Eideard

Sigmar Gabriel, Social Democrats + Joachim Gauck + Angela Merkel, Christian Democrats
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Germany’s government and the two major opposition parties have said they will jointly nominate Joachim Gauck, a human rights activist originally from East Germany, to be the country’s next president.

Angela Merkel said her coalition government, and the centre-left opposition had rallied behind Gauck, 72, who was initially proposed by the opposition Social Democrats and Greens.

He is not a member of a political party.

“What moves me the most, is that a man who was still born during the gloomy, dark war, who grew up and lived 50 years in a dictatorship … is now called to become the head of state,” Gauck said. “This is of course a very special day in my life.”

Christian Wulff, 52, resigned as president on Friday after two months of allegations about receiving loans on favourable terms and hotel stays from friends when he was state governor of Lower Saxony. He was Merkel’s candidate when elected less than two years ago…

When Wulff resigned, Merkel immediately said she would work with the Social Democrats and Greens to find a consensus candidate to succeed him…

The chancellor said that clergymen such as Gauck – a former Lutheran priest – were at the forefront of the protests that eventually brought down the east German regime.

Claudia Roth, the Greens’ leader, said “Gauck will restore the respect for the office, will restore dignity,” to the presidency, which had become tainted by Wulff’s actions.

Isn’t it interesting how a nation which parallels so many of our circumstances in the United States figures out how to take different directions, grow and even prosper in hard times.

Anyone even imagine this happening in the United States with the clown show we have in Congress?

Anti-Nazi demonstrators in Germany prevented far-right groups from marking the 67th-anniversary of the RAF bombing of Dresden by forming a human chain in the city centre. An estimated 13,000 people from across Germany’s political spectrum took part in the stance against the far right despite freezing conditions.

The anniversary of the Dresden raid has been a high point in Germany’s neo-Nazi calendar with thousands rallying in the eastern German city each year despite passionate, and at times violent, opposition from critics, who accused the far right of exploiting the bombing for political purposes.

An estimated 25,000 people died in the raid that started when RAF bombers struck on the night of February 13, 1945 and finished with an attack by US aircraft on February 15.

The colossal loss of life and tremendous destruction wrought by the bombing of a city famed for its culture and architecture has been portrayed by the German far right as an Allied war crime and an example of Germany’s apparent victimhood.

Some 1,600 neo-Nazis travelled to Dresden to mark the raid this year but were met at the station by a police presence of over 5,000, and some 2,000 counter-demonstrators who banged drums and shouted “Nazis out”.

The far right started a torch-light procession but were soon told by police they would have to abandon it because the human chain had blocked their route…

“I’m happy that it remained peaceful,” said Markus Ulbig, interior minister for state of Saxony. “Democrats have come together to show that Nazis are not welcome in the city.” After the far-right threat had passed, people lit candles in memory of the victims of the raid and attended a memorial service. At 21:45, the time RAF bombers first appeared over Dresden, church bells rang out across the city.

“Our city stands together for courage, respect and tolerance,” said the Dirk Hilbert, Dresden’s acting mayor, in an address to the anti-Nazi demonstrators.

I find it very hard to express my hatred of war and those who glorify it. I am blinded by tears of anger and pain – I cannot hold back my rage.

They changed their mind, withdrew the offer.

Katharina Henot, postmaster of Cologne and her brother

The trial of a woman burnt at the stake 400 years ago for witchcraft resumed in Germany on Monday in an effort to clear the woman’s name.

Katharina Henot suffered her fiery fate in Cologne in 1627 after being found guilty of practicing black magic. Arrested, and tortured to such an extent that the right-handed woman had to scrawl her last letter of defence with her left hand, she was eventually paraded through the city in an open cart before being tied to a stake and burnt.

Now the panel on the city council whose predecessors found her guilty of witchcraft hundreds of years ago will review the evidence. It is suspected that Henot, head of the city’s post office, fell foul of a deadly game of political intrigue orchestrated by her rivals and detractors.

The fact that Henot’s name has a chance of exoneration is due largely to the efforts of Hartmut Hegeler, an evangelical pastor and religious education teacher, who has championed the woman’s cause in Cologne…

Between 1500 and 1782 at least 25,000 Germans, mostly women but also some men and children, were executed for witchcraft. Many were made scapegoats for natural disasters or faced accusations because of personal vendettas or just because they failed to fit in with the people around them.

In one of the most infamous cases, a three-month burst of bloodletting in the small town of Oberkirchen in 1630 claimed the lives of 58, including those of two children, as accusations of witchcraft spread like wildfire.

Be of good cheer – if you miss the good old days.

If my fellow Americans elect someone as looney as Rick Santorum, he’ll have the Inquisition back up and running in a matter of days.

A German Catholic priest has admitted 280 counts of sexual abuse involving three boys in the past decade, saying he did not think he was doing harm.

Named only as Andreas L, the priest told a court in Braunschweig that he had first abused the nine-year-old son of a widowed woman parishioner. After being banned by his diocese from making further contact with the boy, he abused two brothers, aged nine and 13…

The priest on trial in Braunschweig faces a minimum prison sentence of between six and six and a half years. He was arrested during the summer, after the mother of his earlier victim reported him to the authorities.

She acted after her son, now aged 17, revealed to her the abuse he had undergone for two years.

Sexual assaults were made on the three boys in various settings: at the priest’s house, on skiing holidays, in a parental home, on a trip to Disneyland Paris and at a church shortly before Mass.

The priest…said that while working in Braunschweig in 2004, he had begun a close relationship with the widow.

When Fr Andreas was moved to Salzgitter, her son often spent weekends with him, and the two would go off on short trips. He would give the boy presents such as a camera and a mobile phone. Abuse would often occur three times a weekend.

The priest said it had not been his intention to get close to the boy sexually, and that it had never occurred to him that he was doing harm…

The abuse of the two brothers…began under similar circumstances, the court heard…

“It was never my impression that the children did not consent,” the priest was quoted as saying at the trial…

About 2,800 pornographic images were found on the priest’s computer, including several of his victims.

I have no idea how thoroughly the Roman Catholic Church is acting to prevent future crimes. It sounds as if they’re still focussed on cleaning up – or concealing – old crimes.

The privilege of working under the open sky is reserved for just a few lucky professions. For the less fortunate majority, spending their working hours surrounded by gloomy office landscapes, the soothing sight of clouds drifting through the sky is unattainable. Setting up office cubicles in the open would do the trick but it’s hardly a practical option, especially in places where the weather cannot be trusted. Fortunately, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO), based in Stuttgart, Germany, know what else can be done to bring a little outdoor comfort to the office-bound. They built a dynamic luminous ceiling which allows office dwellers to gaze at clouds without ever leaving their desks.

As clouds shift shapes and move through the sky, the intensity of sunlight we experience on the ground is in constant flux. When replicated indoors, such lighting conditions could help entice the feeling of freedom and spaciousness that we associate with being outdoors. However, it takes more than attaching a set of your regular LCD TVs to a ceiling and playing footage of a cloudy sky to pull this off. The IAO researchers teamed up with LEiDs GmbH, an LED technology company, to make sure their ceiling simulates natural light conditions on a partially-cloudy day as accurately as possible.

…A combination of red, blue, green and white diodes is used to produce the full light spectrum, which translates into over 16 million possible hues. This means the set-up is able to simulate dynamic changes in lighting conditions that are not immediately obvious to the naked eye. They may, however, influence your effectiveness at work…

For now, the prototype sky takes up 34 square meters of ceiling real estate and uses 32,560 LEDs to provide light with the intensity of over 3,000 lux (500 to 1000 lux is already enough to create comfortable lighting conditions). A small section of this virtual sky is going to be exhibited at the beginning of March in Hanover, Germany, during the CeBIT tradeshow, so you still have some time to talk your bosses into buying one of these. At the moment, the sky comes at 1000 euros per square meter, but the price is likely to come down with the solution growing in popularity.

I showed this to friends who work in a pretty typical American cube-farm and they thought the idea was terrific. Pay attention, boss!

The photo links to a site from the German Ministry of Education and Research

German unemployment fell more than forecast in December as exports of cars and machinery boomed and one of the mildest winters on record helped support jobs in construction…

German companies, working off orders for exports and investment goods, have so far defied a debt crisis the European Commission says risks triggering a recession in the euro area. The Munich-based Ifo institute’s measure of business confidence rose unexpectedly in December, and polls show most Germans see their job as secure even as Europe’s biggest economy slows…

Carmaker Audi AG said on Dec. 27 that it may add 1,200 jobs this year as it expands investment in electric vehicles and light-metal technology. Airbus SAS, maker of the A380 superjumbo whose German production sites include Hamburg, said Dec. 14 that it’s seeking 4,000 more workers. Of Hamburg’s largest 200 employers, 42 percent said they plan to boost hiring in 2012, the Abendblatt newspaper reported Dec. 30, citing its own poll…

Across Germany, 90 percent of voters said they view their jobs as secure, a poll of 2,000 respondents by Ernst & Young International for Die Welt newspaper published today showed. Forty percent said they expect the economy to weaken in 2012.

Compare that to any poll of economic confidence in the United States since Bill Clinton left office. Even in the period before the Great Recession – brought to us by Bush/Cheney in the White house – American workers confronted economic policies that focused solely on maximizing profits through outsourcing.

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Advert for campaign to get clothing-optional voting

A west Florida community is spending $3,800 in tax dollars to entice naked Germans to spend their summer vacations there.

The advertising grant was awarded Tuesday by the Pasco County commission to Pandabare, a local nudist organization representing 16 resorts, campgrounds and clubs located in the largely rural county north of Tampa.

The ads, to be placed in European publications, will promote the county’s longstanding reputation as the nudist capital of America.

“The idea is to create a Euro-bird season in July and August which are our worst two months of the year,” said Eric Keaton, public communications manager for the Pasco County tourist development agency. Keaton said nudism contributes to the county’s economy, but he had no figures to quantify its impact.

The first target market for the ad campaign will be Germany which, according to Pandabare’s application, is “a large and lucrative market whose millions of nudists are among the world’s most prolific travelers.” The group also anticipates a campaign aimed at British nudists.

Keaton said the advertisements…will be very clean, and somewhat funny…”

I always fall apart over states well-known for bible-based reactionary politics…which haven’t any problem with one part of the state making money from freedom-based lifestyles they would generally arrest folks for in another part of the state.

WIlly – you should always wear a cloak -
you can pee whenever you feel like it and no one notices

German maritime archaeologists claimed to have found a urinal used by Kaiser Wilhelm II lying on the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

The piece of porcelain history was discovered in the wreck of the Udine, a light-cruiser which was sunk in the First World War by the Royal Navy, that now lies 28 nautical miles off the German island of Rugen.

“It was sunk by the British in 1915,” said Reinhard Oser, the archaeologist leading the expedition. “We managed to take some great photographs, and made this unusual discovery.”

At the time the significance of the urinal went unnoticed until later research revealed that the urinal was part of a special bathroom laid on for the emperor’s convenience.

“Kaiser Wilhelm was on board the ship when it was launched in Kiel on December 11, 1902, and went on its maiden voyage,” explained Mr Oser…

The discovery of the regal lavatory has helped focus attention on the vast array of wrecks that litter the seabed of the Baltic. Archaeologists estimate that there as many as 3,000 ships, many of them victims of fighting in either the first or second world war, lie beneath the waves.

They’re not certain how many had the honor of transporting the Kaiser while he peed.

An unexploded Second World War bomb is leading to the evacuation of nearly half of the population of the German town of Koblenz.

The 1,800 kilogram bomb was discovered lying in the River Rhine after falling water levels revealed its resting place.

Some 45,000 of the 106,000-strong population will be cleared from an evacuation zone 1.8 kilometres in radius in the biggest post-war evacuation in Koblenz’s history.

Local authorities will provide temporary accommodation in schools outside the danger zone for residents unable to stay with friends or family, and free shuttle buses are being laid on to transport the thousands of people forced to leave.

On Monday two Koblenz hospitals began preparing to move 200 patients and started to cancel operations. Koblenz railway station will shut down, hotels have been told to close, and the inmates of a local jail will also have to pack their bags “The extensive measures are necessary,” said Norbert Gras, a spokesman for the local fire brigade. “It’s true we are dealing with a very large bomb.”

Although discoveries of unexploded ordinance from the massive Allied aerial assault on the Nazi Reich are frequent in Germany, the Rhine bomb poses a particular challenge for explosive experts.

The bomb lies in 40 centimetres of water with parts of it buried in mud, making it difficult to access the detonation fuse. The presence of a smaller American bomb close by has also complicated matters, and set back the operation to defuse the RAF bomb till the weekend…

The low water levels in the Rhine brought on by an autumnal drought have led to a spate of discoveries of unexploded munitions left over from the war. On Sunday 1,000 people in the Rhine town of Neuwied had to leave their homes as experts defused a 500 kilogram American bomb on the banks of the river.

The gift that keeps on giving. Though this bomb was dropped on a part of the world containing the remnants of the Fascist onslaught that threatened the whole world. Our part of comparable dangers presented to civilians from the dispersion of landmines and cluster munitions – during “peacetime” – is a lot less tolerable.

I don’t know about the rest of you – I’m going shopping
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that EU treaty changes rather than eurobonds will help solve the eurozone debt crisis.

Ahead of European Commission proposals for bonds backed by all 17 eurozone states, she said what was really needed was a political response. Mrs Merkel argued if there was to be a debate on eurobonds, it should be at the end, not the middle of the crisis…

The eurobond plans, due to be presented by the commission on Wednesday, are attracting increasing support, despite Germany’s opposition. Greece’s new Prime Minister, Lucas Papademos, said on Tuesday that eurobonds “or similar tools could provide the means to overcome the crisis”.

Addressing Germany’s confederation of employers in Berlin on Tuesday, the German chancellor said that if changing treaties proved too difficult on an EU level, they would be dealt with instead by the 17 members of the eurozone.

“We have to change the construction of the euro area,” she said. “Treaty changes are for me an immediate part of solving the crisis, the political response to a politically derived confidence crisis.”

Reports on Monday suggested that Britain would accept a “narrow” amendment of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty covering the eurozone in return for a deal on the EU’s working time directive.

Although full details of the commission’s proposals are not yet known, a leaked draft document indicates they would involve three options

An extensive scheme that would completely replace national bonds and would require each eurozone government to guarantee the debt of other countries

A lesser scheme that would see national bonds partially replaced with eurobonds up to a limit that could relate to how closely a country adhered to strict rules.

The replacement of some national bond issues with a limit on guarantees

Flip-flopping hardly describes the way this crisis is going down to the wire. And maybe beyond.

Now, the lies accepted to justify sleazy economic practices is haunting the politicians who hoped to benefit. Except an increase in risk supersedes an increase in power. It’s looks more likely to me they will have to shrink the European Union back to the nations which can deal responsibly with each other on debt and currency. That’s a single-digit number.