Germany’s jobs miracle

GlobalPost, Jan. 24, 2012

BERLIN, Germany — Unemployment is rising in most European Union countries, as the effects of crippling sovereign debt crisis, and the austerity measures prescribed to tackle it, take their toll.

Yet the bloc’s biggest and richest member has seemed almost immune to the effects of the crisis, particularly when it comes to its labor market. While dole queues lengthen in Spain, France and Greece, in Germany they are rapidly dwindling.

In fact Germany has seen the number out of work decrease to its lowest level since 1991. It’s a remarkable turnaround.

While many other countries were booming before the crisis hit, Germany was dubbed the “Sick Man of Europe,” as it struggled to cope with the ongoing economic effects of reunification. In 2005 unemployment reached a peak of 12.5 percent, crucially exceeding the 5 million mark. Since then it has been almost halved, with a rate of just 6.6 percent in December 2011.

So how have German workers been left relatively unscathed by the crisis?

Experts point out that one of the most important factors is that Germany deployed a number of instruments to keep people in their jobs even during the most trying days of the financial crisis.

Auschwitz documents surface, then vanish

GlobalPost, Jan. 17, 2012

BERLIN — Before the Nazis fled Auschwitz in January 1945, they destroyed most of the incriminating documents relating to their operation of the death camp, in which over a million people perished.

Yet, it now seems a small number of surviving documents may have resurfaced — only to disappear again.

According to Polish media reports, two unidentified Germans located three crates in south-western Poland containing documents relating to the former death camp, and then smuggled them out of the country.

The news has led the Auschwitz Museum to file a criminal complaint with Polish prosecutors and the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (IPN), which is responsible for investigating crimes related to the Nazi occupation of the country.

“There are several laws regarding archives, regarding historical items, that were violated,” Auschwitz Museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told GlobalPost. “That is why we informed the Prosecutors office and the IPN.”

The museum took the step on Monday after Polish media reported that a Pole named as Mieczyslaw Bojko had helped the Germans find the crates near Przelecz Kowarska, a village near the German border. The crates were reported to contain military service records and over 100 personnel files.

Berlin techno clubs face tax nightmare

GlobalPost, Jan. 14, 2012

BERLIN — In the small hours of the morning, during the harsh Berlin winter, clubbers from around the world brace themselves against the elements, waiting in eager anticipation to enter techno clubs like Berghain, Tresor and Cookies.

These revelers throng Germany’s capital to experience its thriving electronic music scene, regarded as among the world’s best.

The clubs are an integral part of Berlin’s culture and economy. Yet instead of nurturing and supporting them, authorities appear bent on making life more difficult for the clubs.

That, at least, is how many club owners felt after receiving letters from their local tax office, notifying them of hefty, delinquent tax bills. The tax office is arguing that the clubs had been paying the wrong rate for years.

In Germany the normal sales tax is 19 percent. However there is a lower, 7 percent tax rate for cultural events such as concerts.

In 2005, the Federal Tax Court ruled that turntables, mixing desks and CD players could be considered instruments. The court said that if a DJ didn’t just replay records, but mixed them and used these instruments for performance, then the activity could be classified as a concert.

Many clubs took that as their cue to start paying just 7 percent from the tickets for many of their club nights.

Last fall, however, tax officials said that club nights are not concerts at all. They are demanding the difference between the two tax rates, going back to 2005.

Your Kind of Music

CNBC Business Magazine, Jan. 1, 2012

Its big idea was to stream videos based on individual users’ tastes. Now Berlin’s tape.tv is making its own shows and expanding across Europe

By Siobhán Dowling

Florence + the Machine are wowing the crowd on a windswept autumn day in Berlin. Surrounded by hip young fans and media types, the British band are putting on an acoustic performance of songs from their new album on a roof overlooking the River Spree. The director pleads with the crowds not to clap until he has signalled, as the whole thing is being filmed. It is the 100th rooftop concert for tape.tv, one of Berlin’s most successful media start-ups.

The company, founded in 2008 by Conrad Fritzsch and Stephanie Renner, is an online music channel that has rapidly grown in just a few years. While it started out streaming music videos 24/7, it has increasingly broadened its remit, producing its own content. In the German-speaking world it has 3.5 million users a month and its expected turnover for 2011 was €20m. In 2012 it is expanding into new markets, launching in the UK in January, with channels to follow in France and Scandinavia.

Rapid change of Arab Spring slows in winter

The Washington Times, Dec. 27, 2011

When Mohamed Bouazizi, a young Tunisian vegetable seller, set fire to himself in protest over harassment by officials last December, he unleashed a wave of long-simmering resentment across the Arab world that swept away longtime leaders in Tunisia and Egypt over the next two months.

The Arab Spring set in with the hope that a huge democratic change finally was within reach for the region. Now, 12 months later, that initial euphoria largely has subsided.

Syria launched a brutal crackdown on dissent. Yemen is still in a suspended state of chaos, while Libya struggles to unite after overthrowing Moammar Gadhafi. Even in Egypt, the continuing role of the army has led to doubts over its revolution transforming into a representative democracy.

“The sense of disappointment comes from the fact that expectations were raised so quickly and these were impossible to fulfill,” said Christian Koch of the Gulf Research Center, a Dubai-based think tank.

“One has to be realistic that the switch over to a different type of government is something that will simply take time.”

Other analysts agree that change is going to be much slower than the rapid pace of events earlier this year may have seemed to promise at first.

“It will take the Arab world at least between 10 and 20 years to be able to transition from political authoritarianism to pluralism,” said Fawaz A. Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics.

Neo-Nazis’ secret weapon: women

GlobalPost, Dec. 16, 2011

BERLIN, Germany — “I’m the one you’re looking for,” announced Beate Zschaepe when she reported to the police in Jena, eastern Germany, on Nov. 8.

Four days earlier, Zschaepe had blown up her apartment, apparently to hide evidence. Her two live-in companions had died of gunshot wounds, after botching a bank robbery. Authorities contend that one of the men, Uwe Mundlos, shot the other, Uwe Boehnhardt, before killing himself.

In mugshots seered into the German consciousness by non-stop media coverage, Zschaepe, 36, appears exhausted, her dark hair disheveled and smudged mascara ringing her eyes.

Officials quickly determined that she and her two dead companions were members of a far-right trio, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), that had been on the run for 13 years. Evidence emerged linking the group to a series of brutal murders of nine immigrant shop-owners and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007 — a hate crime spree that has unnerved Germany.

Zschaepe, it now seems, is an extreme example of a phenomenon that researchers have been warning of for years: Women are playing an increasingly prominent, and at times violent, role on the extreme right. They now account for an estimated one in five neo-Nazis. And because women are viewed with less suspicion, they have quietly infiltrated many mainstream organizations where they can spread their ideas — even targeting children.

Why Germany opposes a powerful euro solution

Despite rising international pressure, Merkel refuses to allow the ECB to act as the lender of last resort

GlobalPost, Dec. 2, 2011

BERLIN, Germany — Over the past twenty-four hours, both French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have delivered landmark speeches advocating deep changes to the euro zone to address the debt crisis. The changes, if agreed to by member nations, would impose real fiscal discipline over nations, with the goal of giving Brussels the power to prevent countries from falling into fiscal trouble.

The approach is a risky one. It asks countries to sacrifice national sovereignty in the name of economic stability, but in recent years citizens have signalled an unwillingness to forfeit more control to Brussels. But an even bigger problem is that it’s a long term approach to an urgent problem. If successful, it may prevent countries like Greece and Italy from ammassing huge debt burdens in the future. But it won’t solve the continent’s current crisis.

European nations need huge loans, and they need them fast or they risk defaulting. With the debt conflagration now blazing across borders, Merkel and Sarkozy are essentially gazing off at the horizon as the world urges Europe to deploy its most powerful option: unleashing its central bank to act as a lender of last resort.

The problem: Germany is resolutely opposed to using the ECB in this way. Merkel, appeared to reiterate her objections today, stating that “The European crisis will not be solved in one fell swoop.” 

Ireland’s budget leak to Germany brings home some harsh realities

The Guardian, Nov.  18, 2011

Loss of sovereignty may be an abstract notion, but this week Irish people were confronted with what it means in reality. Revelations that draft proposals for the Irish December budget had been circulated in a German parliamentary committee were met with horror in Ireland. It has since emerged that they were sent to every finance minister in the EU.

Members of Irish opposition parties have been in uproar at the fact that parliamentarians in Berlin were privy to vital information, such as a proposed 2% hike in VAT. Meanwhile they and other elected members of the Dáil would have to wait with the rest of the population until budget day, 6 December, to learn where exactly the axe was to fall.

Is a German ‘Fourth Reich’ emerging?

Europeans accuse Berlin of using the euro crisis to boost German power.

GlobalPost, Nov. 15, 2011

BERLIN, Germany — It may have been a bad idea to send a German. And his name certainly didn’t help matters.

When Horst Reichenbach arrived in Athens recently to head a new European Union task force to help the country deal with its debt, the Greek media instantly dubbed him “Third Reichenbach.”

Cartoons appeared of him in Nazi uniform. A Greek tabloid showed a photo of his office with the headline: “The new Gestapo headquarters.”

The Greeks are not alone in harboring suspicions toward Germany, which occupied the country during World War II. The British conservative press is up in arms. The Daily Mail went so far as to accuse the Germans of attempting to use the euro crisis to “conquer Europe” and establish a “Fourth Reich.” Meanwhile in Poland, Germany’s supposed imperial ambitions became an issue in the recent elections.

And as the euro crisis has deepened, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pushed for the EU to have a greater say in the domestic governance of the euro zone’s seventeen members. Among other measures, she has called for real European power over countries’ budgets.

Suspected founder of neo-Nazi cell held

The Guardian, Nov. 15, 2011

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, promised a full investigation on Monday after it was revealed that a cell of neo-Nazis apparently carried out a series of killings over seven years without being detected.

The group, calling itself the “National Socialist Underground”, allegedly killed at least 10 people across the country, leading to accusations that the security authorities underestimated the threat of far-right violence in the country.

The cell was only discovered when the two main suspects, Uwe M and Uwe B, were found dead on 4 November in a mobile home following a botched bank robbery.

Another suspect, Beate Z, handed herself in to the police last week after allegedly setting fire to the house she shared with the two men in the city of Zwickau, Saxony. She was arrested on Sunday, and charged with founding a terrorist organisation and arson.

“We’re seeing something inconceivable,” Merkel said on Monday . “We suspect rightwing extremists are responsible for horrible acts of violence, for rightwing terror. It’s a disgrace and mortifying for Germany and we’ll do everything we can to get to the bottom of this. We owe that to the victims.”