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sauer kraut posted:Some people with higher education might know it's something about Swedish hordes invading the north and kicking Catholic rear end, but that's the extend of it. In Sweden, the Thirty Year War gets a fair bit of romantisation as it turned the country into a superpower and a lot of good state infrastructure was developed after that. I took an evening course in German at my Swedish university. The teacher was from Berlin, and she was kind of baffled by the positive view of the war in Sweden. In Germany, she claimed, it's viewed more as a tragedy with all the destruction it brought to the region, and the following instability and the the aches of the development of Germany over the centuries could be traced back to the war. I specifically brought it up to her because i've always thought that the human suffering of the war tends to get a bit glossed over in Swedish history, so it was nice to hear a German's view of it. Falukorv fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 12, 2013 17:35
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Falukorv posted:In Sweden, the Thirty Year War gets a fair bit of romantisation as it turned the country into a superpower and a lot of good state infrastructure was developed after that. It was a tragedy from a German perspective. I will just quote one part of the Wikipedia article: quote:So great was the devastation brought about by the war that estimates put the reduction of population in the German states at about 25% to 40%. Some regions were affected much more than others. For example, Württemberg lost three-quarters of its population during the war. In the territory of Brandenburg, the losses had amounted to half, while in some areas an estimated two-thirds of the population died. The male population of the German states was reduced by almost half. The population of the Czech lands declined by a third due to war, disease, famine and the expulsion of Protestant Czechs. Much of the destruction of civilian lives and property was caused by the cruelty and greed of mercenary soldiers. Villages were especially easy prey to the marauding armies. Those that survived, like the small village of Drais near Mainz, would take almost a hundred years to recover. The Swedish armies alone may have destroyed up to 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns. That reminds me of the one clear memory I have of history lessons about the Thirty Years War. One of my classmates was asked the years the war started and ended, and he said:"I only remember the start date."... 
Torrannor fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 12, 2013 18:13
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To be fair to him, the 100 year war lasted more than that, so assuming the 30 year war lasted longer than 30 years isn't that dumb. 
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Oct 12, 2013 18:22
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To be fair, the Germans proved quite adept at killing each other even when Swedes weren't involved - Magdeburg was sacked by a catholic army. Of course, as an Austrian it is my duty to remind my North Germans friends from time to time that they are godless heathens, anyway. :P
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Oct 12, 2013 22:35
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derp, wrong thread.
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Oct 12, 2013 22:52
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eviljelly posted:And American politics has way more crazy religious stuff than here. (A Congresswoman recently talked about these being the "End Times" as foretold in the Bible). I'm certainly not disputing this. But I didn't know they'd collect for any religious group - I thought it was only for Christians. I guess we'll see how this unfurls as the Muslim population grows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_in_Christianity#Sunday_rest
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Oct 13, 2013 11:14
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Two things happened today and one of them is shocking.  1.) Probing negotiations are over. There will now be coalition negotiations between the CDU and the SPD. 2.) 1. is apparently considered a top news story by Spiegel Online.
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Oct 17, 2013 19:20
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Randler posted:2.) 1. is apparently considered a top news story by Spiegel Online. Well, at least it isn't a T-Bartz story.  Breaking +++ T-Bartz cancelled his flight +++ Breaking
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Oct 17, 2013 19:32
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Not even Mutti's mobile phone is safe from NSA spying, apparently. As an American living in Germany, this is frankly incredibly embarrassing.
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Oct 23, 2013 19:14
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Drone posted:Not even Mutti's mobile phone is safe from NSA spying, apparently. You should take comfort in the fact that Germany is heavily spying on it's own citizens as well. So some of the outrage over the American surveillance state are quite hypocritical. That said, I am massively more enraged over the NSA spying on me than I am about my own government spying on me. I can vote for somebody who promises to end the surveillance, but even if that does not work out I assume the German government is basically doing what it does for the good of Germany, while the NSA would have no compunctions acting against my interests (or those of any German/all Germans), if it is in the interests of the United States.
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Oct 23, 2013 19:35
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Torrannor posted:You should take comfort in the fact that Germany is heavily spying on it's own citizens as well. So some of the outrage over the American surveillance state are quite hypocritical. Can you go into more details regarding that, because I have never seen that issue being raised in the news media before.
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Oct 23, 2013 19:38
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Torrannor posted:You should take comfort in the fact that Germany is heavily spying on it's own citizens as well. So some of the outrage over the American surveillance state are quite hypocritical. It is practically an open secret that the US is conduction economic espionage against targets in Europe, or is at least doing Chinese-levels of not caring if companies spy on competitors in Europe. Frankly the fact that the EU was negotiating a trade agreement when the scandal broke and continued is insane. The US side has a massive information advantage over the European side, they aren't negotiating in good faith.
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Oct 23, 2013 20:19
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Randler posted:Can you go into more details regarding that, because I have never seen that issue being raised in the news media before.
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Oct 23, 2013 21:13
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Whoa, Lucke gets an interview in a mainstream media format where he is actually asked questions that are not "You are an evil nazi, arent't you?" http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/s...id_1136355.html Interesting: They are talking about alternative szenarios to the current euro policy that the bundesbank evaluated... quote:FOCUS-MONEY: Glauben Sie, dass es günstigere Alternativen als die milliardenschweren Rettungsschirme gibt? vvvv:  Did you even read the interview? The bundesbank evaluated alternative scenarios to the current euro policy (they confirmed in writing that they did those evaluations). And lucke is right: if those studies had unquestionably supported the current policy, they would have been used as ammunitions to support our government's view. No, that in itself doesn't mean that lucke is 100% right. It does mean however that merkel is also not 100% correct about her "alternativlose" policy. Nektu fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Oct 24, 2013 |
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Oct 24, 2013 08:01
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Ah, the patented "There is a giant conspiracy by the government - and the opposition - to keep us out of parliament!"
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Oct 24, 2013 08:17
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ufarn posted:A long time ago, there was a feature in Spiegel on a politician who was geotrackd by cellular triangulation. Can't remember the link, though. http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-vorratsdaten
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Oct 24, 2013 10:51
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Drone posted:Not even Mutti's mobile phone is safe from NSA spying, apparently. http://www.der-postillon.com/2013/10/pofalla-will-wissen-welchen-teil-von.html?m=1 Der Postillon owns.
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Oct 24, 2013 11:46
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Well, our election is water under the bridge, and I guess reality is welcome again: Irre IWF-Idee: Deutsche Sparer sollen ein Zehntel ihres Vermögens abgeben A report about a current publication of the IWF that discusses a possible 10% tax on property as one way out of the crisis. That stuff like that is even discussed openly should ring some really big warning bells. Although I guess that a more sneaky approach with expropriation via inflation is also a viable alternative if they have enough time left for that - it's really hard sometimes to explain the workings of "inflation" to people, and you cannot get mad about stuff you don't know or don't understand (lets call that the merkel approach, shall we?). Sparer im Griff des "Trio Eurofernale":Wie das Kartell aus Politik, EZB und Banken nach unseren Ersparnissen greift Talking about the relations between the ECB, the banks and the european governments, how they will "do whatever it takes to presere the euro" (Dragi, July 2012 btw), and how that "whatever" most certainly contains a healthy dose of "socialising the losses".
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Nov 4, 2013 20:08
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Randler posted:Can you go into more details regarding that, because I have never seen that issue being raised in the news media before. Well our media often sides with the government so there is no real public discussion about the German state spying their citizens. But as a student we used to informally call Wolfgang Schäuble our old Minister of Interior /Special Affairs Dr. Strangelove for his Orwellian ideas. There was even a civil rights campaign called Stasi 2.0 against him.
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Nov 12, 2013 00:39
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Nektu posted:Well, our election is water under the bridge, and I guess reality is welcome again: Yeah, so that's entirely fear-mongering bullshit and fyi ideas like this are discussed pretty often because that's kind of what these reports are for: Exploring a lot of different ideas. The one thing Focus and Welt are freaking out about is a half-page box separated from the rest of the chapter, which by the way is not advocating taxing things to hell and back, but exploring what ideas are possible and how they might work. The chapter is titled "taxing our way out of - or into? - trouble", which should maybe give away that not every idea presented there is also one they'd love to see implemented. In fact, the way that specific idea is floated in this chapter, it doesn't even seem like they are testing the water for it but rather have it in there for completeness' sake. The historical examples Focus and Welt offer in between hyperventilating about Brussels taking taking all our money (retroactively, too, loving laffo) should also tip you off: It's autocratic regimes, usually in a situation of war. I would love to see a legal implementation of that idea within the current framework. In short: This entire thing is loving stupid. There are legitimate concerns about the way the EU and ECB are handling the crisis. This isn't one of them, this is intellectual diarrhea.
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Nov 12, 2013 01:06
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MesozoicStoic posted:Here you go: German government malware Quellen-TKÜ is (or rather would be) an investigative measure used against individual suspects with warrants by the ordinary criminal courts. Neither its scope nor its inteded use are at all comparable to the suspicion-independant general tapping of communication nodes that has been executed by the Obama administration. Therefore I still fail to see how one can claim that Germany is heavily spying on its own citizens to such a degree that complaining about Obama's "eavesdropping" could be considered hypocritical. And for what it's worth, not even domnestic G10 surveillance would even come close to the expansive Five Eyes surveillance that is the current talking point.
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Nov 12, 2013 16:06
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Yeah, I think the closest we're getting currently is Friedrich musing out loud about whether it's possible to simply read all internet traffic at DE-CIX in the name of national security. But that's Friedrich being Friedrich, not the law.
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Nov 12, 2013 18:54
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Ghost Farts posted:Yeah, so that's entirely fear-mongering bullshit and fyi ideas like this are discussed pretty often because that's kind of what these reports are for: Exploring a lot of different ideas. The one thing Focus and Welt are freaking out about is a half-page box separated from the rest of the chapter, which by the way is not advocating taxing things to hell and back, but exploring what ideas are possible and how they might work. The chapter is titled "taxing our way out of - or into? - trouble", which should maybe give away that not every idea presented there is also one they'd love to see implemented. In fact, the way that specific idea is floated in this chapter, it doesn't even seem like they are testing the water for it but rather have it in there for completeness' sake.
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Nov 13, 2013 22:34
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Randler posted:Quellen-TKÜ is (or rather would be) an investigative measure used against individual suspects with warrants by the ordinary criminal courts. Neither its scope nor its inteded use are at all comparable to the suspicion-independant general tapping of communication nodes that has been executed by the Obama administration. Therefore I still fail to see how one can claim that Germany is heavily spying on its own citizens to such a degree that complaining about Obama's "eavesdropping" could be considered hypocritical. It's not. The measure would be equal to a court-ordered search warrant or police observation. However pretty much anything that involves digital information survellience in any way, shape or form in germany these days will be protested and reviled by the Pirate Party and a large number of misguided idealist young persons, fully regardless of the actual factual basis, simply as a matter of course. I remember about 2 years ago there was supposed to be a european treaty to enable the various police forces within the EU to coordinate thier law enforcement efforts in the internet better. The treaty was protested in a rather large scale, with the typical "oh god the government wants to control us all!" hysteria. It got to the point that I actually started to worry and actually went online and read the actual treaty in it's 80- something pages full text. At that point, it became completely clear to me that there was absoultely nothing questionable in the treaty at all, and in the text itself it clearly stated at least FIVE times "Nothing in this treaty enables the signatories to perform any actions that would violate the privacy of private citizins". At that point I saw the hysteria for what it actually was, namely false hysteria, and lost all interest in the entire thing, so sadly I can't say how it turned out.
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Nov 15, 2013 17:13
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So, it seems like CDU and SPD managed to hammer out their coalitions agreement: http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/groko-beschluesse100.html A few points I got from skimming over the document: Minimum wage of 8,50€ is in, but will have a number of exceptions until 2017. The PKW-toll is tentatively in, but might still get axed if they can't get it to comply with a number of guidelines. Dual citizenship will be available only for children born in Germany. States will get the ability to limit increases in rents to keep them affordable. No significant tax raises are planned. There's going to be a 30% quota for women for the board of directors of major companies. It seems like the SPD got a fair few of their demands but in a relatively weakened form. I wonder how their base is gonna take this.
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Nov 27, 2013 12:12
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The Dual Citizenship is a huge loving backwards step. Furthermore, you missed the no marriage equality, and no full adoption rights. Guilty fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Nov 27, 2013 |
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Nov 27, 2013 13:29
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Guilty posted:The Dual Citizenship is a huge loving backwards step. Furthermore, you missed the no marriage equality, and no full adoption rights. Oh? Why is it a backwards step? I haven't been following the news too close lately, but I thought it was a step in the right directions, with children no longer forced to choose a nationality when they are 23 years or so old.
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Nov 27, 2013 14:07
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Things I found relevant: - Europa-GmbH (p. 25)  - "Europa muss sich bei der Normsetzung zurücknehmen" (p. 25) - Limited Net Neutrality (p. 49) - Easier "Allgemeinverbindlichkeitserklärung" of Tarifverträge (p. 68) - Germany will comply with the respective EU directive and (re)implement the Vorratsdatenspeicherung (p. 147) - Harmonizing of Staatshaftungsrecht (p. 154) Guilty posted:The Dual Citizenship is a huge loving backwards step. Furthermore, you missed the no marriage equality, and no full adoption rights. Dual Citizenship is bad and should have been abolished. Coalition agreement says they will actively work to abolish discriminations the Lebenspartnerschaft faces compared to the Ehe. Opening the institution of marriage to same-sex partners still faces constitutional concerns, so I'm not surprised they did not mention that in the agreement. Randler fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Nov 27, 2013 |
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Nov 27, 2013 14:48
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Randler posted:Dual Citizenship is bad and should have been abolished. This is the first time I hear something like this. As someone who is currently trying to get dual citizenship I'd like to know more.
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Nov 27, 2013 14:53
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hey santa baby posted:This is the first time I hear something like this. As someone who is currently trying to get dual citizenship I'd like to know more. Dual citizenship does not play nice with the current understanding of democracy. While it is not 100% accurate, describing it as a problem of "conflicting loyalities" comes close enough. Though there are additional problems of dual citizenships. Especially in the areas of welfare policies and which countrie's laws apply to which person. (Yes, it's not a given that - for example - a German court would apply German law in a lawsuit against a non-German.) § 29 StAG - which the coalition intends to abolish - requires children of non-Germans who have nonetheless gained German citizenship (by way of $§ 4 III, 40b StAG) to decide whether to keep German citizenship or the non-German citizenship. It basically results in a way to get a conditional citizenship which is arguably not in compliance with Art. 16 I 1 GG. Additionally, the requirement of giving up one citizenship after having already received German citizenship only applies to children of two non-German parents, while children with only one non-German parent are allowed to keep both citizenships. This does not seem reasonable considering that German citizenship laws are constructed in a way to limit dual citizenships as much as possible. I would have preferred for them to abolish §§ 4 III, 40b StAG alltogether and then decide whether they want to switch over to ius solis as the baseline. Even with keeping the current ius sanguis approach to citizenship it would have been preferable to create a new law for children of non-Germans born in Germany. They could for example make it so that fulfillment of the requirements of § 4 III StAG would entitle the child to get German citizenship, once it has revoked its non-German citizenship. (In the same way it is required for other naturalizations including the priviledged ones, § 12 StAG.)
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Nov 27, 2013 15:23
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Is there a complaint other than "it might create headaches in interpreting certain laws"? I'm all for letting people choose their own identity, if that includes two countries of origin, let them.
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Nov 28, 2013 11:13
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Simply Simon posted:Is there a complaint other than "it might create headaches in interpreting certain laws"? I'm all for letting people choose their own identity, if that includes two countries of origin, let them. Related to the understanding of democracy and nation states of which the concept of modern state citizenships stem from, yes. The state's desire to have a clear-cut citizenship situation is, however, under the German constitution already a valid complaint for the legislative to only allow dual-citizenships in execeptional cases. (compare BVerfGE 37, 217. Rn. 116 ff.) That does not mean, however, that the state is required to ban dual-citizenships. If there was a political majority for it to change, they could. Just like it would be possible, though in my opinion not advisable, to switch over to a full ius soli approach for citizenship.
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Nov 28, 2013 14:20
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So... that's a "no"?
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Nov 28, 2013 14:22
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Well is there an argument for it other than "why the hell not?" ?
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Nov 28, 2013 14:24
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eviljelly posted:So... that's a "no"? Randler posted:Related to the understanding of democracy and nation states of which the concept of modern state citizenships stem from, yes. Disagreeing with a reason does not mean the reason suddenly disappears. (Especially as they were partly listed in the BVerfGE I cited.)
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Nov 28, 2013 14:29
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Does anybody know anything about the Deutsche Vermögensberatung GmbH?
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Nov 28, 2013 15:12
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Randler posted:Related to the understanding of democracy and nation states of which the concept of modern state citizenships stem from, yes. The state's desire to have a clear-cut citizenship situation is, however, under the German constitution already a valid complaint for the legislative to only allow dual-citizenships in execeptional cases. (compare BVerfGE 37, 217. Rn. 116 ff.) That does not mean, however, that the state is required to ban dual-citizenships. If there was a political majority for it to change, they could. Just like it would be possible, though in my opinion not advisable, to switch over to a full ius soli approach for citizenship. So non-German EU citizens voting in local elections in Germany is bad as well?
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Nov 28, 2013 16:23
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Torrannor posted:So non-German EU citizens voting in local elections in Germany is bad as well? Muncipal elections do not result in the forming of a legislative body, therefore they do not have to play by the same rules as parliamentary elections on the state and federal level.
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Nov 28, 2013 17:02
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Now, this will be interesting to follow from a legal standpoint: http://www.lawblog.de/index.php/archives/2013/12/05/abmahnung-gegen-stream-nutzer/ A cease and desist for watching (streaming) porn on redtube. Realistically redtube must have handed them ip data.
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Dec 6, 2013 09:06
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elwood posted:Now, this will be interesting to follow from a legal standpoint: Lawblog.  I don't expect them to sue for their claims. While U+C apparently belongs to the firms that do not limit themselves to writing out-of-court letters, I see neither a financial nor a preventative incentive for the rights holders to push this to trial.
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Dec 6, 2013 09:21
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