This spy episode has gone onto the next phase....tossing the US spy chief in Berlin at the embassy out. There are two methods to this type of event.....with expulsion the more drastic one. This was simply the method of calling the guy in, and giving him the paperwork that he must leave within a reasonable amount of time.
The curious turn that occurred today....was that the interior ministry stood up and noted that they had reviewed the 200-odd documents that spy number one had passed over for twenty-five thousand Euro. What they indicated was that the value was pretty low....with the material all about internal operations and schedules. It was carefully worded....but you'd get the impression that whatever the US got....was worthless, and the twenty-five thousand Euro was basically thrown away.
This kinda makes me wonder if the US took the 200-odd documents and put five guys on translating them.....and then spent $300,000 on the services of various analysts.....to reach the eventual conclusion of worthless intelligence. Or did the analysts just shake their heads.....file the material....and figure some management idiot must have thought this was worth the money.
This brings me to the odd view of the US back in the 1970s....when we were deep into the cold war. The US prioritized things and they really wanted to know the absolute pure GDP of the Soviet Union, and how much went toward the military structure. For years....it was estimated with bits and pieces of intelligence that they gathered. Over the past decade....the Russians put out various documents freely, and it basically suggested that the Soviets spent a heck of a lot more than we imagined or had gathered via our intelligence. Was our intelligence efforts wasted? It's hard to say.
This spy business is difficult to measure.....kinda like walking into an antique shop and thinking you got a $7,000 painting from France, and then discovering it's a $8 painting instead.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
ZDF's Bogus Show
Last week, ZDF (our channel two on the public-run TV listing) ran two shows....each around two hours each (no commercials).
It was a poll-like show. One for the most noted man in Germany. The other....the most noted woman in Germany. I watched the ladies show. I sat there....mostly scratching my head....how some notable German women who were big names in the 1980s....were near the bottom, but a couple of German female soccer or ski athletes were way above them. Some big name singers made the list....some didn't.
What the network said at the time was that they had a very comprehensive poll....and it was the best of the best....in terms of results.
Well....it took around five days for ZDF to admit that the original method they described in putting the listing together....failed. Once groups on the internet realized their "star" was up on the poll....they voted more than you'd think. So, somehow....someway...ZDF figured a method to drop the internet results and just one single method with minimal value.
So, both shows were built around this bogus idea, and ran on two separate nights. You can figure that they spent at least half-a-million on each show to get the big-name stars there.....put the production together....add the video and commentary.....and get the production crew lined up. All of that....coming out of TV tax revenue.
ZDF apparently got caught in this lie....and there's some talk now via German news media sites that someone will sue someone over the fib. The best you can say is that it was a good idea in the beginning, but once you suggested to let the public vote via the internet....you were opening up a can of worms. On the men's side.....Adolph Hitler could have easily gotten votes and wound up being the most popular guy in Germany since 1945.....if you allowed polling to take place like suggested.
We are at a point where both ZDF and ADD both have credibility problems. They might still have a good favorability ranking with folks over the age of sixty....but once you get down into the 20-to-40 year old crowd.....it's not exactly positive numbers.
The funny thing now....folks will still quote this poll used to pick the top fifty men or women.....thinking it's all accurate, and it's a totally bogus poll.
It was a poll-like show. One for the most noted man in Germany. The other....the most noted woman in Germany. I watched the ladies show. I sat there....mostly scratching my head....how some notable German women who were big names in the 1980s....were near the bottom, but a couple of German female soccer or ski athletes were way above them. Some big name singers made the list....some didn't.
What the network said at the time was that they had a very comprehensive poll....and it was the best of the best....in terms of results.
Well....it took around five days for ZDF to admit that the original method they described in putting the listing together....failed. Once groups on the internet realized their "star" was up on the poll....they voted more than you'd think. So, somehow....someway...ZDF figured a method to drop the internet results and just one single method with minimal value.
So, both shows were built around this bogus idea, and ran on two separate nights. You can figure that they spent at least half-a-million on each show to get the big-name stars there.....put the production together....add the video and commentary.....and get the production crew lined up. All of that....coming out of TV tax revenue.
ZDF apparently got caught in this lie....and there's some talk now via German news media sites that someone will sue someone over the fib. The best you can say is that it was a good idea in the beginning, but once you suggested to let the public vote via the internet....you were opening up a can of worms. On the men's side.....Adolph Hitler could have easily gotten votes and wound up being the most popular guy in Germany since 1945.....if you allowed polling to take place like suggested.
We are at a point where both ZDF and ADD both have credibility problems. They might still have a good favorability ranking with folks over the age of sixty....but once you get down into the 20-to-40 year old crowd.....it's not exactly positive numbers.
The funny thing now....folks will still quote this poll used to pick the top fifty men or women.....thinking it's all accurate, and it's a totally bogus poll.
The Glass Story
Generally, there are around eight to ten beer glass choices.....and if they really get into this business, you might discover your German associate has twenty different styles. If you drink Bitburger.....he'll want to only use his Bitburger stein. If you drink Falkensteiner Ur-Weiss....it'll be a particular glass. On and on.
Wine falls into the same issue. My best guess is that there are at least thirty different glasses that the public might see on occasion, and the general house stock will include at least six of those wine glasses. Apple wine? There's generally two glasses....one small and one extra-large (at least in my opinion).
Water? It rarely goes past one small glass and one large glass.
Soda? If you ask for a Coke, it's pretty good odds that you will get a Coke glass used. Pepsi? Probably a Pepsi glass. Don't even bring up Mountain Dew (they do sell it, although it's not the same taste).
All of this leads me to the reality of people thinking and obsessed with giving you a beer in the right type container. You could hold your hand up and just say you'll sip the beer straight from the bottle.....which might lead your host to ask "why" and if something is wrong.
The odd thing about this is that barely a hundred years ago....if you went into any village and beer was offered....there was likely just stein mugs offered to drink the localized beer. This obsession with glasses is a recent thing....maybe in the past fifty years when brewers started to deliver special glasses to the local pubs and gasthauses. People picked up on this habit and took it home. Local grocery operations started to market the same glasses and everyone simply picked up a stock of six to eight glasses....thus building up a large bar area of just glasses alone.
So don't be shocked when you notice twelve different steins in your friends bar. He's just a bit picky about how he drinks.
Monday, July 7, 2014
This Spy Business
The weekend gave the news media and political figures time to wrestle with the newest of spy episodes.
What generally came out out via several sources....is that this BND guy (German CIA)....accepted 25,000 Euro to produce roughly 200 documents (numbers go up and down on the quantity here).
Questions? Well....who paid this to the BND guy? Did they just pull out a manilla envelope and hand it to the guy at some coffee shop in Bonn or ice cream shop in Bingen? What did the guy do with the money? Did he declare any for taxes....will he have to pay taxes? If he's sent off to prison....will he sue the CIA later for his pension? What does this all say about the pay scale of various German government workers? Was this BND guy making 20,000 Euro ($27,000 a year) a year after taxes?
Several German political figures said it's time to toss the don't-spy-on-our-friends policy, and start spying on France, the UK, and the US. Course, what they didn't say is that it'd mean they'd have to go out find probably three-hundred million Euro to start a bold new program, and continue to squeeze the German tax revenue budget even more.
Recruiting Germans to be spies? I can imagine this German HR guy.....going through three-hundred resumes to find five folks who could pretend to be spies and sit around some neighborhood in Arlington....collecting data. The BND would have to expand out by double it's present size.....to not only have agents in various countries.....but to have the smart folks residing in Germany who can analyze and put value on the data collected. All of this means....more cost....more taxes.....more oversight....more political arguments over who you spy on (would Russia make the list? Would you put five guys in Switzerland? Would you put fifteen spies into the Vatican?).
This episode with the BND guy was pretty stupid, and it's hard to imagine the value of what was gained (the documents) versus the change in German attitude. All of this will bring up the NSA apparatus in Germany....the current relationship with the German version of the NSA and the US's own NSA.....and probably start some spiral into effect over the US military remaining in Germany. Sooner or later....some magnificent screw-up and bigger spy accusation....will cause the US to remove it's troop structure and leave Germany. It might be five years....it might be twenty....but it's on some timetable and likely to occur.
What next? I would guess that some in-depth review of every single BND guy will occur now, and in twelve months....at least ten more will be found to have dealt with Russian, British, French, and US interests. All of this will come back to suggest that BND guys holding secrets.....are not paid at a sufficient level.....and that a major watchful-eye needs to be mounted to spy on the spies.....daily.
The saying works well here....nothing good of this will come.
What generally came out out via several sources....is that this BND guy (German CIA)....accepted 25,000 Euro to produce roughly 200 documents (numbers go up and down on the quantity here).
Questions? Well....who paid this to the BND guy? Did they just pull out a manilla envelope and hand it to the guy at some coffee shop in Bonn or ice cream shop in Bingen? What did the guy do with the money? Did he declare any for taxes....will he have to pay taxes? If he's sent off to prison....will he sue the CIA later for his pension? What does this all say about the pay scale of various German government workers? Was this BND guy making 20,000 Euro ($27,000 a year) a year after taxes?
Several German political figures said it's time to toss the don't-spy-on-our-friends policy, and start spying on France, the UK, and the US. Course, what they didn't say is that it'd mean they'd have to go out find probably three-hundred million Euro to start a bold new program, and continue to squeeze the German tax revenue budget even more.
Recruiting Germans to be spies? I can imagine this German HR guy.....going through three-hundred resumes to find five folks who could pretend to be spies and sit around some neighborhood in Arlington....collecting data. The BND would have to expand out by double it's present size.....to not only have agents in various countries.....but to have the smart folks residing in Germany who can analyze and put value on the data collected. All of this means....more cost....more taxes.....more oversight....more political arguments over who you spy on (would Russia make the list? Would you put five guys in Switzerland? Would you put fifteen spies into the Vatican?).
This episode with the BND guy was pretty stupid, and it's hard to imagine the value of what was gained (the documents) versus the change in German attitude. All of this will bring up the NSA apparatus in Germany....the current relationship with the German version of the NSA and the US's own NSA.....and probably start some spiral into effect over the US military remaining in Germany. Sooner or later....some magnificent screw-up and bigger spy accusation....will cause the US to remove it's troop structure and leave Germany. It might be five years....it might be twenty....but it's on some timetable and likely to occur.
What next? I would guess that some in-depth review of every single BND guy will occur now, and in twelve months....at least ten more will be found to have dealt with Russian, British, French, and US interests. All of this will come back to suggest that BND guys holding secrets.....are not paid at a sufficient level.....and that a major watchful-eye needs to be mounted to spy on the spies.....daily.
The saying works well here....nothing good of this will come.
The New Maut or Autobahn Tax Concept
The entire new concept for Maut (autobahn tax) will be released today here in Germany. There were several pieces of the concept released yesterday.....so most of what is said today won't shock anyone.
Up until fifteen years ago....Maut didn't exist....then came the trucking experiment where electronic collectors were installed, and folks were charged for usage on the autobahn. Ever since that point....there's been this chatter over the idea of making foreigners going through Germany pay something. The election last year brought this idea to the top of the public's interest, and it's been under a planning stage ever since.
The present idea....spoken via several folks yesterday.....is that you'd have a decal for your window if you were a non-German vehicle....and there would be a tax on that vehicle to get the decal. The surprise is that it would not be a standard deal.....like 100 Euro for a yearly decal as some discussed over the past couple of months.
The new idea is that the type of emissions that the vehicle put out.....would figure into this, and the engine size as well. All of this would mean that you might pay as little as 20 Euro.....or as much as 150 Euro.
The hostility brewing here? Not from within Germany.....it's probably a eighty-percent approval rate for some type of taxation on foreign usage of German highways right now. But the Dutch, the French, the Austrians, and the Italians.....they are fairly unhappy about this. To them.....utilizing this system will simply add onto the bill of transiting Germany. They've all promised to sue in court and take this up the EU chain.
I suspect that the method of taxation fixed into this system.....owes itself to the court issues....and they think that most courts will admit that fairness was designed with the environmental view of things.
What may happen? The EU court system might step in.....to order a suspension of the autobahn Maut once this passes via the Bundestag. A one-year review might stall it.....but I suspect that they will admit that it's fair and folks need to get used to doing it. I might add.....it probably will not deliver the amount of capital that people think, and this might only be stage one.....of a four-stage affair.
Up until fifteen years ago....Maut didn't exist....then came the trucking experiment where electronic collectors were installed, and folks were charged for usage on the autobahn. Ever since that point....there's been this chatter over the idea of making foreigners going through Germany pay something. The election last year brought this idea to the top of the public's interest, and it's been under a planning stage ever since.
The present idea....spoken via several folks yesterday.....is that you'd have a decal for your window if you were a non-German vehicle....and there would be a tax on that vehicle to get the decal. The surprise is that it would not be a standard deal.....like 100 Euro for a yearly decal as some discussed over the past couple of months.
The new idea is that the type of emissions that the vehicle put out.....would figure into this, and the engine size as well. All of this would mean that you might pay as little as 20 Euro.....or as much as 150 Euro.
The hostility brewing here? Not from within Germany.....it's probably a eighty-percent approval rate for some type of taxation on foreign usage of German highways right now. But the Dutch, the French, the Austrians, and the Italians.....they are fairly unhappy about this. To them.....utilizing this system will simply add onto the bill of transiting Germany. They've all promised to sue in court and take this up the EU chain.
I suspect that the method of taxation fixed into this system.....owes itself to the court issues....and they think that most courts will admit that fairness was designed with the environmental view of things.
What may happen? The EU court system might step in.....to order a suspension of the autobahn Maut once this passes via the Bundestag. A one-year review might stall it.....but I suspect that they will admit that it's fair and folks need to get used to doing it. I might add.....it probably will not deliver the amount of capital that people think, and this might only be stage one.....of a four-stage affair.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
The TUV Story
Without the sticker.....the cops can pull you over and it's a stiff fine.
You get a vehicle inspection every two years, and the inspector will note the situation by applying the sticker.
This weekend, it's come out in Wiesbaden (via the local paper, the Wiesbaden Kurier).....that an audit occurred with the local office in Wiesbaden. It was an unannounced audit and revealed that they are 3,500 stickers short.
This got the audit folks all disturbed, and it's turned into an investigation of sorts. What they say is that one single decal on the black market....is worth 300 Euro minimum, and could go as high as 500 Euro.
You find a garage mechanic will will produce fake inspection papers, and a real decal.....for a vehicle that might have major problems (costing several thousand Euro to fix), and you got yourself a pretty good deal. You avoid the repairs and just pay for the decal and fakeness.
I've been over to the office in town. There might be a total of a dozen people who deal with the decals and have access in their safe. You figure a decal delivery to the organization is for a two-year period, and if they were stolen....it had to be in the past year or so. As for previous issues like this? I'm guessing at the end of period of holding.....they get a written order to destroy the remaining decals....sign a paper to that effect....and supposedly shred the remaining decals. Nothing goes back to a central office.....so you could sneak around and dump a hundred here or five-hundred there, and likely never get figured out unless an audit occurred.
As for the value of 3,500 decals? Figure roughly a million. The person in the office who took these....is probably a middle-man, and probably got twenty-five percent of the value on the black-market. So, as the audit investigation progresses.....they will be looking for someone who suddenly had a quarter-million Euro in bank deposits, property purchases, or increased lifestyle within the past two years. Course, they may have been there for two decades, and continually took a thousand decals here and there, and have a fairly good lifestyle accumulated over the years.
Yearly trips to Greece? A new Audi TT? A Rolex watch? High-end shoes? Expensive lifestyle?
Yeah, and they will take you down to the police station to explain these.
An odd story. I'm guessing it'll take a year before they crack the case and get the person to agree to some form of guilt. Getting the decals back? Forget it. The profits from the decal sales? Forget about that because it's likely already spent. Firing the individual is about all you will see on this deal.
The Spy Story
While some news outlets have turned this inside-out and upside-down.....there's only a couple of facts to this week's German spy arrested for spying for the US story.
This guy in question....was supposedly a BND guy....the German version of the CIA. There is some agreement apparently that he'd provided some services to the US CIA folks since 2012.....although no one says what. Pay was figured into this, but you have to wonder how they paid him....cash? And how much?
So, what the CIA asked him to provide which got him tripped up? The Germans have an advisory committee from the Bundestag that is reviewing the whole NSA affair....aka....the story behind Snowden and his files.
The advisory committee....composed of Bundestag members....has a list of things that they want to review. This BND guy got a copy and provided it to the CIA. The Germans say the list was classified, which may be true....but just about any journalist in Germany could have approached several members of the committee and probably gotten half the list from them in a on-the-spot interview and with no hassle.
All of this lead to the Chancellor asking the US ambassador in Berlin to come over and have a chat. It's not a pleasant meeting.....I can imagine. Why would you spy on us, and for what gain is this supposed to achieve? The ambassador may not have even known what was on the CIA's agenda or that this one BND guy was working both sides of the street.
So all of this brings me to three questions: (1) How did they trip up this guy and figure this out (a German mole within the CIA)? (2) Why would the CIA or US government care what the committee is investigating on US NSA gathering (unless the CIA doesn't know the full extent of what the NSA is doing and is prying into this to grasp the full story of their associates)? (3) Finally, in the old days....there was tit-for-tat.....after the US arrested a Russian spy, the Russians would arrest two or three US spies. Will the US now try hard to find a German spy in the US and arrest him....offering to trade for their mole?
For the other sixty-six US spies in Germany.....you might want to double-check your cover story and ensure that the neighbors aren't suspecting anything unusual, and plan for escape across the border into Switzerland. Build up a stock of cigarettes (Marlboro brand is preferred by border crossing guards), wrap up your escape money into twenty-Euro clips and put twenty into your fake Bavarian hat, and only drink pure spring water as you transit the Alps (the beer will slow your escape).
This guy in question....was supposedly a BND guy....the German version of the CIA. There is some agreement apparently that he'd provided some services to the US CIA folks since 2012.....although no one says what. Pay was figured into this, but you have to wonder how they paid him....cash? And how much?
So, what the CIA asked him to provide which got him tripped up? The Germans have an advisory committee from the Bundestag that is reviewing the whole NSA affair....aka....the story behind Snowden and his files.
The advisory committee....composed of Bundestag members....has a list of things that they want to review. This BND guy got a copy and provided it to the CIA. The Germans say the list was classified, which may be true....but just about any journalist in Germany could have approached several members of the committee and probably gotten half the list from them in a on-the-spot interview and with no hassle.
All of this lead to the Chancellor asking the US ambassador in Berlin to come over and have a chat. It's not a pleasant meeting.....I can imagine. Why would you spy on us, and for what gain is this supposed to achieve? The ambassador may not have even known what was on the CIA's agenda or that this one BND guy was working both sides of the street.
So all of this brings me to three questions: (1) How did they trip up this guy and figure this out (a German mole within the CIA)? (2) Why would the CIA or US government care what the committee is investigating on US NSA gathering (unless the CIA doesn't know the full extent of what the NSA is doing and is prying into this to grasp the full story of their associates)? (3) Finally, in the old days....there was tit-for-tat.....after the US arrested a Russian spy, the Russians would arrest two or three US spies. Will the US now try hard to find a German spy in the US and arrest him....offering to trade for their mole?
For the other sixty-six US spies in Germany.....you might want to double-check your cover story and ensure that the neighbors aren't suspecting anything unusual, and plan for escape across the border into Switzerland. Build up a stock of cigarettes (Marlboro brand is preferred by border crossing guards), wrap up your escape money into twenty-Euro clips and put twenty into your fake Bavarian hat, and only drink pure spring water as you transit the Alps (the beer will slow your escape).
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Walter White Has Arrived
In the past twenty-four hours.....Germans kinda woke up and got this small tidbit of news.....one of the lesser of the top fifty SPD political leaders in Berlin....was noted trying to buy 100 grams of meth. In the real world.....it'd be around $24,000. German prices? I'm not sure. He said the hundred grams were for personal use. I kinda have doubts on that story.
What they say (through four different German media versions)....is that the SPD party had to waive his immunity before the cops could issue a search warrant. I'm only guessing here....but this likely took at least six to twelve hours to meet and discuss the legal situation. The guy was likely warned, and the cop searched to find.....mostly nothing. At least, that's the indication by the media.
All of this brings me to several observations. Meth is on the rise in Germany....supposedly riding in from Czech. For a major player in the SPD to be noted messing with the stuff.....possibly being a dealer....it kinds hints that the circle of friends around him or other political players....are using the stuff.
The immunity thing? That's an issue as well. With enough warning.....you can destroy or lose evidence rather easily. It's remarkable that no one in the Bundestag wants to get rid of the immunity deal.
What happens now? All they can generally say is that he tried to purchase a major haul of drugs.....which goes nowhere if he didn't have the meth on him and he didn't take possession of the hundred grams.
The SPD is probably willing to part ways with this guy quickly and warn everyone associated with him to find new friendships.
As for the dealer status? I'm guessing that he would have turned the stuff around in a week or two.....gone back for more.....and has a fair amount of cash somewhere within reach. Hundred thousand Euro? Maybe. The tax revenue guys would be interested in this.....if it weren't so political.
So, Walter White has arrived and doing quiet well in Germany.
What they say (through four different German media versions)....is that the SPD party had to waive his immunity before the cops could issue a search warrant. I'm only guessing here....but this likely took at least six to twelve hours to meet and discuss the legal situation. The guy was likely warned, and the cop searched to find.....mostly nothing. At least, that's the indication by the media.
All of this brings me to several observations. Meth is on the rise in Germany....supposedly riding in from Czech. For a major player in the SPD to be noted messing with the stuff.....possibly being a dealer....it kinds hints that the circle of friends around him or other political players....are using the stuff.
The immunity thing? That's an issue as well. With enough warning.....you can destroy or lose evidence rather easily. It's remarkable that no one in the Bundestag wants to get rid of the immunity deal.
What happens now? All they can generally say is that he tried to purchase a major haul of drugs.....which goes nowhere if he didn't have the meth on him and he didn't take possession of the hundred grams.
The SPD is probably willing to part ways with this guy quickly and warn everyone associated with him to find new friendships.
As for the dealer status? I'm guessing that he would have turned the stuff around in a week or two.....gone back for more.....and has a fair amount of cash somewhere within reach. Hundred thousand Euro? Maybe. The tax revenue guys would be interested in this.....if it weren't so political.
So, Walter White has arrived and doing quiet well in Germany.
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