Political blog

When I was reading the article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about EU point of view on the fight with pirates, I thought that I was probably already tired and I misunderstood something. Today I read in the Mirror about a new case of the abduction of a ship with the crew near the coast of Somalia, among the crew were the Germans as well and suddenly I read about the supposedly successful mission of the EU in the fight against pirates. It sounds, in my opinion, fairly cynical.

Apparently it depends on the fact that EU mandate expires soon, and the extension of the presence of the EU army is necessary, the EU MPs want to convey the electorate possibly pain-free (for MPs). Not that I am very concerned about the taxpayers’ money, but is it really sensible to try to solve the problem in this way? How long should we, according to the MPs wait until these pirates give up their machinations? Whether they really will do that without having an alternative way of survival? I doubt it.
I believe that this problem can be solved if the cause of the problem tackled, not just the consequences.

Spiegel Online reported that the fine for traffic violation will be increased significantly. Sometimes there are 2 times larger amounts to be paid if you behave yourself in traffic not correctly. For example, the money fine for drunk driving will be increased from 750 euros to 1500 euros. And if the statistics is to be believed, it is really a good solution, because since 2007 more then 5000 people have died, according to the Federal Statistical Office, due to car accidents. The problem is that professional drivers, such as postrider will suffer from this changes more then other people. These people travel every day through the cities and they always confronted with problems, how to find parking or how to get to some direction. Often there is no possibility to park the auto near the place. A friend of me works at Hermes and he told repeatedly that he had to pay fines for wrong parking, because it simply no parking places in the vicinity of the package receiver. He finds that annoying and I too. Perhaps there are some hints that he does not know, but his life could be easier if he would know them? Maybe someone knows something about this problem more?

When someone speaks about pirates, you usually think first about buccaneer from that era as England and Spain led wars around the Caribbean. The music industry was able to manipulate public so that this term also known as a term for children and young people, who downloads music from the Internet without pay for it.
The real pirates are not interested in music from the Internet, but they have ultra-modern boats, equipped with modern weapons. They take large ships that pass Somalia in sight, steal and take from it crew as hostages in order to get later the ransom for these people from their governments.
Until now, there are no really significant effort by any state, to stop this activity. This is very surprising, especially if you see how the military superpowers or wannabe major powers aka Russia, shows their weapons and ships to highlight their political importance.
How these states explain their inaction? The United States have not any possibility to solve this problem because of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition to the newly created Georgia-Russia conflict, and of course Iran. And what about Russia? Russia said recently that they will solve this problem alone. But until now there were only empty promises. And Germany? Well, Germany because of the law situation is not entitled to participate in such confrontations.
In short, everyone is busy with itself and therefore they are ready, to pay money for hostages, because it is a easy solution.

Today I read an article in the sun about the current development of the Iran crisis. Actually there is nothing new. The world community calls on Iran to stop enrichment of uranium, Iran signaled willingness to negotiate. The negotiations have as always, no result and the game starts from the beginning. Somehow strange that both sides repeat this ritual several times. In my opinion, it is obviously that Iran attempts to win time, while EU and other countries trying to negotiate with the mullah regime and solve the conflict with “European diplomacy”. I am of the opinion that it would be useful, to build for Iran for free a few nuclear power plants, which are working on the heavy water. These nuclear power plants work very efficiently and are completely inappropriate for building an atomic bomb. As far as I know, the U.S. built such power plants for North Korea. The North Korean government has declared to be ready to stop further nuclear weapons research.
If the government of Iran does not really want to build nuclear weapons, it will accept such an offer. Otherwise, I see no arguments against the very tough sanctions. The conflict can’t be resolved with weapons. The example of Iraq show us well how bad this idea are. Therefore, there is just one solution: a complete economic and political isolation. I am afraid, however, that isolation of Iran is simply impossible, because Iran is an interest zone of Russia and China. China needs a lot of raw materials and therefore very easy to win for Iran as ally or protector, because Iran has oil and gas. Russia is interested in sale a weapons to Iran. In addition, Russia has a dream of an organization on the example of OPEC for a coordinated sale of gas and Iran is a part of russian plans. Vicious circle?

In Berlin was recently a conference of editors of the Fundamental Rights Reports. The aim of this report is the protection and support of constitutional rights of German citizens.
The participants had published a resolution, where they calling to stop the state surveillance measures and to protect the rights of German citizens.
The motto of the congress was “security state at the end. Congress for the future of civil rights. “There were a whole new different people and civil rights organizations who had meeting on 23 and May 24. Humboldt University in Berlin served as the venue.
These organizations call on the politicians to protect the fundamental rights and freedom of citizens. They expressed strong criticism because of the new laws necessary for the monitoring of the human which give a free hands to security authorities.
“Every man, must have a monitoring free zone.” According to the congress, the liberties must not be sacrificed to prevent the dangers.
Another criticism was the use of the army in own country and criminalization of the demonstrators. “There is no place for the army missions within the country in a constitutional democracy.”

What I am concerned about, I have some comprehension for all these security measures, which we have today, except perhaps the use of German army against demonstrators during the G8 summit. However, I am very worried because of the development of the situation. They want with these measures, to protect the security of the citizens, but it also creates a large scope to abuse.
What we need in any case, is an independent organization with broad power to take all these control measures controlled and protect the people effectively against abuse.