One way to look at Germany, I guess

Yesterday, I read two articles on globeandmail.com about Germany that kept me wondering on how Canada looks at Germany (knowing that these where only two possible perspectives). I have to say, I found both articles pretty, what, naive? Badly researched? A nice gesture for Angela Merkel´s conservative government?

First, Doug Saunders take on how well Germany dealt with the financial crisis - especially compared to other European states. The article is a bit older, from August I think, I just only saw it yesterday.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/broken-europe/hope-germanys-secret-to-recovery/article1659177/

In a sense he is right about the one fact that the government managed to save a good amount of jobs in certain sectors of industry by simply paying a big share of the employees salaries. As the few examples shown say, people were happy that they could keep their jobs, even on a Kurzarbeit- a part-time basis. But here lies the first crucial point that Saunders forgot to mention: people were happy to keep their underpayed jobs because they knew they would not find a new one elsewhere. Especially all he blue-collars over fifty that had been with their company trough most of their working career. The situation for well-experienced workers over fifty on the German job-market is more or less hopeless and they all knew that.
The second point Saunders is not filling to put his finger on is the simple fact that none of these jobs is an investment into the future. As soon as the state will stop funding those jobs, they will vanish and with them what little hope the people on these jobs had. And none of these jobs will ever be a full-time employment again. So, the average worker deals with the fact that he or she can either be unemployed and on social welfare until retirement age or work for half the money and barely above the margin of subsistence for the next two decades.
The German production industry, especially the automotive sector, has been in trouble long before the financial crisis. Like in the United States of America, the inquiry on the market has been constantly declining. Saving those jobs is an act of good will for the single worker but also a show a Germany´s incapability to design a labor market fitting the demands of the 21st century. Hence, the government - and there was a big debate on the point of all these measures, let us keep this in mind, too - as invested highly into the past and not the slightest bit into the future.

And the 7% unemployment rate is a nice little illusion. If you take all the jobs like the above mentioned, where the state pays salaries in sectors that are nowhere the states responsibility, if you take all the 1-Euro-jobs provided by the national agency for employment where the jobholders still receive social welfare to survive, if you take all the jobs where people have to rely on the state in order to survive because their income is above the minimum income needed to exist, if you take all the internships, trainee-ships and voluntary services that academics with a PhD degree do on a regular basis, if you take all these jobs out of the statistics, Germany´s unemployment rate would hit 20 percent. That is the future perspective, unfortunately.

The second article, published yesterday, was actually a bit hilarious because of its clear black-and-white perspective. Dealing with current research on how Canadians are effected by increasing stress levels at work, the German "example" should show that Canadians are all whiny and don´t have the right attitude towards work - unlike the Germans.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/work-life-balance/part-4-harder-worker-no-life-just-act-more-like-the-germans/article1783415/

It is true, Germany has the 38.5 hour week. On paper. Most people work more and for less money, since extra-hours are only rarely paid. And especially in the private sector, somebody who is employed on a 38.5 basis costs less than somebody on a 50 hours week. Yes, there is such a thing as a very protected work environment with companies that have strong Trade Unions. Those are mostly non-profit organizations or old, well established companies. But the ideal conditions the authors points out is a memory from the fairy-tale-land that Germany maybe was in the 1970s, with full employment and a booming economy that gave the Trade Unions a big deal of liberty to ask for anything. Today, as the article above shows, people simply fear for their job and therefore except any condition. There is the many supermarket chains for example that don´t even allow their employees to form or join a union. Their is the many, many middle class companies with less than eight employees that are nowhere politically represented - unlike their bosses.

According to recent research, every third German faces depression, burn-out, allergies and other stress-related illnesses due to the rising pressure at work. A lot of people wish they could downsize and some actually do. Alternative living arrangements, sabbaticals, time off work become more and more common.

Yes, Germans are very industrious and efficient which means that a higher outcome of everyday´s work is expected. It doesn´t mean that people can drop their pens everyday at four o-clock. Yes, Germans value work and career and it is a big part of our culture and self-esteem. But that does not mean that people don´t have their boundaries and take off to work singing and whistling like the seven dwarfs every day when there is another 14-hour-day ahead.

The picture of the hard-working German robot is another myth form a century long gone.

Sarkozy vs. Berlusconi

Today I wonder who is more ridiculous and hilarious: Sarkozy or Berlusconi. One blamed journalists as pedophiles when he did not like their questions. The other one had a new and bigger penis put on a statue at an official building.
In times when democracy as a political institution faces a crisis of faith and trust in many countries men like Sarkozy and Berlusconi do even greater harm. Or is the fact that men like them have been voted in the first place more than a symptom of crisis but a symptom of decadence? How much damage can be done until it is irreversible?

The "good, old"-Goebbels comparison - now even in BC

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-new-democrat-apologizes-for-nazi-comments/article1778395/

The good, old Goebbels comparison - a political opponent is or acts like Goebbels. Well, we have heard that in the past. I am just surprised that Goebbels made it as far as British Columbia, a place on Earth far away from Germany and its Nazi-past - not only in terms of geography. Don´t you really have nobody else to refer too?

German politicians like to do it once in a while. They speak about yellow stars on somebody´s chest and yes, Helmut Kohl, former Chancellor said something about Goebbels too. Mahmud Ahmadinedshad does it all the time, although one can never be too sure whether he thinks he is the new Hitler or the new victim of propaganda, persecution and all that. Nasrallah does it and a lot of Palestinians and some Jewish people and one can only ask: why are the Nazis so damn fascinating? Why can we not stop talking about them and referring to them and pointing out the fact that they might have done and achieved something good or masterful (like the German autobahn or a very thorough and undoubtedly very effective propaganda machinery)?

Leonard Krog was most likely a bit clueless about Goebbels and just going for the effect. To mention the name Goebbels gives you for sure some audience. But I am bit shocked about the comments that follow the article on globeandmail.com (see link above). He was not referring to the Holocaust, just to Goebbels´mastery of mass propaganda and hey, what is the big deal? I mean, he was good at that, right?

Well, let us just take this away from the Holocaust, let us only talk about the twelve years of Nazi rule in Germany. The propaganda machinery was combined with an equally effective system of "education". From day one in a child´s life, so the ultimate goal, the child should here nothing else than what we want it to hear: hatred against the "other", hatred and mistrust towards your neighbor and your own family, the rightfulness of oppression and extermination of those that were labeled as minor, the indoctrination of the child to make it a devout part of the collective. No freedom of thought or speech, no freedom to chose any other way, no freedom to decide whether you want to die for the country and the "Führer" or not. And to make sure that everybody follows the rules, even those who were not so impressed by Goebbels excellency in propaganda, a system of espionage was established that gave the one party that Goebbels belonged to the ultimate power. Yes, there was propaganda, but also oppression and fear and cruelty. And think about liberal politicians in BC whatever you want, but you have to do a great big deal to "earn the right" to be compared to Joseph Goebbels.

Tomorrow is the 9th of November, the anniversary of the Reichskristallnacht, indeed Joseph Goebbels "masterpiece". Can we really refer to Goebbels and not take the Holocaust into consideration. I don´t think you can separate the mass propagandist from the mass murderer. But what´s the big deal, huh?

Teabags go Israel!

Neither about Canada nor Germany, but still a link I would like to share, since I have been thinking about the Tea Party a lot recently and it fits into my research project on the future of democracy in Canada, Germany, the USA and Israel.
I doubt that the Tea-Party-"Movement" will be to successful in Israel, although Israel can do movements. But Israel´s political landscape suffers greatly from the lack of new faces and new potential leaders much less a figurehead able to unify all protesters of all kinds in the "movement".

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/world/middleeast/02israel.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast

Politik und Glamour?

Heute nur ein Link zu meinem Beitrag auf meinem blog auf vorwärts.de zur Frage, wie man junge Menschen, aber besonders junge Frauen wieder mehr für Politik interessieren kann. Darf Politik sexy sein?

http://www.vorwaerts.de/artikel/macht-medien-mweidlichkeit?page=0%2C1

Today just a link to one of my articles on vorwärts.de on the question how we can interest young people, especially women for taking an active role in politics. Can politics be sexy? In German only

Those who applaud Angela Merkel for her new-found butt-kicking attitude should consider the law and basic liberties firs

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/europe/germany-targets-muslims-in-push-to-criminalize-forced-marriage/article1774397/

Next to the fact that I would wish that Germany would appear in the global news because of something valuable we have achieved and not only because of our sudden facade of strict policies towards Muslims in general, this article is a bit naive when it comes to the facts.

First of all, there is a thin line between a forced marriage and an arranged marriage, whether one likes the idea of the latter or not. Arranged marriages are indeed pretty common in some parts of Germany´s immigrant society and protecting women that end up in Germany after an arranged marriage far away from home and the culture and language they understand could be a positive affect of a new law. Unfortunately, the new law does the opposite, in fact, people have to married a year longer before they get their own permanent residency status. Thus, the new law would not change anything for the better.

There is an undeniable problem with forced marriage and especially cases as mentioned in the article, girls and young women send abroad for a family vacation and never to return. These cases are, unlike the article hints at, the minority and a whole different story than arranged marriages.

Those who applaud Angela Merkel for her new-found butt-kicking attitude should consider the law and basic liberties first. Both in Canada and in Germany the state has repeatedly withdrawn and reduced his competencies and responsibilities regarding peoples´ marriage and bedrooms since the Seventies. It is a legal problem if the state wants to exert more control again - but just for one religious group in the population. And it would be a legally problematic matter to find a formula for the new law that helps judges to distinguish between forced and arranged marriage
to be implemented in a state under the rule of law.

What women in need really need are structures they can rely on. They need a resident status or at least a refugee status on their own. Are we really expecting women to speak out against an arranged or forced marriage when they know they will be send back home - just to be the disgrace of the family, eventually in poverty and separated from their children? They need a state that protects them against so-called honor killings - with police force if necessary. They need a state that makes sure her children can stay with her, safe and with a minimum of social security. They need places to turn to, shelters in case of abuse, rape or the danger of forced marriage. They don´t need us to exploit them in favor of our new-found hard-lining against Muslims for mere strategic matters.

If Angela Merkel thinks about this and tries to implement all this into a big package of new laws that might change the status of Muslim women in Western countries dramatically, then we can clasp our hands. But as long as we don´t see this law it is just populism, just mere boosting her own severely damaged popularity while riding the wave of en-vogue Muslim bashing.

Oh for heaven´s sake, it is not always Israel´s fault

As unfortunate as the fact is that Canada was not granted a temporary seat in the United Nation´s Security Council, blaming the governments support for Israel as one of the reasons for Canada´s loss does not seem helpful at all.

Globe and Mail journalist John Ibbitson named a few reasons for Canada´s defeat in the election. Reducing the development aid and even more so, not having had a coherent strategy on certain issues in the past is for sure on of the problems to point out, along with the changes on carbon reduction policies. And yes, a lot of Arab countries, or better be said, Muslim countries might not like the support of Israel through Ottawa. On the other hand, due to its past, Germany´s support for Israel - with ups and downs - has been unwavering ever since the foundation of the state of Israel. Recently, during the reign of Ms. Angela Merkel, a conservative like Mr. Harper, it has even grown stronger and more obvious, much to the dismay of many in the Middle East. And still, Germany made it through the elections, let´s say, quite easy.

Israel has been blamed for many things in the past. A European-wide poll found that the majority of people see Israel as the biggest threat for peace in the world. Arab nations blame Israel for controlling their own development (or the lack thereof). And now Canada blames Israel for its loss in an UN-election.

Sure, there is a lot that needs to be said about Israel´s settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, about the ongoing occupation and the suppression of people that are unlucky enough to be born in one of those two tiny areas on Earth. Not everybody likes what Jerusalem West has to say about Palestinians and a support for the freedom of the Palestinian people is a good and noble a cause as the fight against Antisemitism all over the world. However, blaming Israel, blaming "the Jews" for everything we haven´t achieved is nothing else then modern day Antisemitism.

"The Jews" have a long, long history of being everybody´s scapegoat, from London to Cape Town, from Paris to Prague and further to Moscow. Maybe, in the 21st century, we are able to overcome this narrative that has survived and developed many different heads ever since Rome started battling those monotheists in Judea.

We have a saying in German: "Das brennt mir auf dem Herzen" which means that something weighs heavily on somebody´s heart, a sentiment for sure not unknown to speakers of the English language. Our common heavy hearts have their origin in Yiddish: Es brent mir ahfen hartz. So please, Mr. Ibbitson, es brent mir ahfen hartz, just stop the blaming and the finger-pointing. I know what you meant to say but people sometimes just hear want they want to hear......