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"extreme poverty" is defined as living on less than $1.90 per day. Or about $57 per month. Or $693.50 per year.

Yes, the amount of people living in that income bracket has been reduced dramatically, and that is one of the biggests successes in the history of mankind and an incredible progress made possible by all the things both left- and right-wing extremists hate so much.

Meanwhile, as the other comment shows in abundance, the majority of new wealth generated in most of the developed countries goes to the top, not the middle or the bottom. While extreme poverty is going down, "simple" povery is going up. Don't believe me? Here's a graph from my home country:

https://de.statista.com/statis...

Here are government graphs, in case you think the source is biased:

http://www.bpb.de/wissen/GCP6X...

How can both of these be true? Because prices differ as well, and a lot. The average yearly income in Congo (~$770) would put you among the poor in the most developed countries if you had it available per month.

And the demographic of migrants being primarily males in their 20's is only part of the problem.

Again, a false claim that is happily repeated over and over by xenophobic fearmongers. Do the math:
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (sorry, german only)

Yet this infamous leaflet was published in 2013?

Wow, that again. Classic case in point. Xenophopic exaggeration and distortion of reality at it's finest.
  Look at the whole picture of that "infamous leaflet". It's only infamous if you really, really want it to be that.
Germans love their rules, especially for their public pools. That leaflet represents a basic set of rules. Concentrating on one of the 13 cartoon images is cherrypicking whatever you can work with to spread hatred.Frankly, as far as respect for women is concerned, I have seen quite a few germans who would have benefitted from those cartoons quite a lot, as they were clearly incapable or unwilling to read and respect the written version of those rules. And btw, that leaflet is much, much older than the current refugee situation. So how can one single picture in it be proof that sexual assaults by refugees at swimming pools have increased so much that an educational leaflet just for them is necessary? And if it is, does it also prove that refugees don't shower, just because picture 1 tells them to?

I am really getting tired of this. You are trying to convince me of things that are proven to be wrong. Do you have anything to say that is not a blatant lie or vigorous bending of reality? I haven't seen anything so far. Therefor, I am now done here.

What are you talking about?
Does that look like down 10% year after year to you?

I'm sorry, but you do have no idea.

First, yes as someone pointed out, Google not only has offices in Germany (more than one, I think), it actually has a german subsidiary. Yes, that could be moved, however, it is almost certainly the legal partner of all existing contracts, which makes things quite a bit more complicated than moving a few small offices.

Second, Germany is part of the EU which has a common market and quite a bit more. If you think you can move just across the border and you're out of reach, you are very mistaken.

Could you imagine the uproar the German government would face from their own companies because now they are at a disadvantage compared to the rest of the world?

Pffft. Here's what Germany exports:
http://www.bpb.de/wissen/MVCEI4,0,0,Import_und_Export_nach_Waren.html
(if you don't speak german, the three big bars are cars, machinery and chemicals)

How much of that is dependent on Google advertisement? Which, btw., makes up at best 10% of the German advertisement business, so let's not pretend it would make such a huge difference. Google would suffer more than Germany.

Why should Germany's first lady receive special treatment?

She shouldn't. This isn't about special treatment, it's about whether or not Google needs to abide by the local laws. If the courts agree with her, then it's not special treatment because anyone in the same position would have the same right.

Can anyone then demand google censor their results if something "bad" is said about them? Yeah, that's a slippery slope that I expect they'd be willing to not want to step on.

Which is why we have courts that are willing to do so, because someone has to. We can't all go around our lives avoiding any slipperly slopes that may or may not be there.

However, even in the extreme case of Luxembourg, the weight of the voter compared to the european average is 10.86x (last election), not over a thousand votes as you state.

You're right, my memory failed me terribad. However Luxembourg:Germany is 5:99 citizens per seat: Seats per inhabitants (German). The point is that it's a compromise, one you can agree with or not, but it violates basic democratic rules, IMHO.

I'm not advocating that the world be modeled after German governance, nor adopt all its laws. To suggest so is ridiculous. Nevertheless, to dismiss an analysis by Mr. Schaar out of hand just because he is from Germany, well-versed in the intricacies of data protection (it's his job), and an expert in the field (it's his job and he's well-recognized in that capacity), is equally patently ridiculous. The rights afforded to German citizens w.r.t. data protection are of a higher base level than those afforded to US citizens by law, as per right now. That is still beside the point, however, since it does not affect intellectual discourse about the issue, and neither can one seriously claim that Mr. Schaar has no idea what he is talking about and thus his testimony or advice not be heard.
I'm also not advocating the German system of government to be the best thing since sliced bread. It's not. It may not be the best in the world, it is definitely not the worst, but you brought up comparing it to other, "freer" (sic) systems, so that's what we arrived at.

Certainly, the German government screws up. Politicians have a knack for screwing up. Things get fixed, and hopefully the result will be better than what was before. I don't believe the US has a monopoly on that particular front (nor has that particular mechanism been working over there, recently, IMHO).

Yes, I have lived in the US for a while, though as you probably have guessed, I am native to Germany (and currently live there). As for where I get those numbers from ... Voter participation is a matter of public record. A quick google-search gives us http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html for the US, http://www.bpb.de/wissen/C11SZM,,0,Wahlbeteiligung_nach_Altersgruppen_1953_%96_2002.html for Germany (on the federal level). Personally I consider it a duty of any citizen of my country to vote come election day, even if that means going out of your way to accomplish such; that's been my upbringing. I'm sad to say that over the past few decades the trend is declining a bit, but a 50% participation is unheard of.
As for participation in the political process in everday life ... I wouldn't compare vigorousness in general, since I can base it only on my surroundings, and that's, by definition, anecdotal. I know politics comes up a lot in conversation here and rarely have I seen talking-point conversations I've been privy to in the US (i.e. Democratic talking point vs. Republican talking point ad infinitum without any discussion taking place); not all of them were that way, of course, but a lot of political discourse was structured in that manner. In any case, political discourse is not dead here, and I assume it's not dead in the US, either (even in the College crowd, though more often than not, Steward and Colbert are cited rather than newspapers; I love those two guys for their satire is exquisite, though :)

Politics lives from controversy. The current US system during the primaries is a great theatralical production, but the often-touted "let's talk issues" is a talking point, nothing more. It's telling that politicians have to preface their statements about issues with a statement that they are about to talk about issues and not personal shortcomings of their opponents, rather than present a political platform they stand on and let that speak for them.

I find it interesting that you seem to consider low voter turnout a good thing, and the reason given for it. By the time that ballot would be cast, sure, a lot of "controversial" choices are weeded out (namely anybody not openly touting their Christianity, anybody without either huge coffers or the backing of one of the two (TWO!) parties, anybody the common Joe would not want to drink a beer with some time, etc).
In any case, the turnouts for the primaries are not looking parti

I'm sorry, I really should have backed up my statements trough links, but I didn't have any at hand.

I live in Switzerland, so I haven't been directly concerned by the censoring, but since I read a couple of german game magazines I have repeatedly heard about it.

The only relevant link I could dig up from my bookmarks is the web site of the government organization which does the "filtering". It's called Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften" (more or less meaning: federal investigation agency for youth-endangering writings).

I have seen the german version of Half-Life however, and what I wrote is definitely true. In addition to this, I think most of the iD games have been "indiziert" (german word, which basically means censored, or at least no advertising or selling in places accessible by minors).

Maybe someone from Germany would like to comment on this?

PS: While I was writing this, I also checked out some links trough Google. Here's a justification for the censoring of iD Software's Doom (in german).