8 posts tagged “germany”
German idealism and common sense have always been on a collision course. As Germany wishes to be a world champion in the campaign against global warming, yet again the worst in not making sense comes out in the country.
German transport minister Wolfgang Tiefensee plans a radical tax reform for vehicle owners. Instead of the size of the vehicle's motor, emission is Tiefensee's target. CO2, as well as microscopic dust and other emissions are to be the measure for higher taxation. Tiefensee's rationale is that the consumer is supposed to get an incentive (wirtschaftlicher Anreiz) to buy cleaner cars. Set aside the fact that taxation is not within Tiefensee's portfolio, there is an interesting point in this discussion.
"Economical incentive" has been a euphemistic synonym in Germany for years - always translating into something like "higher taxation for the consumer". Under his proposals, Tiefensee says, users of clean vehicles are to be rewarded at the expense of those using older, unclean vehicles. As a matter of fact, drivers as a whole are not supposed to pay more vehicle taxes.
If one were to examine the social effects of such taxation, it would probably mean that for wealthy drivers of four-wheeled monstrosities, called SUVs, the new taxation will probably not make any difference. Any amount of tax would probably of little importance to those who can afford the 80,000 Euro plus to purchase one of these vehicles. Those with new cars will probably not have to worry for a while. The vanishing lower middle class in German society, indeed, has to worry.
The German car fleet has been aging on average for years now, as high taxation, and the so-called "eco tax" (pushing the tax portion of petrol prices to about 75 Eurocent in every Euro already) has literally driven many drivers from the road. If the aging fleet will now be taxed even higher, the effect is certainly going to be a retrogressive development in mobility.
At the same time that Tiefensee propagates his new Tax plans
- state subsidies for public transport such as buses and rail were cut back by 4 bn Euro annually, leaving many with no choice but to use their car and spending a good portion of their income just to afford their daily journey to work,
- Berlin politicians on average still roam the streets of the German capital in Audi A8 limousines with high-volume engines,
- there is no mentionworthy fleet policy, imposing maximums for average fuel consumption on car makers.
To the contrary: The consumer is left with little or no choice, the tax gun is pointed to his head with all but no possibility to comply with Tiefensee's wishes. When the EU-commission recently wanted to fix maximum emissions of CO2 to 120 grammes per Km, the German car industry threatened that it would cancel jobs and was intending to stick to its old-fashioned 140 grammes threshold. After a tug of war lacking any dignity, 130 grammes were set, and Tiefensee was found trying to untooth the European legislation by setting model-specific limits.
Which brings us to a very elementary trait of German politics: It is unable, and probably gutless, to counter the continued bluff on behalf of its industry to create large redundancies if there was anything like a faint attempt to set out targets it has to reach.
To date, there is no German-built hybrid car available in volume to the German consumer, and the research on clean emissions lags years behind the French auto industry. Now, pretending to give consumers an "incentive" by tax hikes therefore is another way of admitting to a lack of guts and symbolic policies.
German idealism paired with a dismal lack of courage has been a trademark for German politics for long. As the devastating effects of greenhouse gases become clearer, German politics is still seesawing about to actually reverse its stance on nuclear energy. Just like the outcome of vehicle taxation is likely going to be a regress in mobility, higher energy taxation for at the expense of households and consumers will likely be used to give industry a tax break for polluting technologies, and throttling energy consumption. For the lack of clear outlines and choices in the debate, this is likely to produce what German politics has been producing at an increasing pace since the late 1980's: Industrial decay.
When I heard the news today, I had to remember a song from Roger Waters' album "Amused to Death". History is really going in circles.
In his song "Perfect Sense", Waters, the ex-head of Pink Floyd says:
"And the Germans killed the Jews
And the Jews killed the Arabs
And the Arabs killed the hostages
And that is the news
And is it any wonder
That the monkey's confused"
And that made me remember how much of an influence way beyond their century the German voters of the year 1933 really probably had. I woke up to the thought whether the ferocious so called "War on Terror" would be all that ferocious, had it not been for the Nazis forcing the sense of an urgent need to defend against everyone under any circumstances as part of Israel's DNA. What would a world without Hitler have been like? Probably the Middle East map would look pretty much the same as it does today, maybe not. There would not be an example for the hatred against the Jewish community upon which a lot of the Israeli-Arab conflict stands rock solid, seemingly for eternity.
Almost inevitably, the politics of almost racial segregation and the construction of fortifications around some parts of Israel that even belittle the pre-1989 Berlin Wall, does nothing to defuse this conflict. Israel's attack on a weakened Lebanon has done little to generate peace in the region either. The seeming tranquility in the region is one controlled with a crop, not one that is a chosen solution for all partners in what should be a dialogue in the region. Do the Jews kill the Arabs? Sorry folks, I am German and could and would not go as far as to subscribe to Waters' statement here. Be that as it may, certainly Israel has not been treating the humanitarian war conventions with a great deal of respect lately - and it is pretty irrelevant whether certain parts of its military have simply declined political supremacy or whether the rank and file actually sponsored its behavior during the 2006 assault on Lebanon.
Anyhow, the Arab's kill the hostages. And office workers on 9/11/2001. An epic with which we have had to cope with for the better part of six years now. Since then, it seems the world has reversed into full gear towards a new Dark Age. Yes, some 3,000 people were killed by the September 11 attacks. Civilian deaths, American deaths, heroic deaths. But then again: According to iraqbodycount.org, at least 56,468 Iraqui civilians were killed since the beginning of the hostilities which were initiated by the US under false allegations. Arguably, Iraqis are worse off now than they were under the Hussein regime. So, is one American life worth 18.82 Iraqi lives? Where do we find the certainty that we are allowed to do this? Where does the Bush Administration find it?
And that is the news.
Or is it? The more I look into this process, the more haunting the perspectives become to me. Look at it this way: What is the Western world willing to give up in terms of freedom - or rather which totalitarian powers is it willing to put into the hand and at the mercy of an administration which was caught a red handed liar? Set aside minor things like unwarranted wiretapping or secret dark camps (formerly called Konzentrationslager in Nazi jargon), freedom itself seems at stake. Since yesterday, the Rule of Law is no longer a valid category for the US-government. It reserves the right to define whichever foreigner as a hostile fighter, detain him indefinitely, put him before tribunals, and guarantee him zilch rights. Not that recent reports about police brutality inside the United States put whole groups of US-citizens in a better position. However, not even the pretence of a Rule of Law is now being sought by the Bush administration. Instead, it reserves the right to define who, if foreigner, becomes a second class object of torture, indefinite detention, and who becomes entitled to plane flights in unmarked white Boeings around the world.
The self perceived hostages kill their own freedoms? Possibly yes. There can be little doubt that the United States have begun sliding down a slippery slope of erosion of human and basic rights. The terrorists have a 100% mission accomplished. They have achieved their ultimate goal: The West was moved to set aside its very principles, its unique selling proposition if you will, that made it worth to struggle for. Civil liberties. Bin Laden and others need not drop a single bomb, because the West is caught in its cramp of fear and overreaction. Just like a human body, with its immune system gone berserk into a permanent red alert condition, the US will pay a heavy price. Some of them might be too glad to pay it, and it is probably not too speculative to say that members of the Bush administration will be amongst them.
What they overlook is that, Just like Germany is paying a heavy price for the Hitler-regime to this day, just like Germany has never again produced so many Nobel Prize winners in science after World War two as before, the US is set for an unpleasant surprise from here in about 15 or 20 years. Had it been the Grail of advance and freedom, Zeitgeist is moving away from the US. Intimidated intellectuals will not seek entry, they will simply stay away.
Where is Zeitgeist going to move?
Keep watching Scandinavia and maybe China for answers in the near future.
Without Hitler, the world would really be a better place, even as we speak.
At the Munich (Germany) transatlantic security conference, an alumni-style get together of NATO state representatives and guests, Western politicians bring in their harvest of all but failed security policies. Their last resort: mimick naive innocence.
On Saturday, Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, had some harsh rethorics in store for the hosts of the annual Munich Transatlantic conference on security. The conference unites high ranking government members from NATO states with important personalities from the vanity fair of think tanks, both European and American.
When Russia's president delivered his address on Saturday to a different tune, these representatives uttered astonishment and saw the dawning of a new era of cold war. Top of the list of the media, choosing an unduly innocent pose was the online edition of German newsweekly DER SPIEGEL. The magazine, seeing itself in one league with TIME and Newsweek quoted one participant of the conference asking "why is he [Putin] doing it?"
Putin had criticized American unilatralism as seen by Russia in frank words, and left no doubt about the aims of his address right from the start:
"This conference’s structure allows me to avoid excessive politeness and the need to speak in roundabout, pleasant but empty diplomatic terms."
While the cold-war-rethorics have only slightly lost in impetus on Sunday and a number of the German media attributed Putin's posture as a reflex of Russia's indignation about losing its status as a superpower, none so far documented Putin's speech in full text, which was made available earlier on Sunday through the official homepage of the Kremlin.
Loking at the speech in more detail, it is fair to say that the Russian President's speech amounts to what can be considered a stern warning to the US-led NATO to stop short of unilateralist mesaures.
However, being emotional in tone, Putin's speech in no way fails to objectively outline Russia's new concerns:
Unwillingness to accept moral lessons about democracy from the Western alliance
Mr. Putin made it clear that Russia was unwilling to accept what could be paraphrased as what its considers to be false good advice form the Western alliance about its pace on human rights issues. Mr. Putin compared state internal democracy to a "democratical" world order and tried to redefine the issue, concluding that:
"It is [a] world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.
And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. Because, as you know, democracy is the power of the majority in light of the interests and opinions of the minority.
Incidentally, Russia – we – are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves."
Indeed, with EU-investigations on US-sponsored secret service camps to detain suspects in the states of "New Europe" and with allegedly numerous CIA-sponsored prisoner flights, trying to claim moral authority can be perilous and would eventually have backfired on its originators, as demonstrated by Mr. Putin.
Reciprocity of investment activities
The Russian government has of late seen itself exposed to harsh criticism from the West and its corporate stakeholders about preventing foreign investment through repressive means. In his speech, Putin remarked that:
"We are open to cooperation. Foreign companies participate in all our major energy projects. According to different estimates, up to 26 percent of the oil extraction in Russia – and please think about this figure – up to 26 percent of the oil extraction in Russia is done by foreign capital. Try, try to find me a similar example where Russian business participates extensively in key economic sectors in western countries. Such examples do not exist! There are no such examples.
I would also recall the parity of foreign investments in Russia and those Russia makes abroad. The parity is about fifteen to one. And here you have an obvious example of the openness and stability of the Russian economy."
The debate had heated in late 2006, as Russian investors were rumored to try to buy themselves into German telco incumbent Deutsche Telekom, spurring fears about possible industrial espionage. Also, it is unclear, on which basis the cooperation between European aviation consortium EADS and Russia is to be intensified, as the wish to draw upon traditional Russian strengths in aviation engineering and the wish to stop the efflux of Russian engineering talent to undesirable sponsors is counter-balanced by a deep rooting fear about possible technology and knowledge transfer to Russia.
The sense of encirclement
Given its sheer size, which is about double that of the United States (including Alaska) and its east-west stretch across eleven timezones (or about half of the Northern hemisphere), it is difficult for Russia not to feel encircled. During the early 1990s the problem had temporarily faded somewhat, as the West had not regrouped its interest after the fall of the Iron Curtain. However, with US-lead forces operating in its former backyard Afghanistan, an allegedly strong support by the US to centrifugal, anti Russian, political forces in Caucasus and the fact that NATO has advanced towards the Western Russian borders with little or no buffers (Ukraine's pro-Russian government fell in 2006, Georgia to the south is controlled by a pro Western government), Russia does nowadays struggle to keep the advance of US interests at bay. It seems to be impardonable naive to hear NATO's Secretary General, de Hoop Scheffer quoted as saying "I cannot conceal that I am disappointed (...)" if Russia was worried when "democracy and the rule of law moved closer (...)" to its borders. Given the United States' recent track record of moving democracy closer to third-party borders or beyond, a certain Russian concern could be unterstandable when Putin concludes:
"I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?"
In a more global perspective, Putin's remarks might very well be ushering in a new Russian posture in its security policies, which could ultimately result in the revival of closer strategic ties with China, signs of which are unmistakable according to a number of essays by former high ranking member of the Philippine military, Victor Corpus and published by the Asia Times in 2006.
German online IT newspage Heise.de reports in its Tuesday edition that the German legislator drafts a law that would forbid the dissemination of precise geodata. Some remark, it is a shift into full gear, back into communist era censorship.
According to the report, the German government has submitted a draft law to the upper chamber of German parliament titled: "Law for the protection against imperilment of the security of Germany by means of distribution of high quality reconnaissance data".
The law puts all earth reconnaissance and geo-data systems operated from Germany or by Germans under the potential threat of prohibition, and leaves large leeway for interpretation to the authorities to define what "high quality" actually is.
All operators of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) would, according to the draft law, need a written permission by the German authorities to distribute data, which would potentially confront the development of satellite based navigation systems and map material with unacceptable bureaucratic hurdles. The now introduced legislation, according to Heise, would also concern terrain elevation data models, as they could be used to operate unmanned aviation vehicles in terrorist contexts. It is interesting to observe that the law draws its constitutional justification from Article 26 of the German Grundgesetz (constitution):
"Article 26 [Ban on preparations for war of aggression]
(1) Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be made a criminal offense.
(2) Weapons designed for warfare may be manufactured, transported, or marketed only with the permission of the Federal Government. Details shall be regulated by a federal law."
[Non authoritative translation FYI, source: http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/GG.htm#26]
Commentators in the blogosphere argue that services like Google Earth would either be beaurocratized to the degree of standstill by the now introduced legislation, or be put in peril considered the potential risk of law violation, making it easy for GIS-companies to decide in turn to divert investment away from Germany.
The law provides for a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment or fines of up to EUR 500.000, putting the politically undesired distribution of geo data in one league with the sale of deadly weapons to rogue states, to which article 26 of the Grundgesetz did pertain in its original intention. It is noteworthy that the law, very obviously being a mishapped attempt to curb terrorist dangers, puts terrorist act at one level with "wars of aggression", completely blurring the border between individual criminal acts and state-sponsored wars of aggression.
Some members of the blogosphere also observed in comments about the article that the now introduced law marks an important step back towards communist-era handling of geodata, quoting a report from Berliner Zeitung about intentionally distorted maps in communist Eastern Germany before 1990.
Stormfront Kyrill is about to hit Europe, and from what I hear it has already arrived in Ireland with strong force.
If you would like to share your experinces, report what is happening right now, if you have hints or would like to ask other users questions, please come online to a live audio chat.
If you have Skype, please connect yourself to:
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(copy to your browser window).
Hope to listen to you there.
When I went to Dusseldorf airport recently, one problem at the heart of the German Krankheit (German disease) beacme crystal clear to me: It's all about appearence and no or little substance.
Some weeks ago, i visited the airport in the West German city of Dusseldorf. Not that Dusseldorf differs in many ways from other German cities, on the contrary: It seems to be German society in a nutshell, hosting the well-off 10 per cent and extremely poor parts of the society.
Walking through the departures hall, the following image lept to my eye:
Now, one has to keep in mind that this is the official departure hall of Lufthansa at the Dusseldorf International Airport, not Erich-Sixt-Airport. The ads are by German car rental group Sixt. Actually, not only here, but also at the gangway-fingers, and all over the rest of the place, you will find quite obtrusive Sixt ads. Not only that. Also take a look at the following movie:
This is an aerial approach to the Düsseldorf ariport terminal, not the Vodafone headqarters in that town, as you may think.
Now, not to be mistaken: Ads are and will always be part of a traveller's world, and other airports do display advertisements as well. But what you see in Dusseldorf, as happens all over Germany, goes further: Public assets and their dignity as public places are being sold off to a cheap make-beleive of an advertiser's wonderland.
This goes so far that often projects having been financed and funded publicly are no longer recognizeable as such, or that form follow the advertiser's needs, not necessarily function. Football stadiums in Germany, almost wiithout exception, are named after beer brands or other corporate sponsores. Of course, this does not prevent that more often than not these projects have received heavy public funding before.
Corporates are not so much citizens in Germany than a-socially behaving parasites, joy riding on the back of taxpayers' Euros.
Which brings us to two quite important observations of symptomps of what I would call the "German Krankheit", the German Disease:
- on one hand, appearance overrides function, and everything is tailored to the need of sponsors. The world of make beleive that does not deliver on its promises, as long as the consumer can be billed and bombarded with obstrusive messages. It seems that the country is being sold off as a huge billboard,
- on the other hand, such behavior sheds some light onto the way that Germany ticks these days: Everything is measured to its market value. Even if you ask, what's so special about that. Beleive me, Germany is going to the extremes, as it always does in implementing a concept. Which means that people are getting forced into a hypercommercialized environment, and funny election results to the tunes of the 1930's should only be a question of time - actually tacitly, Germans are quickly getting fed up with the way globalization is implemented in preemptive obedience towards corporates by courage-less politicans.
Actually, in a TV broadcast in September, former German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, has compared today's Germany to the Weimar Republic Germany in the 1930's. There is little to join to that remark, except for the observation that German politicians 2006 AD seem to be willing to strectch their good luck to the extreme and seem to go on living carelessly on borrowed time.
Starting January 1, 2007, all owners of a PC connected to the Internet need to pay the public radio fee. Nobody really knows what justifies that, however it is only one late symptom of the German Krankheit.
Strange it is. While politicians in Germany mimick their support for the Internet, saying they were ready and willing to foster the future, what they do seems to point into a different direction. All Germans with a TV- or radio set are and have been subject to a kind of public tax which has to be paid monthly. Independent of if they use their TV for actually watching TV, every German owning one is obliged to support the public broadcasting system with a fee totalling at about US$ 20, every month.
While the quality one gets in return is arguable, the tax isn't: The Gebühreneinzugszentrale ("fee acquisition agency") has constructed a network for data acquisition that some critics liken to the former East German secret service, the Stasi. Not only do inspectors roam the country's windows at night in search of flickering tubes, word goes that they use the tactics of intimidation in trying to get into homes for inspection. Not only that: The GEZ, being a public agency, is known to buy data from commercial address traders. In a shoot-and-forget-manner, everyone living or having lived at a certain address is then invoiced. Admittedly, receiving mail from the GEZ is a way of doing genealogy for the lazy - other than that, being in contact with the GEZ is hardly very amusing.
Of late, the state agency has switched from molesting citizens into open derision-mode.
On airport baggage trolleys they have installed ads reading: "Finally home. Have you paid your GEZ yet?" That is so funny, one could emigrate or jump right back onto the plane.
Even public broadcaster SWR ran radio ads on their channels saying "we are at the world championships thanks to your fees". Great, I finance the decadence of German public sport reporting I thought.
Anyhow: Should anyone have thought being invoiced for no face value (a favourite institutional pastime in this country) stopped here saw himself badly mistaken this year. The prime ministers of the German states decided, that any computer connected to the internet triggered the obligation to pay radio fees. Theoretically, such is their "rationale", they could be used to receive TV and radio programmes from the German public broadcasters.
OK, none of them really puts up a full TV programme stream in narrowband or in broadband, just like the Norwegian NRK does. Most of them don't even offer live radio streaming beyond a 28 Kbit/s equivalent bandwidth. Anyway: The theoritical possibility of receiving such programmes was enough for the prime ministers to impose the fee. Oh, by the way: UMTS (WCDMA) cellphones, of course, have become subject to the same fee. The fee-satus of badly done dental jobs is as of yet unknown, although one has heard that theoretically one could start recieving radio programmes. OK, better not be German and let it not be a German radio station then. I have to admit, I own a dynamic microphone which, on bad days, throws a loud signal of Czech radio to my preamp. Maybe I better sell that before the inspector knocks twice.
Kommentar: Das Ende der Fahnenstange
Spätestens, seit Wolfgang Schäuble vergangene Woche seine Keule geschwungen hat, wissen wir: Das Internet ist Teufelszeug und eigentlich ein Ausbildungsplatz für Terroristen.
Wie schön ist doch die Welt der Telefonanbieter, in der praktisch nichts stattfindet, weil alles unbezahlbar ist. Sicher: Ein Problem hätten wir durch ein vollständig prohibitives Internet gelöst: Keiner würde mehr mit keinem kommunizieren, weil es schlicht unbezahlbar ist.
Das verringert den Aufwand der Überwachungsbehörden ganz erheblich.
Andererseits, Hilfe ist aus unterschiedlichen Richtungen auf dem Weg und Schäuble kann sich zurücklehnen:
Die Telekommunikationskonzerne gieren nach neuen Einnahmequellen und haben breitbandige Inhalte als Ziel ihrer Begierde fest in den Blick genommen. Anders formuliert: Wer künftig noch über YouTube oder Jumpcut Videos hochladen oder ansehen will, muss damit rechnen, sich künftig vor den verschlossenen Pforten eines Bezahl-Portals wieder zu finden. Der Grund: Die Deutsche Telekom will zum Beispiel YouTube die Datenübertragung zu ihren Kunden in Rechnung stellen und damit für dasselbe Datenpaket zweimal abkassieren: Bei ihren Teilnehmern und
bei YouTube. Überflüssig zu erwähnen, dass die Zeche immer der Endverbraucher bezahlt.
Mit der GEZ-Gebühr auf PCs werden viele PCs schlicht keine Verbindung mehr mit dem Internet haben und wieder genutzt werden, um Haushaltsbücher zu führen, mit der Data-Becker Weihnachtsdruckerei Kärtchen für die Lieben zu designen oder Sudoku zu spielen. Man will nicht von einem virtuellen Ausreiseverbot sprechen, aber die Tendenz ist dennoch klar.
Über Hintertüren wollen sich die Geheim-Dienste Zugang zu jedem beliebigen PC beschaffen, um zu Fahnden. Wer nichts zu verbergen hat, muss schließlich auch nichts fürchten.
Oder?
Sehen wir das Problem einmal von einer anderen Seite an: Wussten Sie, dass Menschen, die ihre Flugtickets bar bezahlen, zum Beispiel in den USA schon den ersten Schritt zum Terror-Verdächtigen gegangen sind? Jaja, doch: Es entspricht der Logik der Dienste, dass Barzahlung weniger darauf hindeutet, dass man gerne Kontrolle über seine Ausgaben behält
(was mit Bargeld leichter ist als mit Kartenzahlungen)
als vielmehr darauf, dass man anonym bleiben möchte und daher sicher etwas finsteres im Schilde führt. Kommt es nun spitz auf Knopf, ist man ruckzuck Staatsfeind nummer Eins. Fragen Sie den friedensbewegten Sänger Cat Stevens, dem die Einreise in die USA verweigert wurde, weil er sich - das ist sicher über ein viertel Jahrhundert her - den Glaubensnamen "Islam" gegeben hat.
Gehen wir also Wohlgemut ins Jahr 2007 und stellen uns die
Frage, welche Überraschungen es für uns bereit hält. Man möchte wetten, in der Informationstechnologie haben wir mit der Debatte um die Egoshooter das Ende des schwarz rot gold beflaggten Fahnenmasts noch nicht gesehen.
