Something That Makes Little Sense

Court case developing in Germany, over a protest that occurred up in NW Germany (in the state of NRW).

So, the protest was an effort by a crowd of folks, to halt the operation of a coal-fired power plant.  Cops came in....arrested five individuals in particular and now the court has opened up.

The initial claim by the five?  They say that they have no job....no income....and are full-time protesters. 

Yes, it does beg questions.

The five are proclaiming themselves as social climate justice 'activists'. 

Logically, you'd ask....how do you survive without a job in Germany?  Social welfare?  If you walk into any Job-Center, to continually approve your Hartz-IV status, they'd demand that you show some effort at getting a job.  That means submitting for jobs, and sending out resumes. Obviously, these five aren't on the Hartz-IV program.

So you go to the next question, where's the income?  You have to have clothing, pocket money for beer and marijuana, along with some food-money.  You can't get from your position under the bridge or from the tent.....to some protest site 300 kilometers away....without using commercial means (train, bus, car). 

There is some income or allowance being handed out, via some unknown foundation or private group. 

The judge in this case?  Maybe he'll buy into the statement, that they are full-time activists with no real income or occupation.  Personally, I'd start to ask about the people behind your group and how they hand you the money.  Tax-wise, there's some funny smell about this story.  But the judge might just want to reach some end-point, and hand the five several months in some local jail....just to end the mess.

This brings me to this odd pondering of thought....just how many no-pay-no-work activists exist in Germany today?  A dozen?  A hundred?  A thousand? 

Where exactly do these revolutionary type folks intend to be in ten to twenty years?  Will this be their life occupation....retiring in forty years, to get free money via social welfare, because they never worked a day or put a single Euro into the pension system? 

Behind all of this comical behavior, you just sense that there's some focus group or foundation, with protest agendas in their mind, and they've hired up some private army to accomplish this.  In some ways, it's a odd prospective....you have to wonder where this would lead a nation in the future.