Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is back. After allegations of plagiarism against the former Minister of Defense surfaced just less than a year ago, Guttenberg has not been in the public eye very much. After his doctorate was taken back by the University of Bayreuth, the prime staff member of Angela Merkel’s cabinet absconded to the United States for some time, while waiting for the public debate to subside somewhat.

The charges of plagiarism against Guttenberg, however, did not end with the withdrawal of his doctoral degree - criminal charges were brought up against him as well. The proceedings, however, have been suspended on the condition that he pay 20 000€ to the German Child Cancer Aid charity. In the midst of all this, Guttenberg has announced an interview book under the title of “Vorerst Gescheitert” or, loosely translated, “Failed For Now”. In this book, he outlines all the facets of his political career - and, obviously, the circumstances which led to his temporary downfall. He states how he was too busy due to the dual load of his private life, his political career and the need to continue writing his dissertation.

On a similar note, he is returning. Stating in his book that he does not have a concrete intention of returning yet, the facts speak for themselves: Maybrit Illner is running a show on his return, he seems to have reimagined his look with a few more pounds, sans glasses and with a new hairdo, “Bild” already ran a title story: “as Gutt as ever”. The fascinating thing is that rarely has such a fuss been made over a politician in Germany. Guttenberg is and remains a superstar of politics in this country, and a controversial one at that. Magazine “Stern” has run a poll on support for a return of the christ-democrat politician. Split right down the middle, 49% of the interviewed people were for a return to the political scene, leaving 51% against it. Interestingly, 53% believe that he can not be trusted, leaving at least 2% thinking that he can’t be trusted and still wanting his return.

The news are bulging with updates on the Guttenberg situation. Germany’s most popular online news site, Spiegel Online alone has been running around 25 articles on the situation since the announcement of his book. If there ever was the climate for a comeback, this is the time. However, would it be a smart step? It depends on what kind of portfolio Guttenberg wishes to please in the future. Predominantly liked by the elites at first as a person that could woo the masses while still making smart decisions and of integrity, he has lost many of those early supporters with his blatant disregard of academia. However, the masses he had wooed during his run still remain firmly behind him, mainly due to a marginalizing of what he did. Many of those voters see his crimes as akin to the cheating in a random school test.

Maybe the people wanting his return were inspired in part by his comments on the scandal in his book: “If I had tried to cover something up, I would have altered it so that no one would have noticed. You can trust me on this.” How very reassuring.

The European Debt situation is currently in the process of escalating to a point where the “point of no return” for the European Union’s joint currency and, by extension, the European Union itself is in sight. Germany’s internal crisis management and the reactions to the changed situation have been frequently challenged by the international community in the past.

But where does this crisis management originate? Well, it stems from a rather worrying shift in public opinion. Germans, at this point, see themselves as having the moral high ground. Media portrayals of the debt situation in Greece and its consorts have been extremely biased, especially so in the tabloid styled lower segment of publications which hold most of the market for newspapers these days. The musings published there effectively informed the German public that “Greece has not done its homework”, and that “our bailouts would guarantee the Greek luxury retirement” etc. What this has led to is nowhere more visible than in the articles that even the quality papers run these day: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an article stating that “Germany’s partners have to accept that Germany will hold on to its generally successful economic policies”. Do they?

The short answer to that question is yes, they will have to at this point. But what becomes evident by statements such as this is that while we felt Europe was coming closer and closer together as a singular state entity, it is still very much divided across nationalist lines. These sentences sound almost like the utterances of a bygone era, a renationalisation of sorts. The international community however has basically criticises something that does not seem to be the government’s position in this regard. Merkel is at this point struggling at the very edge of what can still pass as public opinion. Germany’s government has been listening to its own populace, and it has been listening well - the highly criticised positions the government takes these days are the result of a careful consideration how much of the actual views of this government they can implement without inciting a huge backlash in popular opinion.

This kind of situation is what has prompted former chancellor Helmut Schmidt to speak up out of retirement. If we think back a few years to the time of his chancellery - in 1979, he was faced with a prime example of this in NATO’s double track decision. He decided, against overwhelming public opinion, to go ahead with what he though was the right decision - precisely what the current government does not have the guts to do. What we are missing is not one stringent policy or the other, but rather any stringent policy at all. Seemingly leaving behind nationalism is one of the great achievements that came with the rise of the European Union. Now we are in the progress of reintroducing those same tendencies.

When we first investigated the matter back in October 2010 (http://www.dehnenblog.com/eng/wgoig/railway-project-stuttgart-21-turns-into-a-matter-of-politics/) we investigated the circumstances surrounding the protest movement - and now, after more than a year of constant protest, it has come to its conclusion. The referendum held this Sunday voted to keep on building the train station. With 58.8% voting to keep building and 41.2% against, the decision sounds like a close vote. However, these numbers can be misleading since the quorum that would have been needed to abolish the construction was missed by a long shot - a mere 48.3% of the eligible voters turned up. Since people directly opposed to the construction arguably would have shown up to the legal conclusion of their pet project, the supposed “mass opposition” can’t really claim the support of the silent majority anymore.

So what’s going to happen now? Construction will immediately be resumed. And why wouldn’t it? The people have decided. The current plans state that the building will be finished in November 2019. Most political opposition has, understandably, dwindled. Premier Kretschmann of the Green Party is on record (reluctantly) stating “We will accept this vote. The whole state government will.”

A small number of voices have stated that their opposition will continue even without political support. Environmental protection group “Parkschützer” is one of them. However, these voices do not seem to be supported by even their own previously zealous allies. State chairperson of BUND (the biggest environmental protection group in Germany) Brigitte Dahlbender: “We will have to accept this outcome.”

So have we seen the end of this? Probably, at least as far as the mainstream media and politics are concerned. The people of Stuttgart will likely have to put up with a (severely smaller) number of protesters until the new station has been built. In 2019.

The German government has finally decided on what is to become a major review in tax relief for the benefit of local economy. The monetary volume of the relief program is deemed to be around six to seven billion Euro.

The program will be introduced in two steps, the first of which is to come in 2013, followed by the second one in 2014. Included is a slight increase of income tax allowances to ease the tax load of low income households. A major shift concerning these also occurs in dampening the so called “cold progression” where a raise in salary could, combined with increasing tax burdens, lead to a lower net income. These two measures alone would contribute to a lowered tax yield of around 4 billion Euro, which is planned to be refinanced half by the federal government and half by the states.

Another slight adjustment will be made in the area of heath care, whose contributions will likely be increased by 0.1% on all income levels, leading to an increase in state income of around 1.1 billion Euro. Also added will be a system where parents who decide not to send their child to a day nursery are given the opportunity to receive a child care subsidy of 100 Euro per month in 2013 which will be raised to €150 in 2014. Currently the levels of health care contributions are at 1.95% for families and 2.2% for persons without children.

Other measures include an increase in health care for persons suffering from dementia, a slight lowering of immigration hurdles for highly qualified foreigners and around 1bil.€ for improvements in transport infrastructure. The opposition meanwhile remains sceptical because of the growing debt of public funds. With the approval of the governing coalition, the new law is likely to be passed promptly.

The circumstances surrounding the new agreement are less then stellar - the governing coalition had been infighting for months before these new measures were approved. Aside from the usual differences between two partners of a coalition, the Bavarian based CSU, usually virtually indistinguishable from the CDU, has been a steady influence on these talks. Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer in particular has been split unusually far from the course set by Merkel’s CDU. The decision ultimately decided upon however has put both parties somewhat at ease again.

In recent weeks, a leaked version of the so-called “Bundestrojaner has been making the rounds in German news agencies. We take into exploring what is behind this seemingly new find.

In the wake of Anti-Terror efforts undertaken by Germany’s federal agencies and government, the use of a state issued computer virus, known as the “Bundestrojaner” was sanctioned in 2006. The aim of this virus like program was to facilitate what is known as an “Online Durchsuchung”, basically a search of the target persons personal computer via the internet. The principal debate for this was had back at the inception of the concept, and concerns about the viability and feasibility of such a program were voiced by numerous organizations specializing in privacy concerns in Germany, chief among which was the CCC (Chaos Computer Club), a loose network of “white hat” hackers which have been uncovering privacy flaws since the 1980’s.

For the last few weeks, this organization got their hands on copies of the current version of the Bundestrojaner and has since proceeded to backwards engineer it and hack together a functioning interface. What they uncovered was a scandal indeed - the capabilities of the program disected far outmatched the powers authorized by the current legislation. Instead of merely viewing the files on the observed person’s PC, the program offered the possibility to download and, more worryingly, upload files onto the PCs file system as well as download additional pieces of code from the federal police’s servers to further improve its own functionality. Aside from this, the program offered the possibility to record web chats and Skype calls as authorized in the accompanying legislation.

These features become problematic in the sense that they are most unsafe. With an option for “remote controlling” the infected PC, abuse of the program by third parties is no longer a simple voyeuristic affair, but rather a serious problem. By merely emulating the server structure of the federal police server the program could be remotely made to upload incriminating information on a target person which would then be received by the German authorities - so not only the safety of the individual person is at stake, but also the quality of the information gained by the police.

Adding to these grave faults in the programs structure comes a more general problem with the method used by the police. Such a program, however structured, would be found by a simple antivirus program. The instant the “Bundestrojaner” was first discovered, renowned antivirus makers Kaspersky Lab and Symantec announced it would be added to their databases and henceforth be removable by their programs. In effect, the “state of the art spy tool” desired by the federal police is easily outmaneuvered by even the most basic antivirus software, is a colossal waste of taxpayer money and constitutionally questionable in it’s current form.

Ever since the liquidity of the Greek economy started to crumble and the first bailout plan was devised, the public debate in Germany has been revolving around the issue whether one state should bail out the other in a unified market zone such as the European Union. Until recently, the answer economists gave to that crucial question was all too clear: With the unified market came unified responsibilities and most importantly, risks.

What Germany, in particular, desired was a stable market for it’s export products. With the introduction of the unified currency came the advantage of having a market free from currency differences and unfavorable exchange rates that might hamper exports. In addition, the introduction of the unified currency was and still is the logical next step in a unified market region. With Germany’s own currency directly tied to that of its trade partners in the Eurozone, any of the traditional problems with interacting currencies instantly vanished. However, in the changing economical landscape of international interaction, severe problems were made in the introduction which now resurface. Germany’s de facto reliance on economically less stable partners in it’s currency market is proving problematic.

The currently proposed solution calls for a set of guarantees on the Greek government’s debts set forth by numerous Eurozone partners, with the majority of the granted money coming from the German investors. However, a growing number of Germans are becoming upset at this apparent injustice. The impression put forth by the tabloids - at “Germans are paying for Greek luxury retirements” - is still the prevailing opinion in lots of German heads. With this sociopolitical background, decision making is becoming ever harder for the government -having the rescue fund the advisors so desperately call for at the ready has become a political issue that can not simply be ignored and decided over the head of the people. In classical political terms, simply having Greece become bankrupt would have been an outcome almost desirable - a clean slate for the state to begin with is even seen favorably by many Greeks these days. Germany, however, would get the short end of that particular stick. If such an instance were to occur, several billion € worth of German investments in Greece would be in jeopardy in a very short turn, and the tremendous economic advantages gained for the German export market by the introduction of the unified currency would crumble with the stability of the latter.

So in turn, what decisions will the governments face? It is a hard one to make with certainty. Go broadly against public opinion and take the matter to its logical conclusion? Safe Greece and any others like it with extreme prejudice? Or yield to public opinion and sacrifice economic stability and the process of European integration that has been going forward ever since the 1950s? Germany has decided for the first one and chosen to deal with the fallout for the sake of sanity - but will the others? We certainly will remain seized of the matter.

Cars set on fire in Italy, unhygienic circumstances in lower Manhattan - the Occupy Wall Street Movement sent some drastic pictures around the world over the weekend. Of course, the movement caused some stir in Germany as well: about 40,000 people in Berlin, Frankfurt, and other Germany cities were protesting on the streets.

In Spain, Greece, and the USA, the protests are the reaction to an immediate cause: the financial crisis has an immediate effect on the every day life of these countries’ citizens. Germany, on the other hand, the stable haven for investors from all over the world, actually profited from the crisis. If the German citizens are impacted less directly than other people world wide, who are the protesters on the streets, and what are they protesting?

A few thousand demonstrants, are by far not the 99%, which the Occupy Wall Street Movement proclaims, but the surprising heterogenity of the group of demonstrators represents them very well: We see the experienced protesters from the leftist anti-globalization organization Attac, which in Europe we connect with every demonstration of such sort. They are joined by curious bystanders, and by people who have been unsatisfied with the economical sitiuation and seize the opportunity to mouth their opinion. While this constellation could be seen at the anti-globalization protests in the early 2000s, a surprising new demographic presented itself in Germany this past weekend: members of the middle class, who stayed at home in the past, because they new they were profiting from globalization, now joined the protesting masses. But now, they have been concerned directly by the financial crisis: they lost their jobs, their savings, and their faith in the government. “Protesters of the Middle Class” - this is the a word we hear in the German media often these days.
While the reasons for protest are rather easily defined for the initial Occupy Wall Street Movement in New York City, the goal of the demonstrations in Germany are more diverse. Some demands (e.g. the abolition of banks in general) were received as unreasonble, while others found a approving echo with German politicians: a reasonable transaction tax, a higher equity-ration for banks, and the seperation of investement and commercial banking.
Center-left Social Democrat leader Sigmar Gabriel said that “we have to force the banks back into their role as servants to the real economy. The correct move would be to split investment banking off from commercial banking. Every mid-sized company which needs a loan will soon run into difficulties because banks are threatened with bankruptcy as a result of bad bets on the investment banking side.”
Much now depends on the reaction of the German politics this week. If the government shows understanding, and offers reasonable solutions to the protesters demands, the occupation movement in Germany might be over soon. Unlike other European countries like Italy, Greece, or Spain, where people have to struggle with a high unemployment of the youth, or an immediate depth crisis, in Germany, the demonstraters are not protesting the system, nor are they anticapitalists.
The “Protesters of the Middle Class” simply want their voice to be heard. And with the global Occupy Wall Street Movement as an amplifier, an echo from politicans and upper class, can be expected sooner than before the past memorable weekend of world wide demonstrations.