Focus brought up this short story over the German Army (Bundeswehr).
Just about every month for the past couple of years, some big negative has come out over supply-management issue within the German Army. It's typically that tanks can't run because parts are in short supply, or aircraft are grounded because this part isn't in abundance. Everyone in the Bundeswehr kinda laughs over the shortfalls because it's such a routine thing now.
So in this episode today...it's about food....the rations that you'd tote around in your backpack for a couple of days out on the trail.
In the German Army, they refer to these as 'one-man packages'. A normal battalion would order via their military source these packages and they'd be used in training scenarios where you weren't in some camp or capable of getting hot meals via a traveling chow-hall. This would be a situation where forty guys were going hiking for two days, and each guy needed two of these packages to sustain himself.
In a normal package, there would be food, utensils (plastic knives, forks, spoons) and some kind of coffee and juice mix
The typical 'main course'? Well, a couple of years ago, there were five basic meals that you might end up with: beef patty with tomato sauce, vegetable stir fry, goulash, lentil stew with sausages, an Italian noodle dish, and Yugoslavian-style sausages. There were usually two spreads in the package....a fruit-like spread, and a meat-like spread. Bread and biscuits were usually included.
You can figure for an entire day....there's probably five to six thousand calories in each package, if you ate every single item, and drank all the juicy-juice.
Why the shortage? No one is clear about this. My humble guess is that there's only one or two companies in Germany who manufacture these and they tend to make a batch....then turn off the manufacture for a month or two, until they see a need to make more products. So if some unit came up and said their stock was down to zero, and they wanted a pallet in ten days, the odds are that they'd have to wait thirty days for the purchase and delivery to occur.
An embarrassment? It's not something that you'd really like to discuss in a public forum or via the newspapers.
Saturday, February 3, 2018
Friday, February 2, 2018
The Book Collection Story
At some point after the coup in Turkey (summer of 2016), a Islamic scholar at Frankfurt University....got some kind of invitation to take up Islamic studies in Turkey. The guy? Fuat Sezgin.
Fuat Sezgin had been at the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Sciences at the Goethe University since early 1980s.
In the time that he'd been there.....he'd been responsible for helping the university acquire almost 20,000 Islamic journals and books. It was one of the larger collections in Europe.
Well....Sezgin felt that the collection was personal property....NOT university property.
Sezgin attempted to pack up the entire collection and send it to Turkey....with the customs folks at the Frankfurt Flughafen intercepting the collection.
This drew into court activity and today....the court said that the collection is not personal property...it's a cultural collection, to be held by the German university system.
It's one of those odd episodes where you have to wonder what Turkey's prime plan was for the collection.
Fuat Sezgin had been at the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Sciences at the Goethe University since early 1980s.
In the time that he'd been there.....he'd been responsible for helping the university acquire almost 20,000 Islamic journals and books. It was one of the larger collections in Europe.
Well....Sezgin felt that the collection was personal property....NOT university property.
Sezgin attempted to pack up the entire collection and send it to Turkey....with the customs folks at the Frankfurt Flughafen intercepting the collection.
This drew into court activity and today....the court said that the collection is not personal property...it's a cultural collection, to be held by the German university system.
It's one of those odd episodes where you have to wonder what Turkey's prime plan was for the collection.
A New German Foreign Minister
Various German news sources have commented today that the SPD Party chief (Martin Schulz) has put himself in for the new coalition job of Foreign Minister (rather than Vice-Chancellor). Oddly, the present SPD member....Gabriel....who heads the position, would prefer to stay.
This brings to surface the whole 'switch-out' back in December of 2016....where they brought Schulz from the EU position back into the SPD Party and made him party chief (replacing Gabriel) and forcing Gabriel to step down as Vice-Chancellor, and sliding him over to Foreign Minister.
There is not much love between the two, and some folks within the Party think that the SPD would have done better with Gabriel as their primary leader.
What obviously happens? If the coalition deal is voted upon and approved, I'd expect Schulz to turn into the next Foreign Minister, and about half of the Party supporters to be aggravated with him. The Party has some problems and the two state elections this year (Hessen and Bavaria) might turn into weak performances for the party.
Gabriel? Well....I think he'll slide into this a plain membership deal and get less attention for a while.
This brings to surface the whole 'switch-out' back in December of 2016....where they brought Schulz from the EU position back into the SPD Party and made him party chief (replacing Gabriel) and forcing Gabriel to step down as Vice-Chancellor, and sliding him over to Foreign Minister.
There is not much love between the two, and some folks within the Party think that the SPD would have done better with Gabriel as their primary leader.
What obviously happens? If the coalition deal is voted upon and approved, I'd expect Schulz to turn into the next Foreign Minister, and about half of the Party supporters to be aggravated with him. The Party has some problems and the two state elections this year (Hessen and Bavaria) might turn into weak performances for the party.
Gabriel? Well....I think he'll slide into this a plain membership deal and get less attention for a while.
The Thing About Nymph Gals
Being from Alabama, I would readily agree that my art admiration is fairly limited. It was not until the 1990s and I walked through a dozen art museums that I gained some amount of respect for the artsy culture.
The topic of Waterhouse came up today with ARD (German public TV, Channel One), and they wrote a short piece on this big debate going on within the UK and a museum up in Manchester, UK.
Some folks want the piece removed from public view.....some want it to stay in public view.
The piece is entitled: "Hylas and the Nymphs".
Where this all fits in? Well....Greek mythology.
You see, there was this young guy...Hylas, who was the son of a King (Theiodamas of the Dryopians).
The Dryopian crowd were a tribal group who lived in an area today referred to as Doris, Greece. It was a hilly area. Generally, it's accepted that this was where folks would go when they got expelled as a tribal unit and probably not exactly prime farming territory.
As the legend goes....at least the Romans say this....Hylas' father actually was Hercultes and his mother was some nymph called Melite. Nymphs, for the lesser intellectual folks....were young nimble ladies who were into natural stuff.....no pork or fatty beef....no beer...preferring to sing and dance....and were usually discussed as lusty maidens. Guys who made up stories and legends on nymphs....could lead you on for a full hour and make you weep over the fact that you never met a nymph. In simple terms,nymphs were like Madonna, Marilyn Monroe and Wonder Woman all tied into one.
As the story goes....at some point, King Heracles took on Hylas to be a guy to carry his sword for him and later taught him the fine art of warrior-stuff. The Hylas kid respected King Heracles.
At some in the travels of the Hylas kid...he ended up being kidnapped by nymph-gals at the springs of Pegae. There at the springs, romance blossomed and Hylas got some nymph-gal by the name of Mysia all hyped up.
According to legend, this Hylas kid just up and vanished, with Mysia. King Heracles was all disturbed about the young lad and searched for a fair amount of time for him....never finding him.
No one says much about statues going up for Hylas, or his gal Mysia....but around the campfire for years and years...folks would describe the young lad out on some big adventure in life and falling for the nymph-gal.
The picture painted? Well, some guy sat and imagined the scene and how Hylas just stood there in some moment of awe. Today....2018....the image of these nymph-gals is such....that it's better not to imagine such women. Well....that's what some Brit folks say.
The Appeals Story
Focus (the German news publication, similar to 'Newsweek') did a brief 12-line piece today over a topic which is slowly moving up to be a top ten issue within the Bundestag (the German Parliament).
The subject? Legal challenges on failed asylum applications.
You see...if you were a migrant or immigrant in Germany....you have to submit an application, with some varying amount of evidence over who you are, your reason for migrating, and your background. A review occurs....taking weeks to months, then some German authority makes the decision. If you fail, you'd typically leave within a period of time....well, unless you filed a legal challenge to the asylum application.
Right now (at least as of 1 January)....the Germans were willing to admit that there are now 360,000 asylum challenges filed and in the court system.
Neither the government or journalists will speak much about this, but you could sit and imagine some application taking a minimum of one year....maybe even up to two years to be heard. But then....the judge might go and ask for paperwork or more evidence.....taking anywhere from a couple of weeks, to a couple of months, and onto another year or two. With various challenges, one after another....you could imagine some guy standing there with a failed visa, and using the court system for five to ten years to delay things.
All of this has caught some public interest, and frankly....gotten judges a bit intimidated. No one says much over the calendars of these judges, but you'd have to go and guess that some folks have a full calendar laid out for the next two years.
Adding to this conflict is the fact that the agency making this decision....rests in Nuremberg. So you are dragging some case-officer off his regular work, and requiring him to stand in front of a judge and explain how he came to such-and-such decision. You can figure that case-officer will have waste at least two days minimum in lining up his paperwork, and reviewed his decision a second time....then be challenged by some judge for failing to take into consideration X, Y or Z.
So Focus says....the federal government (with Chancellor Merkel leading this) wants a discussion with the prime ministers of each state (16 of them). They all want to modify procedural law. They don't want this to be a long delayed process. The solution? It's not clearly defined in this article. No one wants to hire more judges because they see this coming to reduced phase.
One gets the impression that they'd like to go and bring in retired judges for a year, and wipe out the bulk of these applications or appeals.
My suggestion would be to create and hire up twenty-odd judges out of the Nuremberg and the only thing that they'd ever do is judge over applications. I'd take the whole application process away from the states and just make this one national or federal process.
Course, you might sit and wonder....how did the 360,000 folks fail? That's the funny side of this story.....you don't know. Were they false identification situations? Well....you just don't know. The fact that the government really doesn't discuss this, and the news folks don't seem to want to know....would lead to wonder about the quantity here (360,000) and what failed these folks.
The subject? Legal challenges on failed asylum applications.
You see...if you were a migrant or immigrant in Germany....you have to submit an application, with some varying amount of evidence over who you are, your reason for migrating, and your background. A review occurs....taking weeks to months, then some German authority makes the decision. If you fail, you'd typically leave within a period of time....well, unless you filed a legal challenge to the asylum application.
Right now (at least as of 1 January)....the Germans were willing to admit that there are now 360,000 asylum challenges filed and in the court system.
Neither the government or journalists will speak much about this, but you could sit and imagine some application taking a minimum of one year....maybe even up to two years to be heard. But then....the judge might go and ask for paperwork or more evidence.....taking anywhere from a couple of weeks, to a couple of months, and onto another year or two. With various challenges, one after another....you could imagine some guy standing there with a failed visa, and using the court system for five to ten years to delay things.
All of this has caught some public interest, and frankly....gotten judges a bit intimidated. No one says much over the calendars of these judges, but you'd have to go and guess that some folks have a full calendar laid out for the next two years.
Adding to this conflict is the fact that the agency making this decision....rests in Nuremberg. So you are dragging some case-officer off his regular work, and requiring him to stand in front of a judge and explain how he came to such-and-such decision. You can figure that case-officer will have waste at least two days minimum in lining up his paperwork, and reviewed his decision a second time....then be challenged by some judge for failing to take into consideration X, Y or Z.
So Focus says....the federal government (with Chancellor Merkel leading this) wants a discussion with the prime ministers of each state (16 of them). They all want to modify procedural law. They don't want this to be a long delayed process. The solution? It's not clearly defined in this article. No one wants to hire more judges because they see this coming to reduced phase.
One gets the impression that they'd like to go and bring in retired judges for a year, and wipe out the bulk of these applications or appeals.
My suggestion would be to create and hire up twenty-odd judges out of the Nuremberg and the only thing that they'd ever do is judge over applications. I'd take the whole application process away from the states and just make this one national or federal process.
Course, you might sit and wonder....how did the 360,000 folks fail? That's the funny side of this story.....you don't know. Were they false identification situations? Well....you just don't know. The fact that the government really doesn't discuss this, and the news folks don't seem to want to know....would lead to wonder about the quantity here (360,000) and what failed these folks.
The Table Water Story
Being from Alabama, I'm kinda used to the idea that when you walk into a regular local restaurant (non-franchise)....that some waitress brings out a glass of ice water....free of charge. The water of course....is local city-water....not from some French glacier or costing you 1.80 Euro.
Typically, in Germany....especially in the summer, you might see fifty-percent of folks order a small bottle of water for the table and share out glass of commercial water. The idea of tap water? I don't think there's a chance that you can find such a thing in Germany.
So, it came up recently as an EU discussion topic....because the EU is so dedicated to fixing 'broke things'. Most BREXIT would interrupt the conversation at this point, and suggest this is why they got so anti-EU. But that's the pure nature of the EU today....nothing can stand unaltered.
The EU would like to fix the table water 'problem'. So there's this Drinking Water Directive being talked about.
Someone did the statistical analysis and said that roughly 80 percent of all Europeans have a trust problem with drinking tap water. The ARD (public TV in Germany, Channel One) says this. I tend to agree, there is this perception of tap water being untrusted.
Some PhD folks in the EU did the analysis and says the actual real true risk of potential health hazards rests at about four percent. Why four-percent? Some countries are lax....some allow for issues to exist. So NOT ALL water in the EU is the same. Rather shocking but it's been that way since the Roman days when water consumption and movement was a big deal. The EU says they can write up a regulation to set limits on issues and pollutants, and fix this whole mess.
Then this EU logic would kick in....if you had pure tap water everywhere....you wouldn't need to order water at the restaurant. The fact that French Evian glacier water is awful dang tasty? Or that Sachsen Quelle stille water is really tasty? That concept hasn't really occurred with the EU folks.
At this point in the story....I wanted to ask the EU folks if they sipped water from the Brussels water supply but I kinda doubt that they do....and that they also buy French or German bottled water.
The EU then came up with this study, which they don't discuss much over who they asked or how they phrased the questions....but they think if water quality was better, then plastic bottles of water would decrease by 17-percent, and you could start a trend.
Somewhere in this mix is this new EU initiative called "Water is a Human Right". If you just had clean water, your life would be better.
I live off in some valley in central Germany where the local mountainside has a spring that runs down into a small city building....which filters the water, and then feeds it into a big tank. While I am awful partial about drinking French Evian bottled water (it's been that way for over 15 years)....I can readily drink my German town's water with a couple of ice cubes, and think it's pretty tasty and safe. Naturally, I refer to it often as 'almost glacier water'.....just ten thousand years ago, some glacier sat over the top of the valley.
Where is all of this leading onto? Well....I would suspect in five years that when they hit 99-percent safe water across all of the EU....some regulation will come to exist which says you (the restaurant or cafe or bar) MUST offer free tap water if asked. If you sit and ponder upon this whole thing....for the 1.80 Euro for that small bottle of water....the restaurant or bar is probably making a minimum of 20 cents off that sale. In an entire year, if you took up the whole profit margin of an average restaurant, all of this bottled water sales probably amount to 1-percent of the total profits. It's not much, but in a business where every single cent matters....it's something.
As for the EU? It's simply another brick in the wall over their need to fix just about everything possible, and proving the BREXIT argument once again.
The odds of me ever ordering some tap water at some German restaurant? Even if free? Maybe if I've had five or six German beers and gotten fairly drunk....I might accidentally ask for some tap water by accident, but that's about the only way that I'd order tap water.
Typically, in Germany....especially in the summer, you might see fifty-percent of folks order a small bottle of water for the table and share out glass of commercial water. The idea of tap water? I don't think there's a chance that you can find such a thing in Germany.
So, it came up recently as an EU discussion topic....because the EU is so dedicated to fixing 'broke things'. Most BREXIT would interrupt the conversation at this point, and suggest this is why they got so anti-EU. But that's the pure nature of the EU today....nothing can stand unaltered.
The EU would like to fix the table water 'problem'. So there's this Drinking Water Directive being talked about.
Someone did the statistical analysis and said that roughly 80 percent of all Europeans have a trust problem with drinking tap water. The ARD (public TV in Germany, Channel One) says this. I tend to agree, there is this perception of tap water being untrusted.
Some PhD folks in the EU did the analysis and says the actual real true risk of potential health hazards rests at about four percent. Why four-percent? Some countries are lax....some allow for issues to exist. So NOT ALL water in the EU is the same. Rather shocking but it's been that way since the Roman days when water consumption and movement was a big deal. The EU says they can write up a regulation to set limits on issues and pollutants, and fix this whole mess.
Then this EU logic would kick in....if you had pure tap water everywhere....you wouldn't need to order water at the restaurant. The fact that French Evian glacier water is awful dang tasty? Or that Sachsen Quelle stille water is really tasty? That concept hasn't really occurred with the EU folks.
At this point in the story....I wanted to ask the EU folks if they sipped water from the Brussels water supply but I kinda doubt that they do....and that they also buy French or German bottled water.
The EU then came up with this study, which they don't discuss much over who they asked or how they phrased the questions....but they think if water quality was better, then plastic bottles of water would decrease by 17-percent, and you could start a trend.
Somewhere in this mix is this new EU initiative called "Water is a Human Right". If you just had clean water, your life would be better.
I live off in some valley in central Germany where the local mountainside has a spring that runs down into a small city building....which filters the water, and then feeds it into a big tank. While I am awful partial about drinking French Evian bottled water (it's been that way for over 15 years)....I can readily drink my German town's water with a couple of ice cubes, and think it's pretty tasty and safe. Naturally, I refer to it often as 'almost glacier water'.....just ten thousand years ago, some glacier sat over the top of the valley.
Where is all of this leading onto? Well....I would suspect in five years that when they hit 99-percent safe water across all of the EU....some regulation will come to exist which says you (the restaurant or cafe or bar) MUST offer free tap water if asked. If you sit and ponder upon this whole thing....for the 1.80 Euro for that small bottle of water....the restaurant or bar is probably making a minimum of 20 cents off that sale. In an entire year, if you took up the whole profit margin of an average restaurant, all of this bottled water sales probably amount to 1-percent of the total profits. It's not much, but in a business where every single cent matters....it's something.
As for the EU? It's simply another brick in the wall over their need to fix just about everything possible, and proving the BREXIT argument once again.
The odds of me ever ordering some tap water at some German restaurant? Even if free? Maybe if I've had five or six German beers and gotten fairly drunk....I might accidentally ask for some tap water by accident, but that's about the only way that I'd order tap water.
The Consequences Story
MDR (a regional public TV network from the eastern sections of Germany) came up with an article today over Freiberg. It's a major city in the Saxony state....with a university and roughly 40,000 people.
The topic of the article? The city (with the mayor and council in agreement) said 'enough', and won't be accepting any migrants or immigrants for the next four years. Reason? Well....it goes across the entire landscape.
They took in roughly 2,000 migrants and immigrants since 2013 as part of their effort for the nation. What they kinda discovered is that there are a number of social platforms required, and each takes up manpower, time, and resources.
Just to talk about living space or affordable apartments.....there was a problem.
Just to talk about German language and integration classes....there was a problem.
Just to take new kids into kindergarten....there was a problem.
Just to take new kids into schools.....there was a problem.
One might sit and think that the leadership and authority would have had some image of their landscape....their capabilities....and taken limits at various points. But no.....they never did (at least until now).
Getting new kids to some degree of German language? Well....the city discovered that you need working space for the classes, and more instructors.....which they hadn't really thought about or anticipated.
I sat and viewed the whole article. Just on the kindergarten slots....they figured they were missing a minimum of 200 seats. On additional classrooms required in the schools....they figured another dozen were needed within the city.
Political hot-topic? Yes. Both the Greens and Linke Party went against the city government vote, but the SPD and CDU groups within the city council carried the vote through.
So a four-year moratorium will occur. What happens in 2022? My guess is that a review by the city council will take place. The mess will have corrected itself to some degree by that point. Some 'white-flight' situations will occur with some townspeople moving ten kilometers away and resolving the city's problems by simply not living there. Maybe a mini-housing boom will occur with a dozen new apartment buildings built.
On the whole of it....this brings you full-circle and asking the question....did the Germans as a whole grasp what happens if you dumped a million-plus people into it? My general view is....no. The leadership at the national level (Berlin), through the sixteen states, and on down to three-hundred-odd cities that accepted a responsibility....did not grasp the full consequences, the cost, or the local impact.
Some major urban cities....like Hamburg or Essen....had the potential to absorb a fair number of immigrants, while admitting affordable housing shortages. But the lesser towns and cities? They all had a unlisted or unprinted limit....never realizing that it really did exist.
You can refer to this as simply a lesson learned, and that when some migration door is opened in the future...it'll likely be a controlled door.
The topic of the article? The city (with the mayor and council in agreement) said 'enough', and won't be accepting any migrants or immigrants for the next four years. Reason? Well....it goes across the entire landscape.
They took in roughly 2,000 migrants and immigrants since 2013 as part of their effort for the nation. What they kinda discovered is that there are a number of social platforms required, and each takes up manpower, time, and resources.
Just to talk about living space or affordable apartments.....there was a problem.
Just to talk about German language and integration classes....there was a problem.
Just to take new kids into kindergarten....there was a problem.
Just to take new kids into schools.....there was a problem.
One might sit and think that the leadership and authority would have had some image of their landscape....their capabilities....and taken limits at various points. But no.....they never did (at least until now).
Getting new kids to some degree of German language? Well....the city discovered that you need working space for the classes, and more instructors.....which they hadn't really thought about or anticipated.
I sat and viewed the whole article. Just on the kindergarten slots....they figured they were missing a minimum of 200 seats. On additional classrooms required in the schools....they figured another dozen were needed within the city.
Political hot-topic? Yes. Both the Greens and Linke Party went against the city government vote, but the SPD and CDU groups within the city council carried the vote through.
So a four-year moratorium will occur. What happens in 2022? My guess is that a review by the city council will take place. The mess will have corrected itself to some degree by that point. Some 'white-flight' situations will occur with some townspeople moving ten kilometers away and resolving the city's problems by simply not living there. Maybe a mini-housing boom will occur with a dozen new apartment buildings built.
On the whole of it....this brings you full-circle and asking the question....did the Germans as a whole grasp what happens if you dumped a million-plus people into it? My general view is....no. The leadership at the national level (Berlin), through the sixteen states, and on down to three-hundred-odd cities that accepted a responsibility....did not grasp the full consequences, the cost, or the local impact.
Some major urban cities....like Hamburg or Essen....had the potential to absorb a fair number of immigrants, while admitting affordable housing shortages. But the lesser towns and cities? They all had a unlisted or unprinted limit....never realizing that it really did exist.
You can refer to this as simply a lesson learned, and that when some migration door is opened in the future...it'll likely be a controlled door.
Thursday, February 1, 2018
German Basic Law
At some point yesterday, the political folks at the CDU/CSU and SPD Parties came to agree on a new package for education....involving tons of money (over a billion Euro), but it required a change to the German Constitution (the Basic Law).
It's a curious thing when you bring up the Basic Law and the continual need to adjust it. At least once a year, and sometimes more....the Germans come to agree to modify their Constitution. When they came to agree in 1949 on this newer Constitution....it was not designed to be a sacred document, but more so.....a living document.
If you pull out the English version of it, it tends to be more of a code, with details on how things should function.
A lot of this mentality over the living document situation goes to the heart of Germans thinking along the lines of 'fixing a problem'. If something won't fit or function correctly.....it has to be corrected. This fear or anxiety that you see in the US.....doesn't occur within the German system.
Between 1949 and 2009....there had been roughly fifty-five changes to the Basic Law.
It's a curious thing when you bring up the Basic Law and the continual need to adjust it. At least once a year, and sometimes more....the Germans come to agree to modify their Constitution. When they came to agree in 1949 on this newer Constitution....it was not designed to be a sacred document, but more so.....a living document.
If you pull out the English version of it, it tends to be more of a code, with details on how things should function.
A lot of this mentality over the living document situation goes to the heart of Germans thinking along the lines of 'fixing a problem'. If something won't fit or function correctly.....it has to be corrected. This fear or anxiety that you see in the US.....doesn't occur within the German system.
Between 1949 and 2009....there had been roughly fifty-five changes to the Basic Law.
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