Clement: Still 18,000 without apprenticeship

Why would a non-training levy do that, it could straightaway get employers to provide more training positions...

Who exactly do Clement and business representatives think they're fooling here? You can clearly see from the development of available training positions that the economy has no interest in providing training at all.

Of course, afterwards there's more complaining that qualified employees are lacking and that they need to bring in Indians or whoever via green cards to have qualified staff. They'll get screwed over just the same and can then meet up with the unemployed youth without training down at the train station...

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Toil and sacrifice - for the German fatherland

A little something about the new patriotism that politicians are demanding. I already hate the word patriotism itself—you can't have it without nationalism, and wrapping it in neoliberal or neoconservative packaging doesn't help either. But then again, stupid blather and empty phrases are basically the political program at the moment ... And of course there are lies: just read the New York Times commentary in the article about Germany as a business location: In addition to low tax rates and wages, state subsidies and weak unions, scaled-back social systems and private provision, it now also includes education, qualification and the promotion of talent (manpower) to make Germany fit for the knowledge society and global competition. But of course we have to keep cutting corporate tax rates, reducing social contributions (and cutting social benefits), and naturally weakening unions so we remain competitive. That's what the politicians say, so it must be true.

At Telepolis News you can find the original article.

Interview with Friedhelm Hengsbach

A very worth-reading interview with Friedhelm Hengsbach on the dismantling of the welfare state.

Many good answers to what politics and business are currently presenting as alleged facts and truths, and which so many people mindlessly repeat without thinking about it. Yes, Germany is regarded as immobile, rigid, a fettered giant, it has the red lantern. Even in that chancellor's speech it was repeatedly said: Germany must get back to the top! These are the sorts of slogans that are stereotypically repeated. But they don't hold true, they are deliberate deceptions of the population, who are being taken for a ride. A gloomy picture is painted using the method of hellfire preachers, a threatening image is thrown on the wall so that people tremble and let everything be done to them. But whoever influences people in this way and exercises power through threatening gestures does not take those affected seriously; he despises them. And that cannot go well in the long run.

At Der Rollberg I found the original article.

State Minister: Illegal copying is like an evil disease

So cool: Mrs. Weiss is making herself just as much an accomplice to the large, established film and music industry and brings the same stupid and mindless arguments as the corresponding representatives of the US government. Of course, here too there is no appreciation whatsoever for citizens' rights to protect their own interests (e.g. availability of films across hardware generations). Of course, here too immediately the general criminalization of all private individuals who have copied copyright-protected material—for whatever reasons—at some point.

Fits perfectly with the government's concept of bowing to business and trampling on the citizen.

At heise online news you can find the original article.

Controversy over Gerster authority

The authority rejected all allegations. - did anyone expect anything else? Nowadays, investigations don't happen when allegations come in anymore. Instead, you deny everything first. That way the press gets a chance to blow the whole thing up properly. Then you can quickly find a few scapegoats to let take the fall. So the citizen can forget about it all quickly and the summer news void is filled. Or something like that.

At tagesschau im Internet there's the original article.

Germany, the Belated Nation

Information laggard.

At Telepolis News you can find the original article.

The Legend of the Salt Dome

For those who haven't quite understood what an interim storage facility is. Although I was aware of the fact that above-ground storage for cooling purposes was used, I was not aware that the procedure for repackaging the waste from the Castor into the Pollux container does not even exist yet. I also could not have named the specific time period of over 30 years.

Propaganda works, we forget far too easily and far too willingly, and we are equally willing to believe...

Here's the original article.

Union holds government responsible for election fraud

Great. The Union sets up an election fraud committee and comes - oh great wonder - to the conclusion that the government defrauded voters. Sure, you could have had that result without setting up an expensive committee, after all it was hardly to be expected that the Union would set up a committee that would then contradict the Union, right?

Apart from that: does it accomplish anything now? No. Because there are no demands, no consequences, no recommendations. Essentially, just a few Union politicians have been patting each other on the back.

Great.

I found the original article on RP-Online: Politik.

Union and FDP want to further weaken employment protection

What a load of nonsense. Relaxing employment protection will only bring more unemployment. Instead of securing jobs, this will only destroy more of them. The few positions that get filled in the short term won't help either - anyone who was waiting for a relaxation of employment protection to hire someone has already factored in that employee's dismissal. So it's just window dressing. But the Union dimwits and the FDP fools are busily patting each other on the back for their genius.

I found the original article at RP-Online: Politik.

Greens continue to reject crypto ban

Cryptography bans. Great idea. Criminals will certainly all comply with them. How stupid does a politician have to be to believe something like that? Yes, I know, as stupid as some politicians on the interior committee, but how stupid is that really? Paving-stone stupid? Bread-in-puddle stupid?

Crypto bans only criminalize the perfectly sensible legal use of the technology, nothing more. What follows from this is a presumption of guilt based solely on the use of a technique - he encrypts, so he must be hiding something evil. The fact that maybe it's simply about preventing everyone from reading along (and sorry, but I wouldn't trust the agencies that could read along with deposited keys any further than I could throw them), that no longer matters when cryptography without key escrow is banned.

The state's constant demand to believe it's allowed to read everything anyway is completely divorced from reality. This whole eavesdropping mania brings nothing except a restriction of our rights and high costs.

At heise online news there's the original article.

Always Funny

Great. A Union MP known for years for antisemitic remarks gets—after his latest outburst—what? Exactly. Not fired. Not ostracized. He just gets a different committee position.

At INSTANT NIRVANA you can find the original article.

Child protection regulations on the internet are becoming serious

And another censorship tool installed. The question is: from when are politically left-wing opinions considered development-inhibiting? From when is criticism of the state regarded as development-inhibiting? When does satire cease to be an art form and start being considered a threat to youth?

It's so cheap to justify such censorship tools on the grounds of restricting access to pornography. Nobody will seriously protest and want to present themselves as a potential pig, right?

What actually endangers youth more - the availability of pornography (or rather the availability of pornography distributed in Germany - hard international systems help little with that) or the existence of censorship tools?

And another question: from when will the Regierungspräsidium Düsseldorf in North Rhine-Westphalia, with reference to youth protection regulations, demand the blocking of masses of sites?

Hard pornography is - at least in most cases - misogynistic. Wouldn't it be time to combat the cause of the distorted image of women in society, instead of making ineffective attempts to censor the symptoms? Education and enlightenment, anyone?

At heise online news there's the original article.

When Work Becomes Scarce...

A summary at Rollberg of links to current efforts to dismantle the social system. Much of it fits very well into the Banana Republic Germany.

At Der Rollberg you can find the original article.

CSU and FDP treasurers allegedly accepted illegal donation

In general, Panorama reports are well researched. So it could be interesting to see what comes out, especially regarding the criminal complaint filed against the Panorama staff. Panorama reports are also online after the broadcast, so if you miss it today, you can catch up. Update: I'm watching the report right now. This is brutally hilarious. This report is definitely going to cause some fun. If you haven't seen it, be sure to check the archive when it appears there!

I found the original article at RP-Online: Politik.

Red-green dispute over genetic engineering law

It is truly appalling in how blatant a manner Ministers Clement and Bulmahn are ignoring consumers' rejection of genetically modified food. How can a minister of a democratically elected government side so openly with an industry when consumers repeatedly and clearly reject this industry in surveys? The only German interests lie with Bayer - the remaining providers are foreign companies. And solely for this reason, not only is consumer will ignored, but for example organic food production is made more difficult (because the pollen from genetically modified plants are simply not stopped at field boundaries by some magic)? That's a great understanding of democracy from the ministers.

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Censorship in Düsseldorf

I overlooked something at Heise. Thanks to the SWR for pointing it out in his blog. Without proper censorship, nothing will come of banana republic Germany. The censorship efforts of the Düsseldorf government president—completely ignorant of any facts, evidence, or technical background—are entering the next round, this time targeting search engines. It's also nice how the government president's spokesperson leaves it open whether action would also be taken against trademark violations. Lovely how they make it clear from the outset that this is absolutely not about protecting citizens, but about a pure demonstration of power by the government president responsible for media law in North Rhine-Westphalia, with the clear intention of implementing a general internet censorship system. So that opinions conform nicely with the district government. How they deal with critics and how they get administrative assistance from public prosecutors' offices in other federal states can be seen well in the proceedings against Alvar Freude. Of course, we all now trust the Düsseldorf district government to not abuse this censorship tool. And pigs can fly. At Der Schockwellenreiter I found the original article.

Porn providers protest against child protection on the web

Well, we could also introduce official registration for entering video rental stores and sex shops, which would be similar to the demanded stricter controls for internet sex offers.

Not that I particularly want to defend the porn industry - after all, it is one of the main causes of the spam problem (after all, this is an area where the click-through rate is significantly higher than in all other advertising sectors - men really do think more with their pants than with their brains), but the demands to tighten age controls are really absurd: who is going to go to their post office or T-Punkt and present their ID there for registration for an X-Check-ID? Sure, the postal workers don't know what that is anyway. Obviously.

The real problem behind this is something else entirely: the inability of authorities and similar institutions to understand that the internet is simply not a regional event. Stricter age control laws will be just as impossible to enforce across borders on the internet as the already planned opening hours for erotic content on the internet.

Youth protection is something that cannot be enforced through this type of prohibition - only through education and enlightenment. Because with the increasing interconnectedness of the world, there will always be content that is illegal in one country but available from other countries. Even absurd attempts like those of the Düsseldorf government president will change nothing about that.

Either we finally accept this content and its distribution as a social problem and address it at that level (through education and enlightenment already in schools), or we criminalize the entire internet and tinker around with pointless and ineffective filtering attempts, waste money on these absurd projects, hand the state far too powerful censorship tools and rights, and make ourselves look ridiculous internationally.

The latter is the path that politicians are currently taking in Banana Republic Germany - it's also much easier, besides you get the necessary censorship rights for free anyway. Then you can also use them right away for politically unpopular opinions.

At heise online news there's the original article.

Prosecutor threatens net activist with occupational ban

This is taking on highly absurd proportions these days. This is abuse of power in its most literal sense. This has nothing to do with rule of law anymore, it's the worst kind of state arbitrariness. Usually something like this only appears in reports by Amnesty International or the UN about so-called banana republics. Well, it seems we're not far from that anymore. Torture was already described as a viable means (P405). Recommended is the documentation on http://odem.org/ - there's a bit more information about it there. At heise online news there's the original article.

Telekom complains about massive devaluation of telecommunications secrecy

I'll say just one thing: Bananenrepublik At heise online news you can find the original article.

How to Silence the ODEM Founder

A report about the prosecution's censorship attempts against Alvar Freude. A great way to deal with critics. I wonder if perhaps one authority (Stuttgart public prosecutor's office) is just trying to give support to another authority (Düsseldorf regional president's office)? It's also great that the legal system is being abused for this.

At Der Rollberg you can find the original article.

Cologne CDU admits to donation misconduct

It's become so commonplace by now that it's almost boring again. Frightening.

At WDR.de you can find the original article.

SPD rebels threatened with recall

Funny. Article 38 of the Constitution states: They [the members of parliament] are representatives of the whole people, not bound by orders and instructions and subject only to their conscience - I can't find anything about party discipline there. Interesting too is Article 21, which states: Their [the parties'] internal order must conform to democratic principles - has the suppression of dissenting opinions recently become considered a democratic principle? It must have snuck in somehow when I wasn't looking ... At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

Investigations into chancellor's office files discontinued

And once again the big fish gets away

At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

SPD dissidents must answer for themselves

This all fits perfectly with my last post on the topic. The Union wants to impose its handwriting on politics - and the SPD will let it happen to them because they no longer have their own profile. And so we keep sliding further into the mess.

I don't want the Union's handwriting in politics. I didn't vote for these idiots. I expect those I did vote for to prevent exactly that - the Union's handwriting appearing there. But I can probably forget about that...

At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

Poor by Official Decree

Well, the fat cats just have the better lobby - no wonder, since most politicians at state and federal level belong to them anyway. And impressing corrupt politicians doesn't work when you don't have the cash to grease them (or their party) ...

And so we're eagerly steering into an increasingly polarized society and letting ourselves be told lies about reforms and minor reforms. At the next election, we get to decide again in which color we'd like to be screwed.

At Der Schockwellenreiter you can find the original article.

The future for Hesse's women is secure

Great prospects for women in Hesse. And of course Koch will announce his rubbish as an absolutely important program and of course he will demand that the same garbage is also done at the federal level. Koch would really be a worthy successor to Kohl - just as corrupt, just as contemptuous of humanity, just as a catastrophe for the Federal Republic.

At Der Rollberg you can find the original article.

Politicians discover social welfare as radical savings potential

Oh how wonderfully simple: Social welfare recipients are just potential freeloaders anyway, so what's the difference, let's strip away their every right to data protection, no big deal, they have nothing to say anyway. The fat cats who move their money abroad. The companies that don't pay taxes because they use enough confusing constructs to hide their real income. The parties that can ship millions abroad but still pocket party financing. All of that is perfectly fine, because after all those aren't social welfare recipients.

And as for the work requirement for social welfare recipients: Work makes you free. We've seen all that before.

Every time you think the populism of German politicians can't get any worse, these idiots come up with even dumber and more contemptuous ideas. And then they wonder about political disillusionment. But who's supposed to still have interest in this madness when it's all just about destroying everything we've created so fat cats can keep ripping us off? So shareholders can keep squeezing companies? So managers can keep showing off to those shareholders how they've tightened the organization and cut costs (and in reality destroy the livelihoods of employees and run the company so far into the ground that a foreign company swallows it up)? So lobby clubs and associations can keep feathering their nests? So corrupt politicians can keep pocketing their bribes for themselves or their party? No matter who you vote for, as a voter you're screwed.

At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

Freedom of Information from 2004?

It's about time too!

You can find the original article on Telepolis News.

Merkel: Exit atomic phase-out if election victory

Great prospects. Operating nuclear power plants as long as they want - that means for Germany financing this nonsense for as long as the monopolists want to rip people off. And renewable energies would be pushed back again. And of course Merkelnix will certainly busily transport nuclear waste through Germany and protect it with huge police presence. All very sensible ... At RP-Online: Politik I found the original article.

Hessian tax investigators put on the brakes?

Oh how nice, a little scandal in Hesse that could develop into a full-blown scandal. But in a country where a leading politician can simply shovel double-digit millions abroad and doesn't have to go to jail for it and the Minister President isn't held accountable either, something like this certainly won't make big waves. Hesse is just Germany's banana republic number one.

At tagesschau im Internet you can find the original article.

Anyone Could Come Along Then

Transparency of the administration to the citizen would make fraud, waste of money and nepotism just as difficult as it would expose the sometimes abysmal incompetence of the public administration. So, what does the good politician do? It's obvious: put a lid on it and cover it up. That's how Büssow already rammed through his appalling blocking order.

At Spiegel Online: Netzwelt there's the original article.

Panorama rules ...

... even though Kohl accuses them of treason

Today there were details about the consulting contract between Kohl and Kirch in the broadcast. Nice how all sorts of shady dealings around Kohl are coming to light. A contract that consists only of Kohl not having to do anything, except not reveal anything, while Kirch pays diligently. Well, the contract is at least making its way into a book - Die Korruptionsfalle, by Hans Leyendecker. It's a shame that he's never really held accountable for it - apparently nobody has a real interest in looking into it and ending it in court. At least one has to interpret the prosecuting attorney's egg dance around Kohl's donation problems this way.

It's quite a wonderful feeling knowing that you're living in a banana republic ...

Monitor - Genetic Engineering Contribution

Why does a citizen in Germany have to feel, with every decision made by politicians, that they've been betrayed and sold out? That their own interests - even when it's the opinion of a majority - don't interest a single politician? That all politicians are either corrupt or let themselves be controlled by business, with corporate interests standing far above the will of citizens?

And why is every piece of nonsense always sold to us again by politicians as supposed commitment or even a victory for consumers or something equally great, when in reality it just means we've been screwed over once more?

But where the Federal Gerd spends their vacation is apparently a much more important decision...

Here's the original article.

German Bureaucracy Is Not Moving

In my opinion, it is an absolute outrage that precisely given the financial situation of the federal government and the states, the bureaucracy does not disclose its data. There is constant talk of costs when something is taken away from citizens, but citizens are denied access to the corresponding areas - how are we supposed to accept that if we cannot verify it? The way this is currently being handled is highly unbelievable and of course provokes every form of suspicion of corruption.

When will we finally learn that transparency in communication is the only right strategy in the long run?

At Der Rollberg there is the original article.

Network Censor Büssow Resigns Against Critics

Translation

The entire behavior of the district government in the dispute over the blocking orders is increasingly becoming a farce. I still hope that somewhere, someone will simply sue the entire district government and force them to finally conduct the whole matter openly. But I fear that such excesses have by now become rather the norm - competent politicians and political officials seem to no longer exist.

One thing is clear in any case: this massive defensive stance of the district government smells suspiciously like there is actually something to hide there - because otherwise the whole discussion could have easily been defused by the publication that was already promised.

So the only question that remains is whether politicians and bureaucrats simply want to conceal their stupidity, or whether there is actually more behind it.

At das Netzbuch - ralles Weblog you can find the original article.