Nachsendeaufträge bei der Deutschen Post kosten jetzt etwas über 15 Euro. Grossartig.

Finally. Good riddance, you bastard. Unfortunately, I didn’t get him on the Death pool.

Deutsche Politiker üben den Aufstand: Auf allen Ebenen zeigt man sich empört darüber, dass Nokia ein Werk in Deutschland schliesst um es dann in Rumänien mit Billigarbeitskräften und EU-Fördergeldern wieder aufzubauen.

Ich weiss garnicht wo ich anfangen soll. Aber versuchen wir es mal.

Erstens: Wenn man nicht möchte, das ein Unternehmen von Region A nach Region B umzieht … sollte man für Region B keine Fördermittel zur Verfügung stellen! Der Sinn solcher Finanzspritzen ist doch gerade, Region B zu stärken.

Zweitens: Dass bei einem EU-Beitritt Rumäniens dorthin auch Outsourcing betrieben wird, hätte man sich doch auch vorher denken können, oder? Wenn das nicht akzeptabel ist, hätte man Rumänien nicht in die EU aufnehmen dürfen – oder zumindest erst, wenn dort ein entsprechendes Lohnniveau erreicht wurde.

Drittens: Dass gerade Politiker die als Berufsstand immer mit einer gewissen Selbstbedienungsmentalität leben, einen Konzern kritisieren ist bestenfalls eine real existierende Satire, aber eigentlich nur peinlich und verlogen. Wann war die letzte Diätenerhöhung, und wer hat dafür gestimmt?

Und Viertens: Wenn die Damen und Herren Politiker keine größeren Probleme in Deutschland oder der EU sehen, als die Verlegung von ein paar Arbeitsplätzen, dann beweisen sie damit einmal mehr ihre Inkompetenz. Mein Lieblingsbeispiel ist die ständige Erosion unserer Grundrechte, die gerade auch von Politikern wie Frau Merkel aktiv betrieben wird.

Ich bin nun wirklich kein Freund von “Big Business”, aber in diesem Fall muss ich wirklich sagen: Einfach mal die Klappe halten. Ihr disqualifiziert Euch mächtig.

We’ve all heard of the genocide during the Third Reich. Most of us are also aware of the atrocities of Stalin and Mao. But who really knew just how badly the British behaved during their colonial rule? Turns out they were just as bad as the Nazis. The Guardian has an interesting article on the subject. But be warned: The descriptions are graphic and not suited for the weak of stomach.

When people in Europe think about World War II they think about Hitler the Holocaust. When Americans think about World War II they think about Pearl Harbor and about Hitler and the Holocaust. But there was just as much evil and suffering going on in East Asia.

Nanking fell to Japanese troops on December 13th, 1937. For the next seven weeks, the Japanese conducted countless atrocities against the Chinese population of the city. It is something that people in Europe and America, who have lived in comfort and relative peace for the past 60 years, can’t fully appreciate.

Princeton has a photo gallery about the crimes. Some Japanese still deny that anything happened here, but, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words. A warning: Many of these images are extremely violent and disturbing. Proceed at your own risk.

I hope that people will understand that wars, no matter where and for what cause, always cause great suffering to people who have done nothing to deserve it. That was the case hundreds of years ago, it was the case in 1937, and it is still the case today.

Dear World,

the German government has gone crazy. More specifically, the interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble has gone out of control. For months he has been making more and more demands for stricter and stricter laws to fight the “threat of terrorism”. Our government wants to:

• Use evidence obtained by torture: While he says that German law enforcement may not torture or encourage others to torture, it would “not be responsible” not to use information obtained by such means.
• Build databases about potential terrorists which are to include such data as religion or professional training.
• Expand video surveillance: “At train stations, airports, big streets and places video surveillance is feasible and expedient”.
• Use the army as a security force inside the country. This was planned for the soccer world cup but not implemented until the G8 meeting at Heiligendamm.
• Shoot down hijacked airplanes – which was actually determined to be illegal by the constitutional court. This doesn’t stop them from saying “we’ll do it anyway”.
• Make conspiracy a crime and ban so-called “Gefährdern” (dangerous individuals) from using Internet and mobile phones. He also considers the killing of suspects to be in no violation with basic law: At most it would be a “legal problem”.
• Search private PCs via a government trojan horse – in secret, of course, without any oversight.
• Retain all connection logs of personal communications – telephone calls, text messages, email and so on – for six months, regardless of any suspicions of criminal activity. This law was passed on November 9th, 2007, but has yet to be ratified by the Bundesrat and signed by our president.
• Introduce biometric passports and ID cards, which include fingerprints saved on an RFID chips, and keep all the biometric data in a central database. Biometric passports have been implemented as of Niovember 2007; the central database and the biometric ID cards are still planned.

Germany is the country which should really know better than this. Of all the people in the world, we should be the ones who learned from history. Unfortunately, we haven’t: Not only do our politicians kick our fundamental laws with their feet, the reaction of the German people is to shrug their shoulders and to vote for them again. “I have nothing to hide”, they say and look the other way.

I now know what it must have felt like, back in the early 30s. Of course we won’t get another Nazi regime. Death camps are really bad for PR. Instead we’ll get something more similar to the East German regime: A surveillance and police state. But unlike East Germany, where the system was dictated by the Russians, we’re doing it to ourselves this time. And similar to the Nazi regime, I am pretty sure everybody will claim “we didn’t know anything” afterwards.

Normally, I’d hope for the free, western world to come to our aid. Failing that, I’d pack my things and move out of the country. But what free western world? Those who should be the shining beacon of freedom and democracy are doing even worse things to their own countries. It is a sad state of affairs when China is a shining ray of hope – while China is a dictatorship, conditions there are improving. Everybody else seems to be hell-bent on making things as bad as possible as quickly as feasible.

Am Tag danach: Hier die Artikel zur gestrigen Demonstration.

• ZDF: Heftige Proteste gegen Ãœberwachungspläne
• Spiegel: Tausende protestieren gegen Datenspeicherung
• Tagesschau: Tausende protestieren gegen Ãœberwachungspläne
• Yahoo (via AFP): 10.000 Menschen demonstrieren gegen Vorratsdatenspeicherung und Tausende protestieren bundesweit gegen Vorratsdatenspeicherung
• Yahoo (via AP): Tausende protestieren gegen schärfere Kommunikationsüberwachung

Mehr habe ich nicht gefunden. Recht schwach.

Ich war heute auf der Demonstration gegen die Vorratsdatenspeicherung in Frankfurt. Was soll ich sagen – strömender Regen. Ca 650 Teilnehmer (laut Veranstalter, ist sicher aufgerundet kommt aber ungefähr hin). Mäßige Sprecher – Insbesondere der Kerl von der Piratenpartei muss das Sprechen in der Öffentlichkeit noch üben.

Die Teilnehmer schienen meist sehr jung. Das sah ich mit gemischten Gefühlen – zum einen ist es schön, dass es auch noch jugendliche gibt die sich für Politik interessieren. Auf der anderen Seite befürchte ich dass es bei diesen Leuten einfach die jugendliche Rebellenphase ist. Klar, es waren auch einige in meinem Alter oder älter da – aber einfach nicht genug. Ich hätte mir eine insgesamt bessere Teilnahme gewünscht. Aber angesichts des sehr schlechten Termins und des sehr schlechten Wetters ist bei einem für den Normalbürger so unzugängliches Thema wohl nicht mehr zu machen.

Letzlich war auch die Botschaft der Demo leider nicht eindeutig. Es wurde zu sehr das Thema “Krieg” mit hineingemischt; vor allem auch durch einen Neokommunisten am Ende der Veranstaltung. Das ist auch ein wichtiges Thema, passte aber nicht in die Veranstaltung.

Zusammenfassend bin ich froh dass es die Demo gab (Danke an die Orga) und ich bin erst recht froh dass ich hingegangen bin. Ich wäre auch bei der nächsten wieder dabei. Und dass es weitergehen muss dürfte klar sein: Wenn unsere Regierung aufgrund von 30 Kleinst-Demos ihre Meinung ändert fresse ich den metaphorischen Besen.

The German train drivers are on strike today. The train drivers are asking for their own contract – separate from the rest of the train company employees – and for 31% more salary.

Yesterday, it was almost impossible to get any information, as service lines were busy and the train company’s website was down due to the heavy load. This morning, I checked and it said my subway would be on time. I decided to take a risk and go for it as usual. And lo and behold – it was exactly on time. In fact, it was much more punctual than on regular days.

Assuming that the people on strike are not the incompetent people who are causing delays, I guess this simply shows that the Frankfurt rail system is overloaded – take out some trains and suddenly everything runs smoothly. As far as I am concerned, they could really make this a normal condition.

As for the 31% pay rise demanded by the train drivers… I think those guys are completely nuts.

So I have a (small) confession to make. I actually watched a Harry Potter movie in China. I have no idea what it was called. If they displayed the title during the intro, I missed it. Or maybe it was Chinese.

What, may you ask, drove me to such insanity?

Clearly I had no desire to actually see the movie. Nor had Youyou, who accompanied me. But when we got to the cinema in Beijing late in the evening, it was the movie in English that had not yet started. Tickets were 50 Yuan each, if I recall correctly.

The movie’s plot is fairly simplistic. Potter’s school gets taken over by a headmistress who, for no real reason, begins to enact all kinds of totalitarian rules and tortures the pupils. When she cancels the practical use of magic in class, the kids band together, and Harry Potter becomes their substitute teacher. (”If we don’t learn how to use magic, how can we defend ourselves from the evil villain?”).

The kid’s voluntary studies are uncovered by the school’s staff, and their secret classroom is betrayed by Potter’s romantic side plot, a Chinese chick. (Why is it that the foreigners are always the traitors? It doesn’t help that the betrayal is explained much later as not the girl’s fault; Harry never looks at the girl again, and there’s hardly any closure of the issue.)

But t doesn’t really matter because, uhm, something happens (the movie doesn’t really explains any of it; the characters act basically on pure divine inspiration in the form of Potter’s nightmares) and a small group of children (and later adult wizards) confront whatever-his-name-was in a magic ministry. Epic battle and all. Whatever.

So there’s a lot of problems with the movie. I’ve already mentioned the Chinese girl. And I shan’t get into the idiocy of the basic storyline (kids with little twig wands… meh). But there are other issues. The plot has no real beginning or ending, and there’s hardly any substance to it, the climactic battle sucks too. The adults take over from Potter; nothing gets resolved, and when the movie ends we’re basically back to where we were before it started. And did I mention that the characters are incredibly annoying? All of them; there is not a single character that doesn’t get on the viewer’s nerves after about three seconds of screen time.

There are of course also some highlights to the movie. The imagery is quite nice in several scenes (the magical school / castle’s well designed, especially the aerial views). But that is hardly a reason to waste money and time on the movie. No, the real highlight of the movie is that it eventually ends.

I guess I have seen worse movies. But I’d be hard-pressed to name one.

The bottom line is: Yeah, I was right, Harry Potter sucks cold donkey balls.