Regarding immigration, yes we have less immigrants then we could support if we wanted". However we define us as an emigration land not an immigration land. Why and how minorities are not well integrated is not really known.
As someone who has lived in Germany as a foreigner, I can tell you what it is: it's the kind of attitudes, prejudices, and ignorance you exhibit, and which are predominant among Germans.
What the pure numbers are concerned, sorry: over the last few hundred years there surely immigrated more people into the USA, but in relation to the population I doubt that.
There have probably been more immigrants to the US from Germany alone than there have ever been immigrants to Germany from anywhere. I think part of Germany's political problems stem from the fact that anybody who has an ounce of independent thought just leaves the country.
Isn't the "green card" limited to about 30k - 40k per year? Don't forget the mexican boarder e.g. Immigrants going to the USA go there to work there, often people with university degrees from second world countries, immigrants coming to the EU are mainly refugees.
In different words, anybody who actually has a choice chooses to go to the US.
Then let me word it different: I expected you to EXPLAIN me why you believe that germany is restricting religious freedom.
Empirically, the fact that there are only two major churches is a good indication. Legally, because the German legal system and government does a lot of things that legal scholars generally consider incompatible with separation of church and state in other nations.
Sorry, it is granted in the constitution and there is no law that puts any restrictions on religion that I'm aware of, but you claimed otherwise.
The German constitution says that freedom of religion is guaranteed, but that's meaningless since politicians and judges don't enforce it due to their close ties to the two major churches.
Let me sai it simple: the USA in its foundation was founded 1776... while you had a nice constitution, you had slavery in various forms and apartheid up till 1950
Yes, and objectively, the US has been far ahead of Europe that way, where minorities were slaughtered by the millions "up until the 1950's" and religious wars took place until the 1990's. And even more importantly: the US corrected these problems without being forced to do so by anybody else.
Even today, integration of immigrants and minorities in Germany is pitiful compared to the US, and religious diversity is nearly non-existent.
But as you surely know in the fucked up way how voting, parliaments and politics works in germany we can't do anything to get influence on what we really want.... Communal construction projects are the only thing where the population can interfere with, and the stupid citizens of Stuttgart
So, you are saying that you really trust German courts, and German laws are really great, it's just that "voting, parliament and politics" are "fucked up" and people get "frustrated" because "communal construction projects" are the only place the population has influence on. Don't you see the disconnect there?
The frustration you and others feel in Germany is exactly what I'm talking about: self-imposed limits on free speech, fear of controversy, and the contradiction between the supposed achievements of German democracy and political reality.
All changes we make to laws are currently dictated by the supreme overlord USA. Biometric passports, changes on copyright law, the attempt to get software patentable, the wish to sell genetic altered food, lowering the restrictions on consumer protection regarding imported food (like beef from the US) all that are attempts coming from the USA.
A lot of those laws are pushed at least as much by European corporations as by US corporations. German politicians blame all the things they really want to do but find hard to push domestically on the "evil Americans". It's mostly policy laundering and propaganda. And it's nothing new either: Nazis and the Weimar Republic did it too. The amazing thing is that Germans just don't learn.
I care about stuff, just not about the same stuff you do.
You really do care about the same stuff I do, you just can't connect the dots from the causes to the symptoms.
Sorry, but that I doubt very very very big time. Every street interview I see in the USA about anything is: "shrugging", "it is as it is", or they simply don't know anything about it.
Oh, well, that settles it then! A few interviews of people on the street, selected by German television, and you are an expert on US culture!
On contrary I believe that germans are very open to discussions and are open to debating.
You sure do debate a lot, unfortunately without much reference to history, law, and facts.
What is "dangerous" in that? Look at Japan, they value this two things far higher even! Why not accept that? It is a cultural difference!
Yes, and whaddayaknow... Japan was the other big power in WWII.
And? What is your problem with that? Don't you have enough self reflection that *you* are behaving in the exact same way?
No, because ultimately I really don't care how you live your life. I object to you mischaracterizing US laws and erroneously claiming that free speech and freedom of religion are arbitrary terms that any nation can define any way it likes. And I encourage you to at least look at US history and law and then make up your own mind. Right now, you're simply speaking from a position of ignorance.
Keep in mind: the USA is since years debating whether burning the flag or whether burning foreign flags should be punished. In Denmark e.g. it is punished - own flag and foreign flags.
Yes, the US has been debating this, and Germany is not debating these things: that is the problem. You ask Americans about flag burning or Quran burning and whether it should be legal and you get lots of different answers, both agreeing and disagreeing with the law. You ask Germans about it, and one usually gets your kind of answer: that Germans are overwhelmingly in favor of the way their laws are, that they are good laws, and that there is really no point to debating them. It's the same for death penalty, privacy, religious freedoms, etc. And when you ask Germans to talk about relevant history, legal foundations, or court cases, they draw a blank.
Germany had the same attitudes when it was a monarchy, a military dictatorship, a fascist state, and a communist state. Germans always believed they had things figured out perfectly, if only the rest of the world would see it! Geibel put this arrogance in words, and it was used by both monarchists and Nazis for propaganda purposes:
Macht und Freiheit, Recht und Sitte, Klarer Geist und scharfer Hieb, Zuegeln dann aus starker Mitte Jeder Selbstsucht wilden Trieb, Und es mag am deutschen Wesen Einmal noch die Welt genesen.
That's still the attitude that Germans have today.
Sorry, if your perception is that germans are still barbarians, I can't help that.
Not at all. My perception is that Germans value unity and social conformity to a dangerous degree.
I fail to see how this applies to this law. After all it can not restrict you in any way in your democratic rights, creating parties, demonstrating on the streets or whatever.... I fail to understand why that "minimal" limitations is considered "significant" by you.... Also I don't understand in what respect germany is restricting freedom of religion, I never have heard about such a thing.
Yes, you "fail to see the problem" and you "don't understand". That's the problem: you just view US and German laws on privacy, communications secrecy, free speech and freedom of religion as different opinions and choices, apparently without any clear understanding of the history, philosophy, and legal traditions behind them.
Contrary to what you seem to think, these are not settled issues. There have been a number of important legal cases in Germany regarding all these questions in recent years, as well as some EU cases. You weren't familiar with any of them, and when I mentioned some of them, you merely got defensive saying that that was as it should be. Apparently, you're just in total agreement with what politicians and courts in Germany are doing, even though you don't actually even keep track of it, and that's just creepy to me.
I just responded to your verbal diarrhea about the supposed failure of the US educational system. Yeah, we should improve, but we're nowhere near as bad as you claim we are. And since we out-spend those other nations, the problem obviously isn't on the spending side.
"And when you were young, per-capita education and health care spending in the US was a fraction of what it is today (in constant dollars), so lack of spending is not what killed those dreams." Simply not true.
Yes it is true; go check the numbers instead of lying through your teeth.
I live in a school district that includes literally million-dollar homes and our teachers dress in cast-offs from Goodwill and drive 20-year-old cars.
So, your school district has a good tax base. If your students aren't getting the education they need, your school district is wasting the money on something else. Become active in local politics to fix this or stop complaining.
I supported Reagan.
And you have the nerve to complain about insufficient funding for anything, and about people with billion dollar bonuses? Reagan started this with his Reagonomics, Trickle Down Economics, and ill-advised military build-up and interventionism. You want to know why the US isn't number one in so many areas? Look to Reagan and then look in the mirror.
You have a good health plan and you live in a school district with a good tax base. If you can't get your medical bills reimbursed and your kids can't get a good education, you only have yourself to blame for it. Let me help you out a little: sign up for an HMO or PPO, become active in local politics, and put 20% of your income in a savings account every month.
The US should indeed become number one on health and education in the world--we spend enough money on it. And to get there, we need to keep people like you from sabotaging that goal with your selfishness, your distortions, and your negativity.
You're offering a cite that lists us as 14 out of 27 and referencing that as "quite high."
Those 27 nations are OECD nations and represent the most developed nations in the world; hence 14 is likely our worldwide position, beating countries like Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg.
Let me guess, home-schooled, right, or did every kid in your class get a ribbon after running the race?
Worked my way through college, got a fellowship for grad school, working as a scientist now, and not rich (but frugal). Oh, and a registered Democrat, although people like you make me ashamed.
When I was young, we were thinking "Mars, then the stars."
And when you were young, per-capita education and health care spending in the US was a fraction of what it is today (in constant dollars), so lack of spending is not what killed those dreams.
The reason I hammer away at you is that you break my heart, and I'm terrified of the timid, miserly, meager, threadbare, hopeless possible future you represent.
And the reason I hammer away at you is that I am terrified of the timid, miserly, meager, threadbare, hopeless possible future you represent. You are the left-wing counterpart to the nutty worshippers of Ayn Rand and the Christian right. The FUD you people spread between you is what is causing people to have so little faith in our future. You sabotage reasonable political debate with your demagoguery and prejudices.
You think education is doing OK in this country because some book or website tells you it is. I think things are falling apart because I've watched it with my own eyes, from both sides of the lectern.
My personal experience agrees with the statistics: education and health care both are quite good in the US. If your kids and your students are disillusioned and fearful, it's because of the way you raised them and taught them.
Should the US improve? Of course. But ideologically motivated diatribes like yours aren't helping. Take your own advice: improve your literacy and then start arguing with facts instead of fear mongering.
I simply don't get why so many - especially americans - don't understand this simple concept. Your own moral feelings should be able to tell you when cross the border.
Because Americans have arrived at their current understanding of free speech after centuries of political debate and legal cases. The boundary between what's legal and what's not is documented in hundreds of court cases, many of which are taught in high school and college.
In contrast, you just say "this is our view, and it's as valid as yours". And when we look at the history of these laws in Germany, we find that instead of promoting democracy, these kinds of laws have historically been used to stifle democratic opposition.
Why don't you understand that free speech is aas free here as in USA? With *only one very very very small* exception. WTF... you behave as if we would live in a dictatorship.
I said no such thing. Of course, Germany is still a democracy. But it has significant restrictions on free speech and freedom of religion.
And what would removing the Volksverhetzung law change on this?
No, it wouldn't. The law is really just a symptom of deep-seated cultural and social problems. The same attitudes that allowed democracy in Germany to fail in the 1848 and 1933 still exist. When Germans start thinking like citizens in a democracy, they will repeal such laws.
Par. 130 is achieving that a new Hitler running around in Munich trying to get followers to burn Jews or Muslims or just random foreigners gets in jail before he can cause harm....
Germany has been governed by theocracies, monarchies, fascists, military dictators, and communists. You can't fix these repeated failures of democracy with a law banning the Nazis; the problem goes much deeper than that. Germany isn't going to repeat the Nazis; its next totalitarian government is going to be something different again.
That worked pretty well the last 70 years
For 50 years, half of Germany was a communist dictatorship, the other had its officials approved by the US secret service, and there are still tens of thousands of US troops on German soil. Germany is far from having achieved peace on its own, and it is far from having proven that it can stand on its own two feet.
And it isn't working. Germany is quite xenophobic and intolerant in my experience. You can also see that from statistics on immigration and integration.
Back to the original topic, I said: for electronic post (email) the exact same laws apply as for paper post. And you said: no! Then you citated/linked the Bundesdatenschutzgesetz, which has absolutely nothing to do with email or paper mail confiscation/ear dropping.
I didn't disagree with the "exactly the same laws" statement, I disagreed that a judge's order was always needed. Fact is (go back in the thread, I pointed you at the law--the OTHER law) that the German government, like the US government, has a range of legal means by which it can access your server-stored E-mail, even without a court order.
Sorry, I don't get why you are angry.... That is an insult taken to the cubic.
I'm not "angry", you just keep making unsupported statements and keep confusing things, while accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about. Read up on the difference between civil and criminal law; you keep confusing the two. Read up on free speech rights in the US vs Germany; you seem to think that they are more similar than they are.
Exactly the history is the reason we have paragraphs like Volksverhetzung.... meanwhile I question your intelligence a little bit.
No, that is factually false as well. The law against "Volksverhetzung" existed in the pre-Nazi era as an anti-communist law; it was modified post-WWII for a different purpose. The problem with laws like it is that they are abused by regimes in order to stifle opposition (in fact, I believe that "Volksverhetzung" was a popular charge brought by the Nazi regime against its opponents).
And you fail to understand: this is a matter how you construct your "law set".... It is completely arbitrary in which order you define your law system
First of all, some sets of laws work, other don't. Germany's first two attempts at democracy failed miserably and Germany's current laws are derived from those; therefore, it is reasonable to ask why we should trust Germany's laws anymore now than in the 1920's. Germany may still only be a depression and a charismatic leader away from another totalitarian state.
Second, terms like "free speech" and "democracy" have objective meanings and you can't just redefine them arbitrarily. It is an objective fact that Germany restricts free speech more than most Western nations. You might argue that these restrictions are good, but then a valid question is: where is the empirical evidence? Religious discrimination, tolerance, and integration seem worse to me in Germany than in the US, so what is Par. 130 actually achieving?
Do you know any country in the world where he would not have been convicted for libel?
He wasn't convicted of libel; libel is a civil matter. He was convicted of offending religious sentiment, a criminal matter in Germany.
Yes, in the US you can offend religious sentiment all you want, and that has worked pretty well. There is almost no criminal speech in the US.
And furthermore, why do you think he should be allowed to insult other people for free?
Because free speech is meaningless if all you can ever say is things that don't offend people.
Look at Martin Luther: do you think his statements didn't offend people? I mean, he called the Pope the "anti-Christ". And the same is true for pretty much any speech that has brought about positive change.
Islam and Christianity both are making strong claims about morality and truth. Of course, one should be able to say "these religions are immoral, fraudulent, and I do not respect them at all"; and one should be able to say that not just in words but also symbolically (although personally, I would not choose scatological symbols).
I hope things worked out with your wife. Obviously, C-sections should be covered and easily reimbursed.
I took issue only with one specific point you made: your argument that public health is the sum of private health. It is not. Your wife's C-section makes no difference to my health; it should simply be covered because it is the right thing to do.
As I was saying: you are a bitter and angry human being because you have had problems with your health insurance. But your bitterness and anger has obviously gone beyond what is normal and acceptable. Your problems do not entitle you to insult people or lie or put words in their mouth, and you have done all of those.
You are interpreting the laws you are citing wrong. In fact, the most relevant parts are Ãf2 and Ãf3. Ãf2 says that executive branches can order telecom providers to give them information; Personal information!!! not EMAILS. Under certain situations, if you can make a strong claim, you can get e.g. connection data, web pages that got accessed etc. But not the actual data you transfered via the wire, that means: no, not a copy of the photos / movies you downloaded, not a copy of he emails you downloaded. Only the mere fact that you connected from this IP to that IP and accessed a given URL or file.
I am neither interpreting it wrong nor citing it wrong. RTFL! It defines exceptions to the privacy of letter and phone conversations:
Yes, you can be put in prison if you attack the dignity of any group of people. And we believe this is rightful so. You fail to understand that you only can get put into prison after a court trial. Its not like that a cop just throws you into jail...
No, I understand perfectly that it requires a trial: a bunch of German judges sit there arguing about whether someone's "dignity" was attacked. It is creepy and totalitarian. "Dignity" should not be protected by law because it is far too easy to abuse such a vague concept.
While we have an explizit paragraph/law about "Volksverhetzung" most other countries apply their less explizit laws e.g. regarding libel in the exact same way.
Libel laws are civil laws, and truth is generally an absolute defense. "Volksverhetzung" is a criminal law, and truth is not a defense.
Germany has some of the strongest restrictions on free speech among any western nation.
Your examples of "making fun" and "Piss Christ(ians)" both would not hold btw.
Printing the Koran on toilet paper has gotten people convicted.
You forget that this law is made by a democratic established parliament. They could as well remove the law or change it... there is nothing "undemocratic" with this law.
The ErmÃchtigungsgesetz was made by a "democratic established parliament"; does that make it or Hitler's reign of terror "democratic"? Democracy does not mean tyranny of the majority, and not everything the majority decides is democratic.
P.S. if you are interested how law works you need to get some skilled teaching, just reading paragraphs won't help much.
What makes you think I haven't? But if my interpretation is wrong, then stop bullshitting and point out specifically where it is wrong, with sources and references. It's the law, it's not rocket science.
Furthermore, if you want to claim that E-mail is protected no matter what, show the laws that guarantee this, show that these laws are enforceable, and that there are no exceptions to these laws.
In actual fact, you have not the slightest idea what's going on. You assume that things are safe, sane, and democratic because that's what you think your country ought to be like. You concoct stories to try and justify that view. And you think that law and government best be left to the experts.
It's scary that someone living in Germany has such attitudes towards government and the law. Have you learned nothing from your history?
The entire article assumes a 1960's approach: launch everything from earth with rockets. That's stupid. Its focus on chemical propellants is even sillier because nuclear propulsion is arguably already a "current" technology.
There are lots of technologies that you can use to get things out of earth's gravity well, including launch loops. There is lots of mass out there that you can use as a propellant and for other purposes. For propulsion, fission is close to ready, fusion is feasible, and even something like antimatter propulsion doesn't involve any new physics, just engineering for scaling up the antimatter generation and storage.
If we want manned spaceflight and colonization, we need to do several things. First, we need to stop wasting money and resources on the current manned space program and instead focus on extensive robotic exploration of the rest to the solar system to know what's out there and how we can take advantage of it. Second, we need to start investing in new launch technologies that don't use rocket propulsion. Third, we need to aggressively pursue the engineering behind fission, fusion, and (eventually) antimatter propulsion.
No, I'm not German, I just follow German politics and law.
As for the laws, both are relevant, since communications privacy requires both laws, both laws have exceptions, and both kinds of laws apply to ISPs.
You are picking out bits and pieces of the law and draw conclusions from them, but that's not how it works. In fact, the most relevant parts are Â2 and Â3. Â2 says that executive branches can order telecom providers to give them information; there is no mention of the need for a judge's order. The "order" refers to the communication from the executive branch to the telecom provider. The only penalties the law seems to contain is for refusal of telecom providers to comply or should they disclose such an order.
Â5 doesn't limit the permissions of earlier paragraphs, it just gives some specific rules for international communications. And there are loopholes, such as Â6, where the intelligence agency itself certifies that it needs the data it is collecting.
As for "Volksverhetzung", it is extremely vague. If you read that carefully, you can be thrown into prison for attacking the "dignity" of any group of people; making fun of rich people or "Piss Christ" could land you in jail under German law. This kind of law is an anathema to a free and democratic society.
Yeah, the UK's recording companies and newspapers are busy self-destructing, and Google is getting rich. The article fails to make a connection between the two.
Note that exceptions can be justified under "Volksverhetzung", which is such a vague concept that a lot of politically unpopular speech might fall under these exceptions.
If you want to claim that "in germany EMails can not be read without a judge giving a warrant first", you have to justify that statement based on law, and... good luck trying.
Governments, software vendors, and/or ISPs can easily install key loggers and backdoors on your machine through the usual software update mechanisms. Once they have that, they can get your keys no matter what system you use.
The loopholes where governments can access and share your data if it is "in the public interest". No, they don't need a warrant for that, and they can do just about anything based on that. Here is one of the places where that exception is listed http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bdsg_1990/__4c.html There are other holes in the law.
Many European nations nominally have better privacy laws, but they have lots of exceptions for national security, police enforcement, and privacy law enforcement, as well as other loopholes.
But you're likely also no better off storing it on your local disk; for your government or your ISP, accessing data on your disk is likely no more complicated than pushing a button.
If you want your E-mail to be private, encrypt it, whether it's on a local disk or a server, and even then, there's a good chance others can intercept the key and read it anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who has lived in Germany as a foreigner, I can tell you what it is: it's the kind of attitudes, prejudices, and ignorance you exhibit, and which are predominant among Germans.
There have probably been more immigrants to the US from Germany alone than there have ever been immigrants to Germany from anywhere. I think part of Germany's political problems stem from the fact that anybody who has an ounce of independent thought just leaves the country.
In different words, anybody who actually has a choice chooses to go to the US.
Empirically, the fact that there are only two major churches is a good indication. Legally, because the German legal system and government does a lot of things that legal scholars generally consider incompatible with separation of church and state in other nations.
The German constitution says that freedom of religion is guaranteed, but that's meaningless since politicians and judges don't enforce it due to their close ties to the two major churches.
So, you are saying that you really trust German courts, and German laws are really great, it's just that "voting, parliament and politics" are "fucked up" and people get "frustrated" because "communal construction projects" are the only place the population has influence on. Don't you see the disconnect there?
The frustration you and others feel in Germany is exactly what I'm talking about: self-imposed limits on free speech, fear of controversy, and the contradiction between the supposed achievements of German democracy and political reality.
A lot of those laws are pushed at least as much by European corporations as by US corporations. German politicians blame all the things they really want to do but find hard to push domestically on the "evil Americans". It's mostly policy laundering and propaganda. And it's nothing new either: Nazis and the Weimar Republic did it too. The amazing thing is that Germans just don't learn.
You really do care about the same stuff I do, you just can't connect the dots from the causes to the symptoms.
Oh, well, that settles it then! A few interviews of people on the street, selected by German television, and you are an expert on US culture!
You sure do debate a lot, unfortunately without much reference to history, law, and facts.
Yes, and whaddayaknow... Japan was the other big power in WWII.
No, because ultimately I really don't care how you live your life. I object to you mischaracterizing US laws and erroneously claiming that free speech and freedom of religion are arbitrary terms that any nation can define any way it likes. And I encourage you to at least look at US history and law and then make up your own mind. Right now, you're simply speaking from a position of ignorance.
Yes, the US has been debating this, and Germany is not debating these things: that is the problem. You ask Americans about flag burning or Quran burning and whether it should be legal and you get lots of different answers, both agreeing and disagreeing with the law. You ask Germans about it, and one usually gets your kind of answer: that Germans are overwhelmingly in favor of the way their laws are, that they are good laws, and that there is really no point to debating them. It's the same for death penalty, privacy, religious freedoms, etc. And when you ask Germans to talk about relevant history, legal foundations, or court cases, they draw a blank.
Germany had the same attitudes when it was a monarchy, a military dictatorship, a fascist state, and a communist state. Germans always believed they had things figured out perfectly, if only the rest of the world would see it! Geibel put this arrogance in words, and it was used by both monarchists and Nazis for propaganda purposes:
That's still the attitude that Germans have today.
Not at all. My perception is that Germans value unity and social conformity to a dangerous degree.
Yes, you "fail to see the problem" and you "don't understand". That's the problem: you just view US and German laws on privacy, communications secrecy, free speech and freedom of religion as different opinions and choices, apparently without any clear understanding of the history, philosophy, and legal traditions behind them.
Contrary to what you seem to think, these are not settled issues. There have been a number of important legal cases in Germany regarding all these questions in recent years, as well as some EU cases. You weren't familiar with any of them, and when I mentioned some of them, you merely got defensive saying that that was as it should be. Apparently, you're just in total agreement with what politicians and courts in Germany are doing, even though you don't actually even keep track of it, and that's just creepy to me.
I just responded to your verbal diarrhea about the supposed failure of the US educational system. Yeah, we should improve, but we're nowhere near as bad as you claim we are. And since we out-spend those other nations, the problem obviously isn't on the spending side.
Yes it is true; go check the numbers instead of lying through your teeth.
So, your school district has a good tax base. If your students aren't getting the education they need, your school district is wasting the money on something else. Become active in local politics to fix this or stop complaining.
And you have the nerve to complain about insufficient funding for anything, and about people with billion dollar bonuses? Reagan started this with his Reagonomics, Trickle Down Economics, and ill-advised military build-up and interventionism. You want to know why the US isn't number one in so many areas? Look to Reagan and then look in the mirror.
You have a good health plan and you live in a school district with a good tax base. If you can't get your medical bills reimbursed and your kids can't get a good education, you only have yourself to blame for it. Let me help you out a little: sign up for an HMO or PPO, become active in local politics, and put 20% of your income in a savings account every month.
The US should indeed become number one on health and education in the world--we spend enough money on it. And to get there, we need to keep people like you from sabotaging that goal with your selfishness, your distortions, and your negativity.
Those 27 nations are OECD nations and represent the most developed nations in the world; hence 14 is likely our worldwide position, beating countries like Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg.
Worked my way through college, got a fellowship for grad school, working as a scientist now, and not rich (but frugal). Oh, and a registered Democrat, although people like you make me ashamed.
And when you were young, per-capita education and health care spending in the US was a fraction of what it is today (in constant dollars), so lack of spending is not what killed those dreams.
And the reason I hammer away at you is that I am terrified of the timid, miserly, meager, threadbare, hopeless possible future you represent. You are the left-wing counterpart to the nutty worshippers of Ayn Rand and the Christian right. The FUD you people spread between you is what is causing people to have so little faith in our future. You sabotage reasonable political debate with your demagoguery and prejudices.
My personal experience agrees with the statistics: education and health care both are quite good in the US. If your kids and your students are disillusioned and fearful, it's because of the way you raised them and taught them.
US science literacy is still quite high in international comparisons:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_sci_lit-education-scientific-literacy
The US also is among the top for money spent per secondary student:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_spe_per_sec_sch_stu-spending-per-secondary-school-student
Should the US improve? Of course. But ideologically motivated diatribes like yours aren't helping. Take your own advice: improve your literacy and then start arguing with facts instead of fear mongering.
Because Americans have arrived at their current understanding of free speech after centuries of political debate and legal cases. The boundary between what's legal and what's not is documented in hundreds of court cases, many of which are taught in high school and college.
In contrast, you just say "this is our view, and it's as valid as yours". And when we look at the history of these laws in Germany, we find that instead of promoting democracy, these kinds of laws have historically been used to stifle democratic opposition.
I said no such thing. Of course, Germany is still a democracy. But it has significant restrictions on free speech and freedom of religion.
No, it wouldn't. The law is really just a symptom of deep-seated cultural and social problems. The same attitudes that allowed democracy in Germany to fail in the 1848 and 1933 still exist. When Germans start thinking like citizens in a democracy, they will repeal such laws.
Germany has been governed by theocracies, monarchies, fascists, military dictators, and communists. You can't fix these repeated failures of democracy with a law banning the Nazis; the problem goes much deeper than that. Germany isn't going to repeat the Nazis; its next totalitarian government is going to be something different again.
For 50 years, half of Germany was a communist dictatorship, the other had its officials approved by the US secret service, and there are still tens of thousands of US troops on German soil. Germany is far from having achieved peace on its own, and it is far from having proven that it can stand on its own two feet.
And it isn't working. Germany is quite xenophobic and intolerant in my experience. You can also see that from statistics on immigration and integration.
People have a lot of experience with these devices, and form factor, battery life, and software work well in the classroom.
Long term, they are going to be replaced not by netbooks, but by tablets. But tablet prices are still a lot higher.
I didn't disagree with the "exactly the same laws" statement, I disagreed that a judge's order was always needed. Fact is (go back in the thread, I pointed you at the law--the OTHER law) that the German government, like the US government, has a range of legal means by which it can access your server-stored E-mail, even without a court order.
I'm not "angry", you just keep making unsupported statements and keep confusing things, while accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about. Read up on the difference between civil and criminal law; you keep confusing the two. Read up on free speech rights in the US vs Germany; you seem to think that they are more similar than they are.
No, that is factually false as well. The law against "Volksverhetzung" existed in the pre-Nazi era as an anti-communist law; it was modified post-WWII for a different purpose. The problem with laws like it is that they are abused by regimes in order to stifle opposition (in fact, I believe that "Volksverhetzung" was a popular charge brought by the Nazi regime against its opponents).
First of all, some sets of laws work, other don't. Germany's first two attempts at democracy failed miserably and Germany's current laws are derived from those; therefore, it is reasonable to ask why we should trust Germany's laws anymore now than in the 1920's. Germany may still only be a depression and a charismatic leader away from another totalitarian state.
Second, terms like "free speech" and "democracy" have objective meanings and you can't just redefine them arbitrarily. It is an objective fact that Germany restricts free speech more than most Western nations. You might argue that these restrictions are good, but then a valid question is: where is the empirical evidence? Religious discrimination, tolerance, and integration seem worse to me in Germany than in the US, so what is Par. 130 actually achieving?
He wasn't convicted of libel; libel is a civil matter. He was convicted of offending religious sentiment, a criminal matter in Germany.
Yes, in the US you can offend religious sentiment all you want, and that has worked pretty well. There is almost no criminal speech in the US.
Because free speech is meaningless if all you can ever say is things that don't offend people.
Look at Martin Luther: do you think his statements didn't offend people? I mean, he called the Pope the "anti-Christ". And the same is true for pretty much any speech that has brought about positive change.
Islam and Christianity both are making strong claims about morality and truth. Of course, one should be able to say "these religions are immoral, fraudulent, and I do not respect them at all"; and one should be able to say that not just in words but also symbolically (although personally, I would not choose scatological symbols).
I hope things worked out with your wife. Obviously, C-sections should be covered and easily reimbursed.
I took issue only with one specific point you made: your argument that public health is the sum of private health. It is not. Your wife's C-section makes no difference to my health; it should simply be covered because it is the right thing to do.
As I was saying: you are a bitter and angry human being because you have had problems with your health insurance. But your bitterness and anger has obviously gone beyond what is normal and acceptable. Your problems do not entitle you to insult people or lie or put words in their mouth, and you have done all of those.
Get some psychological help; you need it.
I am neither interpreting it wrong nor citing it wrong. RTFL! It defines exceptions to the privacy of letter and phone conversations:
http://bundesrecht.juris.de/g10_2001/BJNR125410001.html
No, I understand perfectly that it requires a trial: a bunch of German judges sit there arguing about whether someone's "dignity" was attacked. It is creepy and totalitarian. "Dignity" should not be protected by law because it is far too easy to abuse such a vague concept.
Libel laws are civil laws, and truth is generally an absolute defense. "Volksverhetzung" is a criminal law, and truth is not a defense.
Germany has some of the strongest restrictions on free speech among any western nation.
Printing the Koran on toilet paper has gotten people convicted.
The ErmÃchtigungsgesetz was made by a "democratic established parliament"; does that make it or Hitler's reign of terror "democratic"? Democracy does not mean tyranny of the majority, and not everything the majority decides is democratic.
What makes you think I haven't? But if my interpretation is wrong, then stop bullshitting and point out specifically where it is wrong, with sources and references. It's the law, it's not rocket science.
Furthermore, if you want to claim that E-mail is protected no matter what, show the laws that guarantee this, show that these laws are enforceable, and that there are no exceptions to these laws.
In actual fact, you have not the slightest idea what's going on. You assume that things are safe, sane, and democratic because that's what you think your country ought to be like. You concoct stories to try and justify that view. And you think that law and government best be left to the experts.
It's scary that someone living in Germany has such attitudes towards government and the law. Have you learned nothing from your history?
The entire article assumes a 1960's approach: launch everything from earth with rockets. That's stupid. Its focus on chemical propellants is even sillier because nuclear propulsion is arguably already a "current" technology.
There are lots of technologies that you can use to get things out of earth's gravity well, including launch loops. There is lots of mass out there that you can use as a propellant and for other purposes. For propulsion, fission is close to ready, fusion is feasible, and even something like antimatter propulsion doesn't involve any new physics, just engineering for scaling up the antimatter generation and storage.
If we want manned spaceflight and colonization, we need to do several things. First, we need to stop wasting money and resources on the current manned space program and instead focus on extensive robotic exploration of the rest to the solar system to know what's out there and how we can take advantage of it. Second, we need to start investing in new launch technologies that don't use rocket propulsion. Third, we need to aggressively pursue the engineering behind fission, fusion, and (eventually) antimatter propulsion.
No, I'm not German, I just follow German politics and law.
As for the laws, both are relevant, since communications privacy requires both laws, both laws have exceptions, and both kinds of laws apply to ISPs.
You are picking out bits and pieces of the law and draw conclusions from them, but that's not how it works. In fact, the most relevant parts are Â2 and Â3. Â2 says that executive branches can order telecom providers to give them information; there is no mention of the need for a judge's order. The "order" refers to the communication from the executive branch to the telecom provider. The only penalties the law seems to contain is for refusal of telecom providers to comply or should they disclose such an order.
Â5 doesn't limit the permissions of earlier paragraphs, it just gives some specific rules for international communications. And there are loopholes, such as Â6, where the intelligence agency itself certifies that it needs the data it is collecting.
As for "Volksverhetzung", it is extremely vague. If you read that carefully, you can be thrown into prison for attacking the "dignity" of any group of people; making fun of rich people or "Piss Christ" could land you in jail under German law. This kind of law is an anathema to a free and democratic society.
Yeah, the UK's recording companies and newspapers are busy self-destructing, and Google is getting rich. The article fails to make a connection between the two.
No, I didn't "paste the wrong law". That is one of the relevant laws. Similar exceptions exist in other laws:
http://dejure.org/gesetze/GG/10.html
http://bundesrecht.juris.de/g10_2001/BJNR125410001.html#BJNR125410001BJNG000300000
Note that exceptions can be justified under "Volksverhetzung", which is such a vague concept that a lot of politically unpopular speech might fall under these exceptions.
If you want to claim that "in germany EMails can not be read without a judge giving a warrant first", you have to justify that statement based on law, and ... good luck trying.
Governments, software vendors, and/or ISPs can easily install key loggers and backdoors on your machine through the usual software update mechanisms. Once they have that, they can get your keys no matter what system you use.
The loopholes where governments can access and share your data if it is "in the public interest". No, they don't need a warrant for that, and they can do just about anything based on that. Here is one of the places where that exception is listed http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bdsg_1990/__4c.html There are other holes in the law.
That's nonsense. A "platform" can be anything you build something on. Java is a platform, so are different operating systems.
And even if you mean "hardware platform", what "hardware platforms" is Windows 8 supposed to be "cross-platform" for?
Many European nations nominally have better privacy laws, but they have lots of exceptions for national security, police enforcement, and privacy law enforcement, as well as other loopholes.
But you're likely also no better off storing it on your local disk; for your government or your ISP, accessing data on your disk is likely no more complicated than pushing a button.
If you want your E-mail to be private, encrypt it, whether it's on a local disk or a server, and even then, there's a good chance others can intercept the key and read it anyway.