vor ort, for you, die II. staffel

The debate over continuing financial assistance for former East German stabilization and development, sparked by the election season rhetoric of some municipal hopefuls, has now, fuelled by bidden commentary, broadened from a suggestion, that could have had xenophobic overtones, to a discussion about power of the purse and the sturdiness of statistics (DE). I am not sure how to translate the meaning of “poor-mouthing.” Unlike private banking institutions in Germany, like Deutsche Bank or Commerzbank, savings and loan banks (Sparkassen) are supported and partially owned by their host communities.  Traditionally the profits of the Sparkassen have either been reabsorbed into the network in order to promote more growth and investment, locally, or have underwritten local charity initiatives, aside from shoring up capital, which can be problematic in an environment of tight credit, against expanding requirements for reserves.

Though not without resistance and fear of undue influence (benefit going not to the public but the politician), savings banks in a few of the same communities that were calling for the end to solidarity payments have agreed to share a part of the some 4,7 billion € made nation-wide last year in profit with the cities. Money is a very emotional issue and can be set on edge even more by accusing one group, making an otherness, of contributing to one’s own insolvency. Annually, the Sparkassen turnover for North Rhine-Westphalia is over 200 million €, which is, incidentally, the amount that the communities of the Ruhrgebiet have contributed to the Solidarity Pact fund. The pledge for financial assistance cannot be a matter that individual communities can take leave of at will and probably should not be ended prematurely, since wealth redistributed (within the same country, too) is not squandered, but neither should the social support of charitable organizations be beholden to political will, because even local-politics is not always in civic interest.

socks cousteau

Vacationing in London several years ago, we each got a pair of posh socks from Harrods’ as keep-sakes, perhaps lucky socks.

I try to wear mine gingerly but they’ve held up quite well. Inside-out (for washing—although I am not about the rationale behind the technique) one can see that each individual colour panel is stitched separately and the loose threads flay like some exotic sea-slug. Laundry can be quite an adventure of discovery, too.

eine torte? nein danke!

beacon

Thank goodness for radio broadcasts and hobbyists, I was thinking while driving to work, since larger and larger swathes of the communication spectrum is going silent. First cable made aerials unnecessary, then quite a wide plateau followed with satellites but now analogue (and seemingly approachable) are being replaced wholesale by digital channels. Of course, everything is awash in an invisible smog of cellular and wireless transmissions but those do not have a significant range nor persistence.

For decades, the compendium of human business rippled, diffuse and faint but still with some tiny hope of being seen, out—slouching in all directions from television and radio. Now much (and with a tendency towards more) of communication is tethered, careening awkwardly in sort of a closed-circuit matter-of-record. Never before has so much been recorded verbatim, and many people are committing more words to the ages than exchanged in conversation, but the audience is limited, private and through the annuals of time, probably would not be beatified as a chronicle of the moment. I’ve amassed some visitors to PfRC from all over the world and it’s fun, but there’s no possibility, no point of entry, for anyone outside of our idiosyncratic protocols and routines, to share what we have done and what we are doing. One does not need to imagine some alien culture, curious that we've gone quiet, for this argument, since already we are finding difficulties with backwards-compatibility and our own future generations may dismiss our records as inscrutable or irrelevant, like so much surplus magnetic-tape and floppy disks.  The world-wide web is a closed system and perhaps irretrievable and irreparable should the architecture of the internet go away. That buzzing swarm of cell phones and WiFi and their longer-range counterparts are, besides, garbled and coded—further to make the intended the exclusive audience and allow no spillage, but I do wonder sometimes if encryption could possibly appear more intelligible than natural language.

revival

Though sometimes reviled as pedestrian (especially after alternatives became readily available), Microsoft's Internet Explorer was truly a pioneering opus.  For the launch of its latest incarnation, MS has developed a brilliant series of marketing-infographics, embracing this love-hate relationship, to inaugurate its come-back.

lend-lease or ostalgie

Possibly in anticipation of a disgruntled electorate for regional voting in May, a very polarizing and divisive idea has been offered up for public consumption by some cash-strapped communities in North-Rhine Westphalia: civic leaders argue that the Solidarity Pact tariff (DE/EN) for helping integrate the former East Germany has become redundant and they can ill-afford to make further financial contributions.

The industrial region of the state in question is called the Ruhrgebiet and has seen some struggles, contemporary and on-going since some mining and manufacturing operations have been curtailed, but is hardly a Rust-Belt. The cities and towns there on the verge of insolvency were prey and prone to the same mechanisms that have distributed this economic crisis globally. Perhaps it is the press coverage that is most politically-charged, igniting much comment and discussion. These assistance payments, scheduled to expire in 2019, helped the former East (the so-called Neue Länder—which is in fact true since under the East German regime, there were no states but rather districts that were restored to their former boundaries with reunification but when it’s said in the news, it sounds a little back-handed to me) to rebuild and thrive. No one, I think, is begrudging past payments or doubts it was necessary but are merely suggesting that perhaps its time has come—that East Germany is on equal footing with the West, however, the media has exploded the debate into greater dimensions.

Old prejudices come out—though they are never much restrained, like the small comments about having, for the first time in history (which spans a little more than two decades, just), both Chancellor and President from East Germany—and I think maybe people forget that the Solidarity Pact is not a tax solely levied on the people of the Ruhrgebiet but rather something paid by all citizens, East and West alike, and the fact that razing the border, along with added government support, also significantly increased the opportunity for commerce for Western firms and made quite a few businesses extraordinary wealth over night and fueled the German Wirtschaftswünder. It seems almost, in the realm of politicking, that the suggestion is a swipe against the economic rescue packages of the European Union, which are something held at arm’s length from a plebiscite.

conservation of energy or green-washing

Alexander Neubacher, writing for Der Spiegel’s international section (auf Englisch), presents a clever look at trenchant German environmental policies and psyche, suggesting that outcomes are sometimes marginalized for the sake of the movement and solidarity. Though I do believe that many ecological initiatives of Germany and the inchoate care and concern for the planet’s health are positive, like indoctrinating everyone at an early age to develop sustainable practices, wind- and solar-power and preservation of natural habitats, it is interesting to explore how some aspects of environmentalism, in practice, have perhaps become counterproductive and have been victimized by their own success.

Some of the more convoluted efforts, with no net gain or possibly a negative impact, seem more there to uphold the laws of thermo-dynamics (that neither energy nor matter can be created or destroyed) rather than help the ecosystem. The article addresses two of the biggest perversions, bio-fuel—ethanol, which takes the incentive away from farmers to raise food crops and practice traditional methods of sustainability, like crop-rotation, and must be harvested with diesel burning tractors—and energy-saving light-bulbs—which are poisonous and have the potential to make one as mad as a hatter and are a nightmare to dispose of, but there are other unintended consequences welling up from the best intentions no longer so well managed. The deposit programme (Pfand) on single-use containers has led to a reduction on truly reusable containers, extreme water-conservation has left the sewer systems of larger cities clogged up and extra water must be used just to flush it all away, abandoning nuclear energy only to import the shortfall from neighbours, the latest craze of insulation does save on heating and cooling but the siding suffocates homes and offices and promotes growth of mould. Germany is a model for environmental activism and stewardship, and no one should be discouraged by the estrangement of policy from outcomes but rather work within that same framework of recycling, conservation and improving efficiency towards a better means of execution.

litotes or meno male

There has been enough deflection in the news in recent weeks, what with the American Republican party primaries, unrest and due unwelcome in Afghanistan, general simonizing of the economy, one could rightly wonder what happened with the aegis of sovereign default that was clouding Greece, Italy and other euro-zone members. One would be forgiven, in fact, for thinking that the situation resolved itself, and the Greeks and other Occupiers have grinned and bore it through austerity and virtual deficits met a spectacular and fiery demise, greeting their anti-debt counterparts (fabricated and negotiated in kind), as if real markets and future prospects unfolded to the same morality play script, the personified Laziness and Greed versus the righteousness of the fabulists and troubadours.

I am sure there was no mutual annihilation, however, and rosiness and ease, by any number of estimations, are unfortunately not prevailing. Standards of ethics and morality of course do have everything to do with governance, stewardship and negotiation, but like the pronouncements of the Credit Rating Agencies, the so-called Troika, the triumvirate, is not the absolute moral authority it is setting itself up as.  I am sure the intent is pure but pontificating, far from under-shooting the mark, is a useful mask for hypocrisy and dread.