment in Koln or Frankfurt. Most average families can't afford it.
3. Average income issue. If you take an average German couple and look at the general income (both working) and deduct the taxation....you start laughing. One member of the couple needs to have a fairly technical background with decent pay....if there was some objective of having three kids.
4. It is commonly accepted that couples might not have any kids at all. You might find some guy who meets up with a German gal, and twenty years later.....still living together....no marriage....no kids...and happy with the situation.
As much as politicians and bureaucrats have tried to invent ways to entice more production....it simply hasn't achieved much of anything. Adding to the whole 'game'....is the fact that studies have shown that even immigrant families arrive and help to some degree to pump up the numbers.....that generation 2.0 and 3.0 (a decade, two decades, and three decades down the line).....all become Germanized and they settle back into the same German dilemma....lower production rates.
If you ask the German government about the rate....they will tell that it's risen in the past two years (mostly due to incoming immigrants). Before 2013, it was near 1.43 births that came from German women over their lifetime from age 15 to age 45. In the past two years....it rose to 1.5 births. Not exactly a significant number, but it's better than 1.43.
Why the low rate? There are basically four elements to the story.
1. About a hundred years ago....several German 'charity' groups got around to publishing birth-control information. If you asked for it.....you got it. Naturally, this upset political folks and a fair number of men. Knowledge is power.....if applied. Fortunley, the war (WW I) came along, and two million German men didn't come back from the war. While recovery took a few years....German Industry and manpower needs eventually came to be an open-door for German women.
The same episode repeated in the late 1930s, and by 1945....3.6 million German men did not come back. Women at that point were firmly planted in occupations and having a career path that hadn't existed before. Having some desire to just stay home and have four or five kids? There was no desire. As you proceed through the 1960s, with the pill now available and more birth-control options in the 1970s and 1980s....the information factor simply doubled up.
2. Cost of living. Ever looked around at the typical cost of living or the cost of affordable housing in Germany? Go and try to price a three or four bedroom apartment in Koln or Frankfurt. Most average families can't afford it.
3. Average income issue. If you take an average German couple and look at the general income (both working) and deduct the taxation....you start laughing. One member of the couple needs to have a fairly technical background with decent pay....if there was some objective of having three kids.
4. It is commonly accepted that couples might not have any kids at all. You might find some guy who meets up with a German gal, and twenty years later.....still living together....no marriage....no kids...and happy with the situation.
As much as politicians and bureaucrats have tried to invent ways to entice more production....it simply hasn't achieved much of anything. Adding to the whole 'game'....is the fact that studies have shown that even immigrant families arrive and help to some degree to pump up the numbers.....that generation 2.0 and 3.0 (a decade, two decades, and three decades down the line).....all become Germanized and they settle back into the same German dilemma....lower production rates.
The Linda Story
It is a page two story in Germany....but this Dresden teenage gal (16), who ran away and jointed ISIS in Iraq, and is now a prisoner of the Iraqi government.....is said to be in serious jeopardy (possibly getting the Iraqi death penalty).
What the Iraqis hint (various news services now covering this) is that gal (Linda) is a teen and typically, the Iraqis can find various ways of avoiding the death penalty, but they really don't want to mess with her or hold her.
So, you get the impression....the door is open for some German political figure to negotiate with Iraq about this episode. The big issue is that the Germans themselves have a law on the books which suggests several years in prison as a minimum....if you run off and join some war effort (like in this case).
My prediction is that you see either Gabriel (the German Foreign Minister) or one of the big CDU folks just appear in Iraq, and in one hour....they have this teenage German gal on the plane and flying back into Berlin.
Some court case will be scripted up....she will admit guilt, and get 18 months in some controlled atmosphere, with schooling and education mandated as part of the deal. Along the way, she can do an interview and confess that going off to fight for ISIS was just plain stupid....detailing how she got doped, and the public TV folks can get a five-star leg-up on the radical thugs who recruit for ISIS.
It ought to be this easy to do one simple smart thing, but somehow, I think some intellectual German bureaucrat will screw this up.
What the Iraqis hint (various news services now covering this) is that gal (Linda) is a teen and typically, the Iraqis can find various ways of avoiding the death penalty, but they really don't want to mess with her or hold her.
So, you get the impression....the door is open for some German political figure to negotiate with Iraq about this episode. The big issue is that the Germans themselves have a law on the books which suggests several years in prison as a minimum....if you run off and join some war effort (like in this case).
My prediction is that you see either Gabriel (the German Foreign Minister) or one of the big CDU folks just appear in Iraq, and in one hour....they have this teenage German gal on the plane and flying back into Berlin.
Some court case will be scripted up....she will admit guilt, and get 18 months in some controlled atmosphere, with schooling and education mandated as part of the deal. Along the way, she can do an interview and confess that going off to fight for ISIS was just plain stupid....detailing how she got doped, and the public TV folks can get a five-star leg-up on the radical thugs who recruit for ISIS.
It ought to be this easy to do one simple smart thing, but somehow, I think some intellectual German bureaucrat will screw this up.
Inner-German Gaps
I was reading this morning over commentary by a German (anonymous in nature) who made the observation that he now has to read foreign news media coverage because he knows that the content of German news production is biased or written with an agenda attached.
This comes up this weekend because of the university study over the news media coverage of the immigration period of 2015, and the analysis of the university study that the general news cycle in Germany were no longer acting as reporters....but producing agenda-like coverage. No one says it was in relationship with the government, or any political party....which is what you'd expect. It's almost like you walked into a party and started a rumor on one side of the room that the beer was 'flat', and an hour later....everyone in the room was convinced that the beer really is flat. No one actually stands there and tastes the beer or counters the rumor....they just accept it as fact.
What really happened in this period of 2013 to 1 January 2016? One can say that the one-sided direction of German analysis and news ended with the Koln riot from the New Year's eve period. Within four short weeks after that period, it was a water valve was turned off and the significant coverage in the one-sided direction simply ended.
As for what happened in that three year period leading up to January of 2016? I would lay the problem upon three basic issues:
(1) Intellectual compromise. This is usually where a really smart (PhD-type) individual has consumed a lot of information but is unable to factor in odd pieces of the story, find faults with conceived 'facts', or is unwilling to ask more questions (believing they have reached the 'gold-standard' of PURE FACT).
(2) The good German costume. With so much crap dumped on the Germans from WW I and WW II....some people would really like to go and find this wonderful public image of the 'good German'....the guy who takes in the poor, the weak, the injured, and the war-afflicted. I admit, it's a worthy thing to go and look for this costume, and to feel the humble respect of your peers. The problem with this is that you end up with a costume that is ill-fitting and sometimes makes you look a bit foolish. On top of that....a fair sum of people don't really want to wear the 'good German' costume, and when they said 'no'....they were criticized for not accepting their role in the 'play'.
(3) Labeling all asylum seekers, immigrants, and migrants as one single 'flavor'. There was this period in 2014 where the news media of Germany (mostly ARD and ZDF) were telling strictly Iraqi and Syrian refugee-related stories. Oddly enough, if you did look at the factual data....they were maybe making up 50-percent of the incoming crowd. The rest? From Albania, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Africa, and Central Africa. The crowd from Syria and Iraq? Mostly family related (grandparents, kids, etc). The folks from North Africa? Mostly all male (18-to-25 years old). The news crowd couldn't bring themselves to break out the incoming into the natural groups....if they had....their positive-spin story would have started to dissolve.
At this point in the compromised situation....you can sense that the news media folks over this weekend are carefully reading through the criticism leveled at them....by the university professors, and perhaps frustrated. They will call up co-workers and peers to get support....maybe go to some pub and sip through wine and beer....discovering that their friends and associates kinda agree with the compromised story-line and some knew this all the way back to 2013.
So, back to the gentleman who started me upon this topic today....the German guy who says that gaps in the news of Germany now exist. Well....there are literally thousands of sources of news existing in the world and you can go and start a habit of reading from outside of your circle. The internet provides you that tool. I'm guessing that the ARD/ZDF crowd (the public TV gang of Germany) will try to suggest that too much fake news exist and you need to stick with them because they know all about fake news. Then you kinda laugh because....well....they were fake-agenda creators for three years, and they've got a lot of expertise in that area.
I don't really want to hype up on this whole issue, but you just gaze back over three years and how it was a one-sided story, and in the blink of an eye....over January of 2016, the one-sided story just quietly evaporated and disappeared. There is a story here, but it's just not one that anyone would want to admire or feel proud about.
My end-point? Was this the only one-sided story? Or did they also go and create other topics like this as well?
This comes up this weekend because of the university study over the news media coverage of the immigration period of 2015, and the analysis of the university study that the general news cycle in Germany were no longer acting as reporters....but producing agenda-like coverage. No one says it was in relationship with the government, or any political party....which is what you'd expect. It's almost like you walked into a party and started a rumor on one side of the room that the beer was 'flat', and an hour later....everyone in the room was convinced that the beer really is flat. No one actually stands there and tastes the beer or counters the rumor....they just accept it as fact.
What really happened in this period of 2013 to 1 January 2016? One can say that the one-sided direction of German analysis and news ended with the Koln riot from the New Year's eve period. Within four short weeks after that period, it was a water valve was turned off and the significant coverage in the one-sided direction simply ended.
As for what happened in that three year period leading up to January of 2016? I would lay the problem upon three basic issues:
(1) Intellectual compromise. This is usually where a really smart (PhD-type) individual has consumed a lot of information but is unable to factor in odd pieces of the story, find faults with conceived 'facts', or is unwilling to ask more questions (believing they have reached the 'gold-standard' of PURE FACT).
(2) The good German costume. With so much crap dumped on the Germans from WW I and WW II....some people would really like to go and find this wonderful public image of the 'good German'....the guy who takes in the poor, the weak, the injured, and the war-afflicted. I admit, it's a worthy thing to go and look for this costume, and to feel the humble respect of your peers. The problem with this is that you end up with a costume that is ill-fitting and sometimes makes you look a bit foolish. On top of that....a fair sum of people don't really want to wear the 'good German' costume, and when they said 'no'....they were criticized for not accepting their role in the 'play'.
(3) Labeling all asylum seekers, immigrants, and migrants as one single 'flavor'. There was this period in 2014 where the news media of Germany (mostly ARD and ZDF) were telling strictly Iraqi and Syrian refugee-related stories. Oddly enough, if you did look at the factual data....they were maybe making up 50-percent of the incoming crowd. The rest? From Albania, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Africa, and Central Africa. The crowd from Syria and Iraq? Mostly family related (grandparents, kids, etc). The folks from North Africa? Mostly all male (18-to-25 years old). The news crowd couldn't bring themselves to break out the incoming into the natural groups....if they had....their positive-spin story would have started to dissolve.
At this point in the compromised situation....you can sense that the news media folks over this weekend are carefully reading through the criticism leveled at them....by the university professors, and perhaps frustrated. They will call up co-workers and peers to get support....maybe go to some pub and sip through wine and beer....discovering that their friends and associates kinda agree with the compromised story-line and some knew this all the way back to 2013.
So, back to the gentleman who started me upon this topic today....the German guy who says that gaps in the news of Germany now exist. Well....there are literally thousands of sources of news existing in the world and you can go and start a habit of reading from outside of your circle. The internet provides you that tool. I'm guessing that the ARD/ZDF crowd (the public TV gang of Germany) will try to suggest that too much fake news exist and you need to stick with them because they know all about fake news. Then you kinda laugh because....well....they were fake-agenda creators for three years, and they've got a lot of expertise in that area.
I don't really want to hype up on this whole issue, but you just gaze back over three years and how it was a one-sided story, and in the blink of an eye....over January of 2016, the one-sided story just quietly evaporated and disappeared. There is a story here, but it's just not one that anyone would want to admire or feel proud about.
My end-point? Was this the only one-sided story? Or did they also go and create other topics like this as well?
German News, Sunday
Turkey tourism down: ARD article. A blunt piece written over German tourism into Turkey because of the coup of last summer. As they point out....anyone walking the streets around these Turkish resorts would say that there's very few tourists compared to the better period (spring of 2016, before the coup). 5.6 million Germans visited Turkey in 2015.....no one is guessing much on 2017 but the trend is way down. As for countries that took up the slack and replaced Turkey? Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Croatia have noticed a serious pick-up in tourism in 2017.
Candidate Schulz warns of a new crisis: N-TV article. From this weekend, SPD's Schulz has hyped up that a new refugee and immigration crisis is about to emerge with Italy and the 200,000 that they've 'rescued' from the Med. If you had to go and pick out a topic to fan upon the German voting public which would NOT be taken in a friendly fashion, this is one of those topics. His gimmick solution? Force EU countries to take in the Italian crowd, but oddly....no mention of halting the smuggling operations or rescue ships....so you'd have another 200,000 in a matter of six months to disperse as well...and force upon the EU members yet again. He is correct in that a crisis is likely coming but looking over five or six EU members as being zero-enthusiastic about taking migrants is one problem. Then telling a thousand migrants sitting in Italy that they will have to accept going to some country that wasn't on their acceptance list is another problem. If this episode explodes in the final weeks before the election....it hurts both the SPD and the CDU.
Macron polling down: N-TV article. Well, yeah, it only took about 90 days for the public to start losing it's appeal with the Macron charm. Forty-three percent of the French public is dissatisfied with Macron now.
Anis Amri troubles: N-TV article. If you remember Anis....he's the young Tunisian guy who killed eleven Germans in Berlin around Christmas time. The young terrorist thug....was killed days later in Italy by a couple of cops. Well, it's come to pass that the city where he was shot by the cops.....Sesto San Giovanni....has been handed the bill by the city mortuary folks for holding the guy 'on ice' for an extended period (he's only been released to be sent back Tunisia in recent weeks). The bill? 2,160.18 Euro.....yeah, it's pretty precise. The mayor doesn't want the bill on his back and he thinks the people of the city also are angry about this stupid bill. He has sent the bill to Rome and wants the national government to pay this. There is an Italian law which says......if NO ONE claims the body....the city where the death occurred.....must take the bill. Oddly, no member of the family took possession of the body, and it appears that Italy just helped to ship the body back to Tunisia. Pretty stupid episode but it demonstrates how troublesome terrorists can be....even when they are dead.
Candidate Schulz warns of a new crisis: N-TV article. From this weekend, SPD's Schulz has hyped up that a new refugee and immigration crisis is about to emerge with Italy and the 200,000 that they've 'rescued' from the Med. If you had to go and pick out a topic to fan upon the German voting public which would NOT be taken in a friendly fashion, this is one of those topics. His gimmick solution? Force EU countries to take in the Italian crowd, but oddly....no mention of halting the smuggling operations or rescue ships....so you'd have another 200,000 in a matter of six months to disperse as well...and force upon the EU members yet again. He is correct in that a crisis is likely coming but looking over five or six EU members as being zero-enthusiastic about taking migrants is one problem. Then telling a thousand migrants sitting in Italy that they will have to accept going to some country that wasn't on their acceptance list is another problem. If this episode explodes in the final weeks before the election....it hurts both the SPD and the CDU.
Macron polling down: N-TV article. Well, yeah, it only took about 90 days for the public to start losing it's appeal with the Macron charm. Forty-three percent of the French public is dissatisfied with Macron now.
Anis Amri troubles: N-TV article. If you remember Anis....he's the young Tunisian guy who killed eleven Germans in Berlin around Christmas time. The young terrorist thug....was killed days later in Italy by a couple of cops. Well, it's come to pass that the city where he was shot by the cops.....Sesto San Giovanni....has been handed the bill by the city mortuary folks for holding the guy 'on ice' for an extended period (he's only been released to be sent back Tunisia in recent weeks). The bill? 2,160.18 Euro.....yeah, it's pretty precise. The mayor doesn't want the bill on his back and he thinks the people of the city also are angry about this stupid bill. He has sent the bill to Rome and wants the national government to pay this. There is an Italian law which says......if NO ONE claims the body....the city where the death occurred.....must take the bill. Oddly, no member of the family took possession of the body, and it appears that Italy just helped to ship the body back to Tunisia. Pretty stupid episode but it demonstrates how troublesome terrorists can be....even when they are dead.
Criticism of German News
Early this morning (Sunday), I noted that the ARD (German public TV crowd) had finally put up the analysis over German media coverage for the immigration period, and were very critical of the one-sided nature of the news journalists involved.
Where did ARD stack it? Taggeschau's web page....under the 'Fact Checker'.
They basically noted that the analysis did exist and laid out the basic theme of the report. Beyond that....nothing. It reminded you of some kid who stole grandmother's blueberry pie, and has been discovered with blue-spots all over his mouth....trying not to admit he did it, but it's obvious.
I then went to the bottom where they have to allow commentary by the public. 92 folks made observations....most all of them noted that they felt the one-sided nature of the immigration stories told from 2013 to 2016. Anger and frustration? You get that impression as you read through the commentary.
One of the commentary reactions by readers even put it correctly. You cannot trust the news media completely. You need to filter information. You need to use various sources and read through different pieces to arrive at a understanding. Weigh information that you get, and determine if any piece of it could be fake news. In other words, use common sense.
At one point in the public commentary, I came to this one interesting prospective....the individual felt they were back in the old GDR (East Germany), where one-sided reporting was normal and regularly accepted. In some ways, that is a valid point in this amusing analysis.
What happens next? Anyone's guess. Maybe a public chat forum comes up in three or four weeks (after the summer vacation period for the networks), with this as a topic.
Saturday, July 22, 2017
German Left-wing Radicals
There was an interesting piece with Focus this morning. Someone had sat down (within the cops apparently) in Berlin and analyzed the heck out of left-wing extremist (like the Hamburg thugs) and had drawn a number of interesting prospectives.
In Berlin, most of the radical and violent left live in the Riga Strasse area of town (on the east side of town).
So, 92-percent of the Berlin left-wing crowd.....still live with mom and dad. Eight percent live on their own. Yeah, that's an amazing number.
Within this crowd....most are male (84-percent).
The majority (75-percent) are between 18 and 29 years old.
Most of them are single (estimated at 90-percent).
Roughly 60-percent of the Berlin left-wing crowd are either students or jobless. The analysis doesn't ask the question....why they were jobless.
I sat there in amazement....92-percent still live at home. Mom makes them breakfast and likely cleans their room. "Johan" not working? Fine, dad will pass over some cash for his pizza this weekend.
Are mom and dad aware of 'Johan' and his friends activities? When 'Johan' said he was going to be visiting some friends for the weekend in Hamburg.....did mom and dad put together the puzzle and figure out their son was a 'bad-boy' over that four-day period in Hamburg?
Trying to be some Marxist-revolutionary....while living in mom's apartment? It's what you'd call a loser scenario. Some kid without much in life....just acting out. The part about 90-percent of them being single....gee, wonder why? Course, 16-percent of this entire Berlin crowd are female.
What happens as 'Johan' gets up into his mid-30s and still unemployed? My guess is that sooner or later....mom and dad kinda hint that you have to go.....and that means the evil situation has latched onto you.....you will have to work for a living and account for your actions. This left-wing extremism game will come to a bitter end....the rent-money and food for tonight will rate as a higher priority.
Across Germany, it's this same story. The template for the Berlin left-wing crowd is the same for the crowd in Koln, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and so on.
No one suggests numbers across Germany for these 'kids' still living with mom and dad, but on some revolutionary-war episode to bring Marxism to the masses. I hate to suggest it, but I think at 18....the kid needs to be sent either onto the German military or pushed out of the house. This would change the numbers of left-wing radicals drastically.
In Berlin, most of the radical and violent left live in the Riga Strasse area of town (on the east side of town).
So, 92-percent of the Berlin left-wing crowd.....still live with mom and dad. Eight percent live on their own. Yeah, that's an amazing number.
Within this crowd....most are male (84-percent).
The majority (75-percent) are between 18 and 29 years old.
Most of them are single (estimated at 90-percent).
Roughly 60-percent of the Berlin left-wing crowd are either students or jobless. The analysis doesn't ask the question....why they were jobless.
I sat there in amazement....92-percent still live at home. Mom makes them breakfast and likely cleans their room. "Johan" not working? Fine, dad will pass over some cash for his pizza this weekend.
Are mom and dad aware of 'Johan' and his friends activities? When 'Johan' said he was going to be visiting some friends for the weekend in Hamburg.....did mom and dad put together the puzzle and figure out their son was a 'bad-boy' over that four-day period in Hamburg?
Trying to be some Marxist-revolutionary....while living in mom's apartment? It's what you'd call a loser scenario. Some kid without much in life....just acting out. The part about 90-percent of them being single....gee, wonder why? Course, 16-percent of this entire Berlin crowd are female.
What happens as 'Johan' gets up into his mid-30s and still unemployed? My guess is that sooner or later....mom and dad kinda hint that you have to go.....and that means the evil situation has latched onto you.....you will have to work for a living and account for your actions. This left-wing extremism game will come to a bitter end....the rent-money and food for tonight will rate as a higher priority.
Across Germany, it's this same story. The template for the Berlin left-wing crowd is the same for the crowd in Koln, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and so on.
No one suggests numbers across Germany for these 'kids' still living with mom and dad, but on some revolutionary-war episode to bring Marxism to the masses. I hate to suggest it, but I think at 18....the kid needs to be sent either onto the German military or pushed out of the house. This would change the numbers of left-wing radicals drastically.
Bag Charges
This came up in travel news this week...from several different Brit sources.
Jet2....a discount airline out of the UK (number four on the list)....has a new policy. If you intend to board the plane, and don't check any luggage in (meaning that you have a small-travel bag that you will lug as you board)....then there's a charge for that hand-bag (2.59 pounds per bag, each way).
That's 3.25 dollars roughly....per bag.
You can do the math....a Welsh couple jetting off to some Spanish isle for 3 days of reckless fun and carrying only the bare minimum of clothing along....will pay $13 extra to get their bag each within the cabin.
Various reasons will be given for the charge. Some folks argue that the older planes, while designed for 90 passengers....weren't designed in some way to handle the 90 folks having the mini-bags that you typically see dragged onto the plane.
I sat a couple of weeks ago on a Delta-flight in the US and observed dozens of people dragging bags which would just barely fit into the overhead bin. In one case, with the whole plane full (every seat taken)....they had three bags which wouldn't fit anywhere, and they had to drag them back to the front and have 'Joe-the-bag-dude' reopen the baggage area to dump them in.
I can understand the logic to this but it's just another stupid charge added to your ticket. In some situations, you could be looking at three or four cost-elements added to your 100-Euro airline ticket, and making it 150-Euro instead.
Jet2....a discount airline out of the UK (number four on the list)....has a new policy. If you intend to board the plane, and don't check any luggage in (meaning that you have a small-travel bag that you will lug as you board)....then there's a charge for that hand-bag (2.59 pounds per bag, each way).
That's 3.25 dollars roughly....per bag.
You can do the math....a Welsh couple jetting off to some Spanish isle for 3 days of reckless fun and carrying only the bare minimum of clothing along....will pay $13 extra to get their bag each within the cabin.
Various reasons will be given for the charge. Some folks argue that the older planes, while designed for 90 passengers....weren't designed in some way to handle the 90 folks having the mini-bags that you typically see dragged onto the plane.
I sat a couple of weeks ago on a Delta-flight in the US and observed dozens of people dragging bags which would just barely fit into the overhead bin. In one case, with the whole plane full (every seat taken)....they had three bags which wouldn't fit anywhere, and they had to drag them back to the front and have 'Joe-the-bag-dude' reopen the baggage area to dump them in.
I can understand the logic to this but it's just another stupid charge added to your ticket. In some situations, you could be looking at three or four cost-elements added to your 100-Euro airline ticket, and making it 150-Euro instead.
Immigrant Groups in Germany
One of the things that few Germans grasp is that there is a vast and wide landscape of nationalities and cultures in Germany today (more than eighty nationalities).
They range from the Turks with roughly 1.5-million all the way to down to Liechtensteiners with roughly 240 folks.
Some come to study or attend college (like a lot of Chinese). Some come for safety (like the Syrians and Iraqis). Some come for jobs (like the Turks).
Just because they have a visa to work, study or stay long-term....does NOT mean that they are actively seeking citizenship.
Roughly eighty-percent of the German society (82-million) are native full-blown Germans....which means that twenty-percent (around 16-million) either were born else-where and became a German, or have a visa to visit or stay long-term.
The 90,000 folks from Vietnam? The mass majority were part of an exchange program with DDR (the old East Germany) and were brought in for work-assignments. When the wall went down....no one said much, and it's believed that most stayed and integrated into Germany.
The South Koreans in Germany? They number around 32,000. Their introduction into German society started in the early 1960s as part of a work-guest program (mostly for miners and nurses). While the program had a end-date and end-date to it....as the end-date approached....roughly half of the South Koreans applied to stay permanently in Germany. One of the interesting aspects of the Koreans who stayed....their next generation (the 2nd generation) had almost 70-percent of the kids reach Abi-level (meaning 12 years of high school and a year of technical college). If you look at normal German statistics...they typically reached the 35-to-40 percent range....so the Koreans-turned-into-Germans put a lot of emphasis on their kids to achieve and move ahead in the German system. The Koreans have a very large presence in the Rhine-Main region (Frankfurt), with over 6,000 in the region.
If you go and ask most Germans about having foreigners around....they will typically cite the Turks, the Greeks, the Russians, and the Italians. They will typically point out the Greek and Italian restaurants in the local area as an example of successful immigrants.
As much as some folks do 'dump' on the immigration policy....the trend up until the 2013 period was mostly positive and with minimum complaints. The only way that West Germany and later...Germany itself....reached economic success and built up dozens of known companies....was the effort to get guest-workers into the country and fast-pace them along the way to production and integration. If you went and asked most who came into Germany in the 1960s or 1970s....they will say that a basic course in German occurred, and some German co-workers pointed out a few things along the way. Otherwise, integration was almost non-existent in terms of a program existing.
What happened along the way? I think there was always a magical number in the air in terms of people coming in and the pace that they took. You won't find anyone who will say what the magical number is, or how they arrived at the magical number. PhD folks and intellectuals will mostly just grin because you can't build a science or logic around this magic number. The CSU of Bavaria will tell you that the magic number is 200,000 per year. They can't cite any science behind that number though. The pro-asylum folks will say that the number is unlimited, but they can't cite any science behind that logic either.
Adding to this conflict is the fact that integration is continually argued about. If you offered a class and a hundred question quiz....then offered the same test to some fifty-year-old Germans (folks who've been here their entire life)....probably a quarter of them would fail the German integration test.
So you are left with a door that must be forever left unlocked and somewhat open....at least in the minds of the German leadership.
They range from the Turks with roughly 1.5-million all the way to down to Liechtensteiners with roughly 240 folks.
Some come to study or attend college (like a lot of Chinese). Some come for safety (like the Syrians and Iraqis). Some come for jobs (like the Turks).
Just because they have a visa to work, study or stay long-term....does NOT mean that they are actively seeking citizenship.
Roughly eighty-percent of the German society (82-million) are native full-blown Germans....which means that twenty-percent (around 16-million) either were born else-where and became a German, or have a visa to visit or stay long-term.
The 90,000 folks from Vietnam? The mass majority were part of an exchange program with DDR (the old East Germany) and were brought in for work-assignments. When the wall went down....no one said much, and it's believed that most stayed and integrated into Germany.
The South Koreans in Germany? They number around 32,000. Their introduction into German society started in the early 1960s as part of a work-guest program (mostly for miners and nurses). While the program had a end-date and end-date to it....as the end-date approached....roughly half of the South Koreans applied to stay permanently in Germany. One of the interesting aspects of the Koreans who stayed....their next generation (the 2nd generation) had almost 70-percent of the kids reach Abi-level (meaning 12 years of high school and a year of technical college). If you look at normal German statistics...they typically reached the 35-to-40 percent range....so the Koreans-turned-into-Germans put a lot of emphasis on their kids to achieve and move ahead in the German system. The Koreans have a very large presence in the Rhine-Main region (Frankfurt), with over 6,000 in the region.
If you go and ask most Germans about having foreigners around....they will typically cite the Turks, the Greeks, the Russians, and the Italians. They will typically point out the Greek and Italian restaurants in the local area as an example of successful immigrants.
As much as some folks do 'dump' on the immigration policy....the trend up until the 2013 period was mostly positive and with minimum complaints. The only way that West Germany and later...Germany itself....reached economic success and built up dozens of known companies....was the effort to get guest-workers into the country and fast-pace them along the way to production and integration. If you went and asked most who came into Germany in the 1960s or 1970s....they will say that a basic course in German occurred, and some German co-workers pointed out a few things along the way. Otherwise, integration was almost non-existent in terms of a program existing.
What happened along the way? I think there was always a magical number in the air in terms of people coming in and the pace that they took. You won't find anyone who will say what the magical number is, or how they arrived at the magical number. PhD folks and intellectuals will mostly just grin because you can't build a science or logic around this magic number. The CSU of Bavaria will tell you that the magic number is 200,000 per year. They can't cite any science behind that number though. The pro-asylum folks will say that the number is unlimited, but they can't cite any science behind that logic either.
Adding to this conflict is the fact that integration is continually argued about. If you offered a class and a hundred question quiz....then offered the same test to some fifty-year-old Germans (folks who've been here their entire life)....probably a quarter of them would fail the German integration test.
So you are left with a door that must be forever left unlocked and somewhat open....at least in the minds of the German leadership.
German News, Saturday
Air Berlin woes: Focus article. Focus put up a business article and talked with an expert on the sour business with Air Berlin. Their suggestion was that they'd advise people not to buy tickets with the airline more than six months out. As they say....you just don't know if it'll still be around. If I were using their logic....maybe I wouldn't even buy a ticket more than two weeks out. They need to be bought by someone who has some cash flow and willing to wait out till BER (the new Berlin Airport) opens. Since BER's status is still not that great, there just isn't any interest in buying Air Berlin.
Frankfurt crane in jeopardy of tipping over: HR article. If you travel through Frankfurt, one of the things you will notice will be the quantity of tall cranes around the city.....as massive construction is going on. Well....issues developed yesterday and one of the cranes is almost ready to fall over. Cops evacuated the area, and construction folks have stabilized the crane to some degree. They are hoping to take apart the crane today (Saturday).
No-handshake episode: SWR article. A male Islamic policeman was in the process of a promotion, and like most German cop organizations....there's a ceremony with other cops there. And a female cop came to offer her handshake (a tradition)....which he refused (religious grounds). You can guess the sequence after that. There's been a complaint lodged and the leadership will have to evaluate the guy and his no-handshake-with-women future. You have to wonder....there is a recruitment process, evaluations, tests, and then more than a year in a German police academy....how did this guy get so far and this no-handshake thing didn't come up or get noticed? Added to this whole story....the guy in question is a minister on the side as well....although his group isn't noted for any radical tendency. There is a 'wavier' written up into the Koran for events like this....when you live in the 'west' (non-believers)....you need to act within their customs and traditions. If he doesn't shift on this, I think he's probably finished within the cop profession.
Travel agencies warn: SWR article. With all the words this week by the German leadership on Turkey and advising people that it's getting to a point of questioning your safety if you did go on a trip there.....a travel expert was consulted by SWR. He says that you don't have many options if you already booked a trip to Turkey. It would be different if Germany made Turkey a no-go area....but they haven't done that....they merely suggest that your safety isn't absolutely assured. Generally, if you go and just stay in your resort, it's 100-percent safe. If you went on the optional day-tours and ended up at some rally or cops came to question your status....then your safety rate drops. No one has said that German tourists are being rounded up or detained, and other than long-term German-Turks living around Turkey....I can't think of anyone of a German citizenship being hauled off to jail.
Frankfurt crane in jeopardy of tipping over: HR article. If you travel through Frankfurt, one of the things you will notice will be the quantity of tall cranes around the city.....as massive construction is going on. Well....issues developed yesterday and one of the cranes is almost ready to fall over. Cops evacuated the area, and construction folks have stabilized the crane to some degree. They are hoping to take apart the crane today (Saturday).
No-handshake episode: SWR article. A male Islamic policeman was in the process of a promotion, and like most German cop organizations....there's a ceremony with other cops there. And a female cop came to offer her handshake (a tradition)....which he refused (religious grounds). You can guess the sequence after that. There's been a complaint lodged and the leadership will have to evaluate the guy and his no-handshake-with-women future. You have to wonder....there is a recruitment process, evaluations, tests, and then more than a year in a German police academy....how did this guy get so far and this no-handshake thing didn't come up or get noticed? Added to this whole story....the guy in question is a minister on the side as well....although his group isn't noted for any radical tendency. There is a 'wavier' written up into the Koran for events like this....when you live in the 'west' (non-believers)....you need to act within their customs and traditions. If he doesn't shift on this, I think he's probably finished within the cop profession.
Travel agencies warn: SWR article. With all the words this week by the German leadership on Turkey and advising people that it's getting to a point of questioning your safety if you did go on a trip there.....a travel expert was consulted by SWR. He says that you don't have many options if you already booked a trip to Turkey. It would be different if Germany made Turkey a no-go area....but they haven't done that....they merely suggest that your safety isn't absolutely assured. Generally, if you go and just stay in your resort, it's 100-percent safe. If you went on the optional day-tours and ended up at some rally or cops came to question your status....then your safety rate drops. No one has said that German tourists are being rounded up or detained, and other than long-term German-Turks living around Turkey....I can't think of anyone of a German citizenship being hauled off to jail.
Friday, July 21, 2017
The Pretender News Media
Die Welt carried a shocker of a story today....over a study which the Media School of Hamburg and the University of Leipzig carried out.
The study? Did German news media organizations do a good job of journalism during the 2013 to present on the asylum/migrant/immigration crisis?
Short answer: no.
They were more of a promotion crew, rather than journalists. The independent survey noted that they were uncritical (not just casually, but full-blown), and simply hung a sign out...."welcome". The idea of being critical? Non-existent.
The piece of the story which I found interesting....the study even noted that most of what was said during the past four years....simply were words of the political elite....repeated by the journalists.
The study crew even went as far as suggesting that journalists don't understand their professional role or the function of the news media.
I'm guessing the ARD and ZDF big-wigs are sitting there and trying hard not to read over the assessment by the Hamburg school and the Leipzig university. They hate criticism, and in this case....the professors are taking the 'kids' to the wood-shed and laying on a fair amount of criticism.
What happens now? Nothing.
It's done. You can't fix this. You can't retract the stories. You can't suddenly say you discovered the stupidity of your analysis. You just keep going forward. Kinda sad, but that's the German method. The only shocker for me is that it took three years for the survey crew to get around to this and finally pronounce a judgement. I saw it in 2014 and sat mostly amused. The 'kids' felt that no one would ever come and judge them.....and they were wrong.
I would also note.....if they weren't critical over that particular topic....what else are they lacking clear judgement or analysis upon? Any guesses? I don't think the Hamburg or Leipzig folks are finished on analysis....they might want to continue.
The study? Did German news media organizations do a good job of journalism during the 2013 to present on the asylum/migrant/immigration crisis?
Short answer: no.
They were more of a promotion crew, rather than journalists. The independent survey noted that they were uncritical (not just casually, but full-blown), and simply hung a sign out...."welcome". The idea of being critical? Non-existent.
The piece of the story which I found interesting....the study even noted that most of what was said during the past four years....simply were words of the political elite....repeated by the journalists.
The study crew even went as far as suggesting that journalists don't understand their professional role or the function of the news media.
I'm guessing the ARD and ZDF big-wigs are sitting there and trying hard not to read over the assessment by the Hamburg school and the Leipzig university. They hate criticism, and in this case....the professors are taking the 'kids' to the wood-shed and laying on a fair amount of criticism.
What happens now? Nothing.
It's done. You can't fix this. You can't retract the stories. You can't suddenly say you discovered the stupidity of your analysis. You just keep going forward. Kinda sad, but that's the German method. The only shocker for me is that it took three years for the survey crew to get around to this and finally pronounce a judgement. I saw it in 2014 and sat mostly amused. The 'kids' felt that no one would ever come and judge them.....and they were wrong.
I would also note.....if they weren't critical over that particular topic....what else are they lacking clear judgement or analysis upon? Any guesses? I don't think the Hamburg or Leipzig folks are finished on analysis....they might want to continue.
That Took Two Hours (New Ambassador Comment by German Public TV)
Yep, within two hours....they'd hyped their message or theme.
German public TV (ARD) put their first big announement of the new American ambassador. The message? "Now Fox News, Soon New US Ambassador."
Around nine lines into the piece, they then admitted....oh yeah....he is openly gay.
Then they went to the final 13 lines of the piece....talking over the woes of various ambassador jobs and high-ranking positions left unfilled at present. Shocking....yes, absolutely shocking. Well...if you were an intellectual.
I suspect by tonight that at least sixty seconds of background video will be put up as Grenell is noted as a past contributor to Fox News. Sadly, it would have been told in a much more favorable light if he'd just been a past contributor to CNN or perhaps even PBS.
The effect on the bulk of German society....the working-class Germans? They don't really care. They can't name any of the past dozen US ambassadors. If you asked them who were the last five US State Department chiefs....they might be able to name Hillary Clinton but that's about it. If anything, from the working-class, they might ask the German public TV news geek.....is there anything really news-worthy out of this entire story?
Man, thank God that there's only 28 days left before the Bundesliga (soccer) season starts (18 August). Then there will be some noteworthy news.
German public TV (ARD) put their first big announement of the new American ambassador. The message? "Now Fox News, Soon New US Ambassador."
Around nine lines into the piece, they then admitted....oh yeah....he is openly gay.
Then they went to the final 13 lines of the piece....talking over the woes of various ambassador jobs and high-ranking positions left unfilled at present. Shocking....yes, absolutely shocking. Well...if you were an intellectual.
I suspect by tonight that at least sixty seconds of background video will be put up as Grenell is noted as a past contributor to Fox News. Sadly, it would have been told in a much more favorable light if he'd just been a past contributor to CNN or perhaps even PBS.
The effect on the bulk of German society....the working-class Germans? They don't really care. They can't name any of the past dozen US ambassadors. If you asked them who were the last five US State Department chiefs....they might be able to name Hillary Clinton but that's about it. If anything, from the working-class, they might ask the German public TV news geek.....is there anything really news-worthy out of this entire story?
Man, thank God that there's only 28 days left before the Bundesliga (soccer) season starts (18 August). Then there will be some noteworthy news.
The ISIS Fraulein Story
In recent days, various news sources (German, British and French) have covered this little short news item out of Iraq.
As Iraqi troops have moved into Mosul....a few days ago, they came to this basement area and found this young woman....a German. So her story has been laid out in some degree.....as a wannabe-ISIS-thug.
LInda Wenzel....now 16 years old....basically ran away from home (Dresden) last year. Various emotional issues popped up and her only future path ended up being a runaway and joining ISIS. No, she wasn't a Muslim....she was just looking for some emotional escape-door (a gang-like situation that would take care of her). She uses her mom's credit card and buys a ticket into Turkey.....walks across the border, and then discovers the world of ISIS.
Married within ISIS....she had a Chechen husband. Iraqi forces kill the husband. Then they get to the young girl's situation. She's alive and being held as a prisoner. Some stories indicate that she's shot and killed Iraqi soldiers over the year that she's been in Iraq. Some suggest that she was a sniper at one point.
What becomes of Linda? No one says much. There's probably enough evidence to convict and execute her. Some German influence might be used to spare her and just convict her with Iraqi charges and let Germany take possession of her.
You tend to go and make a lot of stupid mistakes in your youth....doing things for the wrong reason, and having to pay a price for the mistakes. In her case? You need some fair amount of judgement and punishment dished out, but there might be some rehab value of bringing her back....letting her get her wits, and then let her tell the insider story to the whole fake nature of ISIS. Yes, there is some value in bringing the German kid back home. If she is some nutcase? Then fine....put her into some mental facility and just get some judge to sign the paperwork.
As Iraqi troops have moved into Mosul....a few days ago, they came to this basement area and found this young woman....a German. So her story has been laid out in some degree.....as a wannabe-ISIS-thug.
LInda Wenzel....now 16 years old....basically ran away from home (Dresden) last year. Various emotional issues popped up and her only future path ended up being a runaway and joining ISIS. No, she wasn't a Muslim....she was just looking for some emotional escape-door (a gang-like situation that would take care of her). She uses her mom's credit card and buys a ticket into Turkey.....walks across the border, and then discovers the world of ISIS.
Married within ISIS....she had a Chechen husband. Iraqi forces kill the husband. Then they get to the young girl's situation. She's alive and being held as a prisoner. Some stories indicate that she's shot and killed Iraqi soldiers over the year that she's been in Iraq. Some suggest that she was a sniper at one point.
What becomes of Linda? No one says much. There's probably enough evidence to convict and execute her. Some German influence might be used to spare her and just convict her with Iraqi charges and let Germany take possession of her.
You tend to go and make a lot of stupid mistakes in your youth....doing things for the wrong reason, and having to pay a price for the mistakes. In her case? You need some fair amount of judgement and punishment dished out, but there might be some rehab value of bringing her back....letting her get her wits, and then let her tell the insider story to the whole fake nature of ISIS. Yes, there is some value in bringing the German kid back home. If she is some nutcase? Then fine....put her into some mental facility and just get some judge to sign the paperwork.
The New American Ambassador To Germany
Richard Grenell.
Ok, he's not a household name. Generally, you can say five things about Grenell:
1. He's a Republican (I know....that will worry most Germans....it's very frightful).
2. Highly educated (Master's degree in Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, with a bachelor's degree in Government and Public Administration from Evangel University (private Christian college in Missouri)). This should also worry Germans because he's had been educated via Christian college, and fairly intellectual.
3. He spent roughly eight years at the UN, as the US's chief spokesperson (throughout the Bush period). He can probably get all chatty and go on for hours about crisis X, Y and Z.
4. He's been on Fox News a good bit and can talk at length about worldly affairs. This would usually worry Germans.
5. He's openly gay. Yeah, a shocker for Germans....you can be gay, intellectual, and Republican.
How this will go over?
I'm guessing that the confirmation process will take three months (summer vacation period).....so he won't show up until early November. I'm also guessing that he will be invited onto one or two German public-chat-forum shows, and be asked over and over how a gay or intellectual can be a Republican. At some point, the stupidity of the German view will shine through to the general public, and everyone will have a good laugh that they were amused by the whole gimmick of biased news for months.
Grenell? He might actually be around for more than two or three years. It wouldn't surprise me if he's still there as ambassador in 2024. I suspect if you were looking for a badger-like instrument to dig claws into some biased news gimmick, and not let go....Grenell is probably that instrument.
Ok, he's not a household name. Generally, you can say five things about Grenell:
1. He's a Republican (I know....that will worry most Germans....it's very frightful).
2. Highly educated (Master's degree in Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, with a bachelor's degree in Government and Public Administration from Evangel University (private Christian college in Missouri)). This should also worry Germans because he's had been educated via Christian college, and fairly intellectual.
3. He spent roughly eight years at the UN, as the US's chief spokesperson (throughout the Bush period). He can probably get all chatty and go on for hours about crisis X, Y and Z.
4. He's been on Fox News a good bit and can talk at length about worldly affairs. This would usually worry Germans.
5. He's openly gay. Yeah, a shocker for Germans....you can be gay, intellectual, and Republican.
How this will go over?
I'm guessing that the confirmation process will take three months (summer vacation period).....so he won't show up until early November. I'm also guessing that he will be invited onto one or two German public-chat-forum shows, and be asked over and over how a gay or intellectual can be a Republican. At some point, the stupidity of the German view will shine through to the general public, and everyone will have a good laugh that they were amused by the whole gimmick of biased news for months.
Grenell? He might actually be around for more than two or three years. It wouldn't surprise me if he's still there as ambassador in 2024. I suspect if you were looking for a badger-like instrument to dig claws into some biased news gimmick, and not let go....Grenell is probably that instrument.
An Immigration Comment
North Rhineland-Westphalia's Integration Minister (Joachim Stamp, FDP) came out today in a Focus-written piece talking about the lack of a immigration 'plan' for Germany.
He laid out two issues. First, if something isn't done in Africa to stabilize the population shift and show some economic promise for the future....then a fair number of the African population will give up and head for the Med and try to get a ship across to Europe. Second, as he emphasized in his short piece....there is no real immigration plan or law existing today in Germany.
When you sit and analyze the old 'understanding' of West Germany (before the wall went down)....there was a process where you had to submit paperwork to your local West German embassy in your country, and patiently wait several months for them to process it and approve or disapprove your application. Within this process, you showed a valid ID or passport, and proved your ability to work or generate an income.
After the Wall came down....we moved onto what I would call immigration plan version 2.0. No one really worried much about immigration because it generally stayed at 250,000 per year....except in the Balkan War years. Since 2013....the lack of a real plan or concept is noticeable. The federal involvement is basically to take the application and process it....but beyond that....it's all dumped down to the states and cities to render care and help to the individual, with money dished out later to compensate. A clear program across all sixteen states? No....it was never designed that way. The ability to have one guy faking out two separate states with different ID's or names? It's been proven to work....although on a small basis.
On the Africa talk....I think that Stamp is correct, but it's going to mean that Germany, along with the rest of the EU....will have to cough up tens of billions over a 25-year period (my estimate) and figure out a way to create markets in Africa for goods. It also means bringing birth-control into the region, and altering the reproduction cycle. And it means putting enormous pressure on war-lords and crisis-creation vehicles to stop their chief purpose in life.
The odds of some immigration change coming? Maybe after the election, there can be some minor shift created.
He laid out two issues. First, if something isn't done in Africa to stabilize the population shift and show some economic promise for the future....then a fair number of the African population will give up and head for the Med and try to get a ship across to Europe. Second, as he emphasized in his short piece....there is no real immigration plan or law existing today in Germany.
When you sit and analyze the old 'understanding' of West Germany (before the wall went down)....there was a process where you had to submit paperwork to your local West German embassy in your country, and patiently wait several months for them to process it and approve or disapprove your application. Within this process, you showed a valid ID or passport, and proved your ability to work or generate an income.
After the Wall came down....we moved onto what I would call immigration plan version 2.0. No one really worried much about immigration because it generally stayed at 250,000 per year....except in the Balkan War years. Since 2013....the lack of a real plan or concept is noticeable. The federal involvement is basically to take the application and process it....but beyond that....it's all dumped down to the states and cities to render care and help to the individual, with money dished out later to compensate. A clear program across all sixteen states? No....it was never designed that way. The ability to have one guy faking out two separate states with different ID's or names? It's been proven to work....although on a small basis.
On the Africa talk....I think that Stamp is correct, but it's going to mean that Germany, along with the rest of the EU....will have to cough up tens of billions over a 25-year period (my estimate) and figure out a way to create markets in Africa for goods. It also means bringing birth-control into the region, and altering the reproduction cycle. And it means putting enormous pressure on war-lords and crisis-creation vehicles to stop their chief purpose in life.
The odds of some immigration change coming? Maybe after the election, there can be some minor shift created.
The Schornfeld 'Mini-Riot'
We are now five days past the Schornfeld fest (down in the Stuttgart region), and it's much hyped 'riot'. N-TV article laid out the whole thing in a very precise fashion.
What the news media, cops and political folks talked about in abundance on Monday....has settled down.
The basic facts: (1) the four-day fest had twice as many people arrested this year when compared to 2016 (total of 53 people arrested over the weekend for disturbances, violence, or assault of some variety). (2) There were not a thousand rioters, but closer to one-hundred. (3) The big upsurge of violence started when a 16-year-old German hit a 19-year-old Syrian in the head with a bottle. (4) A handful of folks (some immigrants) were arrested on sexual assault (mostly for patting some gal on the butt). (5) One German was arrested for....resisting arrest (you get the impression he was seriously drunk). And (6) serious alcohol consumption is now believed to be the root of all the violence of the weekend.
In other words....a bunch of folks (Germans and immigrants) were drinking in significant quantity (like typical German fests)....and words got exchanged....insults got tossed around....a few acts of violence occur....and then all heck breaks loose. That's how you get a hyped-up five-star riot....when it's really just a two-star drunken brawl.
Next year's Schornfeld fest? I'm going to take a guess that serious rules on alcohol consumption will come down. Maybe only sales of 1-percent beer....maybe no alcohol sold after 6PM. You can bet that the German political folks are going to sit and think over this very carefully.
What the news media, cops and political folks talked about in abundance on Monday....has settled down.
The basic facts: (1) the four-day fest had twice as many people arrested this year when compared to 2016 (total of 53 people arrested over the weekend for disturbances, violence, or assault of some variety). (2) There were not a thousand rioters, but closer to one-hundred. (3) The big upsurge of violence started when a 16-year-old German hit a 19-year-old Syrian in the head with a bottle. (4) A handful of folks (some immigrants) were arrested on sexual assault (mostly for patting some gal on the butt). (5) One German was arrested for....resisting arrest (you get the impression he was seriously drunk). And (6) serious alcohol consumption is now believed to be the root of all the violence of the weekend.
In other words....a bunch of folks (Germans and immigrants) were drinking in significant quantity (like typical German fests)....and words got exchanged....insults got tossed around....a few acts of violence occur....and then all heck breaks loose. That's how you get a hyped-up five-star riot....when it's really just a two-star drunken brawl.
Next year's Schornfeld fest? I'm going to take a guess that serious rules on alcohol consumption will come down. Maybe only sales of 1-percent beer....maybe no alcohol sold after 6PM. You can bet that the German political folks are going to sit and think over this very carefully.
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