German Joys

Austerians' Next Target: Universal Healthcare

Adam Gaffney at Dissent reports on how austerity is being used to slowly kill the institutions of of universal healthcare, arguably the most important (positive) political innovation to emerge from Europe in the 20th century:

The truly universal health care system, however, was in general a post–Second World War development and was usually the consequence of the work of labor and left-wing parties. Most Western European nations took one of two paths: gradual expansion of coverage until the system could fairly be called universal or the more abrupt creation of a truly socialized national health service. In Great Britain, the 1946 passage of the National Health Service Act brought about the British National Health Service. Financed through general taxes, it provided health care as a right, with medical services free at the point of service.

Most other nations, however, took a more incremental path. France, for instance, built upon its 1928 National Health Insurance system, passing successive pieces of legislation that covered larger and larger proportions of the population until, in 2000, the remaining 1 percent of the nation that was uninsured received coverage. Germany likewise built upon its nineteenth-century Bismarckian system to create a system of truly universal coverage. Greece was relatively late to the game. In 1934, it established a Social Security Organization that covered urban and industrial workers, which was expanded to agricultural workers in 1961. But it was the 1983 legislation of the newly elected Socialist Party that put into place a National Health Service (NHS), founded on the principles of universal access. Along similar lines, Spain built upon a 1942 health insurance law with successive expansions of coverage. This culminated in the 1980s, when through a number of measures the Spanish Socialist Party converted the health care system to a tax-based system with universal access and a largely public provision of care.

No doubt, as they entered the twenty-first century, all of these systems had their own flaws, their own inefficiencies, even their own inequities and injustices. But for the first time in human history, the poorest individuals could avail themselves of some of the most advanced medical care in the world without worry that their illness would bankrupt their family, and without the stigma of charity. A true right to health care had been legislated into existence. Universal health care, from this perspective, represented a truly massive and historical achievement.

...

[Gaffney then recounts the staggering cuts to healthcare in European periphery countries]. Although universal health care was a relatively recent achievement, it quickly came to be considered an intrinsic feature of the European welfare state. It is not, however, immutable. Universal health care everywhere arose through the process of political struggle, and it can be similarly unmade. It was generally the creation of parties of the Left, and was more likely to emerge, and to emerge earlier, in those countries with a strong tradition of labor unionism. As the balance of power shifts, it is not only possible, but indeed probable, that those elements that were fundamentally opposed to universal health care from its very conception will emerge to challenge it.

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The right wing uses the cause of cost-containment and deficit reduction, combined with allegations of inefficiency, to chip away at the margins of these programs, to promote privatization and reductions in benefits, while at the same time avoiding a frontal rhetorical attack. Similarly, those who would undo universal health care in Europe begin by increasing the barriers to access (such as increased user fees or the denial of care to illegal immigrants), by cutting expenditures and reducing quality, by subtly changing the system away from universalism with changes in financing or benefit eligibility. Not to recognize that such measures could amount to the first step in a long process of unwinding the right to health care would be a dangerous mistake.

The 'Appalling' Peer Steinbrück

In an article on the ideological history of austerity economics, Ruy Teixiera gives Peer Steinbrück the back of his hand while misspelling his last name:

Keynes’s anti-austerity ideas had their day of course—and a very successful day it was, lasting from the mid-’30s to the mid-’70s. But austerity ideas never went away because, as outlined above, they are rooted in an entire philosophy about the state and public debt that is not subject to disproof, especially among the conservative forces and big economic interests who embrace it. As a result, when Keynesian economics appeared to falter in the 1970s, austerity-based economics came roaring back and dominated economic thinking for decades.

Now, after a brief resurgence of Keynesian economics in 2008-2010, it is back again. (See this paper by Henry Farrell and John Quiggin for a blow-by-blow description of how this happened.) Austerity dominates today’s economic discussions, this time with the chimera of “expansionary fiscal austerity”—the idea that the way out of an economic slump is to cut spending which will lead to rising business confidence, more investment and strong growth.

It is not just in conservative circles that the austerity idea remains strong. The idea also has significant purchase in progressive circles. For example, in Germany, while the social democrats offer some criticisms of austerity, their standard-bearer in the coming election, Peer Steinbruck, played a key role in undermining the brief period of Keynesian ascendancy and re-establishing the hegemony of austerity economics. Steinbruck is a particularly appalling example, but the ranks of European social democrats are full of politicians who subscribe to some variant of austerity economics or at least find it expedient not to oppose it.

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The effects of proceeding down the current path could be devastating. Without more growth, millions of people will suffer and unemployment will remain high.² Compelling evidence of this suffering is collected in the new book, The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, written by epidemiologists David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu. Stuckler and Basu provide a capable summary of the basic problems with austerity economics as economics, but their signal contribution in this book is to focus on the health effects of austerity. Looking at data from states during the New Deal, Asian countries in the 1990s East Asian financial crisis, and European countries in the Great Financial Crisis that started in 2008, they find that, the more austerity was practiced in a state or country, the more people got sick and the more people died.³ In short, “Austerity Kills” is more than just a slogan. Austerity doesn’t work as economics, and it kills people in the bargain. It’s time we came up with an alternative.

Locust Capitalism Made in Germany

It seems appropriate now and then to remind everyone that the leaders of Germany-- land of the gentle, caring social state (g)! protectress of human rights (g)! denouncer (g) of 'anglo-american' style turbo-capitalism! -- continues to demand policies that have led to mass human suffering in countries in Southern Europe:

The Greek economy is in free fall, having shrunk by 20 percent in the past five years. The unemployment rate is more than 27 percent, the highest in Europe, and 6 of 10 job seekers say they have not worked in more than a year. Those dry statistics are reshaping the lives of Greek families with children, more of whom are arriving at schools hungry or underfed, even malnourished, according to private groups and the government itself.

Last year, an estimated 10 percent of Greek elementary and middle school students suffered from what public health professionals call “food insecurity,” meaning they faced hunger or the risk of it, said Dr. Athena Linos, a professor at the University of Athens Medical School who also heads a food assistance program at Prolepsis, a nongovernmental public health group that has studied the situation. “When it comes to food insecurity, Greece has now fallen to the level of some African countries,” she said.

Oh, and the economic theory that German policymakers conveniently invoked as a fig leaf for their pursuit of Germany's economic interests cited as intellectual support has been largely debunked: 

To see their enormous influence on the European debate, it is worth quoting an extract from a speech by Olli Rehn, the European Commission’s economic chief, to the Council on Foreign Relations in June 2011. “Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have coined the ‘90 per cent rule’,” he said. “That is, countries with public debt exceeding 90 per cent of annual economic output grow more slowly. High debt levels can crowd out economic activity and entrepreneurial dynamism, and thus hamper growth. This conclusion is particularly relevant at a time when debt levels in Europe are now approaching the 90 per cent threshold, which the US has already passed.”

Mr Rehn presumably did not read the original papers, which were more ambivalent in their conclusions, as academic papers tend to be. Policy makers, such as Mr Rehn, are always on the lookout for economic theories that seem plausible and accord with their deep beliefs. In Europe, most of them have little exposure to macroeconomists who think out of the box. Clearly, most policy makers find it counter-intuitive that governments should spend money in a recession. It is against their own experience, especially if they come from northern European countries. They may have read the history of the Great Depression, and yet they find that a Keynesian response is less plausible than pro-cyclical austerity. If two of the world’s most respected economists then come along and tell them that their gut instincts have been right all along, this is the conservative policy maker’s equivalent of birthday and Christmas coinciding. At last, the message they always wanted to hear.

And, of course, is not even resulting in significantly lower debts, since austerity-driven economic contraction increases sovereign debt:

Though the cumulative level of government deficits fell last year, mainly because of Germany swinging into a budget surplus, many countries have continued to reel from the costs associated with recession.

Spending cuts and tax increases have helped to reduce deficits across the 17 EU countries that use the euro, but the region's debt burden rose after economic growth flatlined and fewer companies and households paid taxes.

Of the four countries that accepted financial assistance, Portugal and Spain saw their deficits swell in value terms and in proportion to the size of their economies. Portugal's deficit increased to 6.4% of GDP in 2012, from 4.4% the year before; Spain's jumped to 10.6% from 9.4%.

Greece managed to make further inroads in cutting its borrowings, but the deficit rose to 10% of its annual GDP from 9.5% as the country remained mired in a deep recession. Only Ireland, widely viewed as the poster child of austerity, saw its deficit fall under both criteria – it stood at 7.6% of GDP against 13.4% the year before.

Of course, only those ranting, irresponsible...populists* (pronounce with scorn) feel the need to continuously draw attention to these facts.

History is not going to be kind to Angela Merkel. Wait, let me qualify that: Non-German historians are not going to be kind to Angela Merkel. But then again, hypocrisy is only human:

A Moral Principle met a Material Interest on a bridge wide enough for but one.

‘Down, you base thing!’ thundered the Moral Principle, ‘and let me pass over you!’

The Material Interest merely looked in the other’s eyes without saying anything.

‘Ah,’ said the Moral Principle, hesitatingly, ‘let us draw lots to see which shall retire till the other has crossed.’

The Material Interest maintained an unbroken silence and an unwavering stare.

‘In order to avoid a conflict,’ the Moral Principle resumed, somewhat uneasily, ‘I shall myself lie down and let you walk over me.’

Then the Material Interest found a tongue, and by a strange coincidence it was its own tongue. ‘I don’t think you are very good walking,’ it said. ‘I am a little particular about what I have underfoot. Suppose you get off into the water.’

It occurred that way.

             — Ambrose Bierce, Fantastic Fables, 1898

(Via Futility Closet.)

The Best Reaction to Bombings: Nothing

Security expert Bruce Schneier, who has long mocked the pointless, expensive, and alienating displays of 'security theater' in airports after 9/11 (shoes, belts, fluids, fingerprints), adds his voice to the chorus of people saying that following the news is foolish and harmful:

Ezra Klein: What should people be thinking about in the aftermath of an attack like this?

Bruce Schneier: They should refuse to be terrorized. Terrorism is a crime against the mind. What happened in Boston, horrific as it is, is theater to make you scared. That’s the point. The message of terrorist attacks is you’re not safe, and the government can’t protect you — that the existing power structure can’t protect you.

I tell people if it’s in the news, don’t worry about it. By definition, news is something that almost never happens. The brain fools you into thinking the news is what’s important. Our brains overreact to this stuff. Terrorism just pegs the fear button.

EK: What should policymakers do in the aftermath of this kind of event? 

BS: Nothing. This is a singular event, and not something that should drive policy. Unfortunately, you can’t prevent this sort of thing 100 percent. Luckily, terrorism is a lot harder than people think, and it happens rarely. The question people asked after 9/11 is what if we had three of these a year in the United States? Turns out there were none. People get their ideas on terrorism from movies and television.

EK: What makes terrorism so difficult? After 9/11, lots of people thought we’d see suicide bombers in malls across the country, or crude chemical weapons unleashed in subway systems. Why were they wrong?

BS: Because there are a lot of steps to pulling it off, and if you make mistakes in any of them, you go to jail. There’s not a lot of practicing you can do. The criminal mastermind is an invention of comic books; 9/11 just barely worked. They got unbelievably lucky; it was by no means inevitable.

...

EK: So what should we be afraid of?

BS: Car crashes. Global warming. It feels insensitive to say it so close to the tragedy, but it’s true. What people should worry about are things so common that they’re no longer news. That’s what kills people. Terrorism is so rare, it’s hardly a risk worth spending a lot of time worrying about.

And on that note, I'm going to do some things that are worthwhile -- stop by my local farmers' market and ride through the park to work. Spring is finally here, which means Germany has officially turned into heaven for the next 6 months.

No News is Good News

Rolf Dobelli makes a powerful argument that following the news compulsively isn't just a waste of time but is positively harmful. A few of his points:

News is irrelevant. Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it – allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business. The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you. But people find it very difficult to recognise what's relevant. It's much easier to recognise what's new. The relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of the current age. Media organisations want you to believe that news offers you some sort of a competitive advantage. Many fall for that. We get anxious when we're cut off from the flow of news. In reality, news consumption is a competitive disadvantage. The less news you consume, the bigger the advantage you have.

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News makes us passive. News stories are overwhelmingly about things you cannot influence. The daily repetition of news about things we can't act upon makes us passive. It grinds us down until we adopt a worldview that is pessimistic, desensitised, sarcastic and fatalistic. The scientific term is "learned helplessness". It's a bit of a stretch, but I would not be surprised if news consumption, at least partially contributes to the widespread disease of depression.

News kills creativity. Finally, things we already know limit our creativity. This is one reason that mathematicians, novelists, composers and entrepreneurs often produce their most creative works at a young age. Their brains enjoy a wide, uninhabited space that emboldens them to come up with and pursue novel ideas. I don't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie – not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter. On the other hand, I know a bunch of viciously uncreative minds who consume news like drugs. If you want to come up with old solutions, read news. If you are looking for new solutions, don't.

I could hardly agree more. I follow the news much more than I should (the job requires a certain amount of this) but I try to limit it as much as possible, for precisely the reasons Dobelli indicates. It almost always turns out to be an utter waste of time. Because I myself don't follow the news very much, Dobelli was not on my radar screen, even though he's apparently a best-selling German-language author whose most recent book is now being translated into many languages, including English.

A Quaint Little Cottage in Thatcher Bashing

There's all sorts of rejoicing going on about Margaret Thatcher, with people celebrating in the streets and linking to hate-ditties either calling for her to be killed or relishing the thought of her dying. I find it all rather tasteless. Rejoicing at the death of a frail old woman who was no longer capable of doing anyone harm is churlish at best and inhuman at worst.

I've always been suspicious of this carefully-advertised Thatcher-hatred. I assume that, like so much political activity, it's mainly a kind of signaling -- a convenient way of showing other like-minded people that you're part of their in-group. Julian Barnes once said that one of the things that made English literary life in the 1980s so dull was the inevitable scene in which bien-pensants at a dinner party bitched about Maggie for several pages.

I myself witnessed a lot of Thatcher-bashing from fragrant, hirsute, not-very-bright English and Welsh people, ususally delivered in defiantly non-posh accents (think of the couple in High Hopes, but all too real). Privately, I would think to myself: 'Thatcher may be tinny and irritating, but you, you self-consciously prolish British lefty, are boring me shitless. And your ideas for running Britain, assuming you have any, are probably as half-baked as you are'. To this day, I associate non-posh British accents with plodding self-righteousness, which I admit is unfair, but what are you gonna do?

I disagree with Thatcher's policies as much as the next guy, but the fact remains that she was an outstanding public speaker, knew how to appeal to the middle class, and won three terms as Prime Minister while the British left fumed impotently, pointed fingers, and escalated their outrage to a keening pitch -- when they weren't raging against middle-class voters for not understanding their own interests. In other words, engaging in precisely the sort of sour navel-gazing that deservedly loses elections.

UPDATE: Always reassuring to be on the same side of an issue as Johnny Rotten (h/t TG):

When someone dies, give them respect. Enemy or not. I can't be listening to folk who do that.
'What kind of politics are they offering me? You dance on another person's grave? That's loathsome.'

He added: 'Her politics were really dreadful and derisive and caused a great many issues for me when I was young, for all of us trying to go through that.

'But that don't mean I am gonna dance on her grave, as they say. I'm not that kind of person.

'I was her enemy in her life but I will not be her enemy in her death. I am not a coward.'

The Miseducation of Annette Schavan

Yet another plagiarism scandal is rocking -- well, not really rocking, more like poking -- Germany. This time, with exquisite irony, the victim is the Education Minister of the entire country, Dr. Annette Schavan. She got her doctorate in education in 1980 from the University of Düsseldorf. Someone got a copy of her dissertation, which dealt with the development of a personal conscience, and began looking for unacknowledged quotations and uncited paraphrase of others' ideas. The results can be found on the blog Schavanplag (g), which contains a detailed listing of all the problematic pages.

The Faculty Council of the liberal arts college of the University of Düsseldorf, after lengthy review, voted 12 to 3 to withdraw her doctoral dissertation on grounds of evidence of sustained, intentional plagiarism. They held (g) that Schavan's dissertation contained (my translation): 'more than isolated instances of word-for-word copies of other texts without acknowledgement' and found that '[t]he frequency and the construction of these word-for-word copies, along with the failure to cite relevant literature in footnotes or in the bibliography have convinced the Faculty Council, after reviewing the entire work, that the doctoral candidate systematically and intentionally, throughout the entire dissertation, presented ideas as her own that were, in fact, not.'

Not precisely the sort of thing you want to read about your country's own education minister. But the withdrawing of her Ph.D. is just the beginning: the program she completed in 1980 led directly to a Ph.D without any intervening steps, so once the university withdraws it, she will have no official, earned academic title at all past high school. The final nail in the coffin is her remarks about Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the last conservative politician to have lost his job last year over plagiarizing his doctoral dissertation. Back then, she announced (g) that as someone who had a Ph.D herself and met with many doctoral candidates, she was 'ashamed, and not just privately' about Guttenberg's conduct. Schavan has pledged to challenge the Faculty Council's decision in court, and to stay in office. But Angela Merkel has professed her 'full confidence' in Schavan, which means she's probably doomed.* One German newspaper calculated (g) that any politician who earns Merkel's 'full confidence' has, on average, 18.75 days left in office.

Whenever people ask me to compare Germans and Americans, I first order them to fill me with booze. Once that's done, then I pontificate as follows: 'The average middle-class American is driven about 90% by a desire for more money, and most of these people will come right out and tell you that. A similarly-situated German will be motivated 40% by money, 20% by job security, and 40% by the desire for officially-bestowed, external signs of high social status -- especially involving education or heredity. However, they will only admit the desire for job security, and will half-heartedly deny or rationalize the other motivations'. Perhaps the ultimate status symbol is the doctoral title which, under German law, can be made an official part of your name. The sacred two letters accompany you through life, surrounding you with a diffuse aura of scholarly dignity and good breeding.

Which is often spurious, of course. The social cachet of a doctoral title (which may also entitle you to higher salaries than your co-workers) drives thousands of ambitious young Germans to seek a title. A minority of these students are genuinely intellectually talented and interested in the advancement of human knowledge for its own sake. A majority, in my experience, just wants to find some way, any way, to bolt those two little letters to the front of their name for status/signalling reasons. They may well turn to dubious 'consulting agencies' which work with shady professors (g). One step above this are people who actually write a doctoral dissertation, but do so 'outside' the university system. In the German system only one professor supervises the actual dissertation-writing process, so if you find one who's relatively lax, you don't have to work up much of a sweat to get the title.

From my inbox:

I couldn’t help reading the story on Schavan today and just thinking “reap what you sow, Germany Bildungssystem”. Years of benign neglect to plagiarism, the discouraging of originality, the lack of substantive peer rigor at the higher academic levels and deference to professors who frequently supervise topics they can’t even evaluate the originality of have just resulted in what for Germans must seem like the End of All that is Good and True. Guttenberg was a case of a ‘friendly’ degree offered to someone obviously on his way to a higher political future than the academy, and I think there is a lot of tolerance for that here (and Schadenfreude when it blows up), but Schavan just struck a crippling blow to the whole concept of there being academic merit in this whole absurd title-chasing complex. If the Ministrix of Education loses her degree, that’s as bad as the Surgeon General being found to have obtained his medical degree at the Sweetrose Nursing Academy or the Minister of Consumer Affairs having marketed Vorwerk vacuum cleaners to math club students.

That about sums it up. Schavan is clearly doomed, and her case throws light on a very weak system. The problem is that all the superficial, crappy doctoral dissertations debase the currency. I haven't thought this through, but I envision something like a 2-tier process: you can either work with one professor to write a short, workmanlike survey of a particular area in 18 months-2 years (which doesn't need to be published), or you can opt for a 'real' doctoral dissertation, which must be more substantial, and which will take 3-4 years, and be supervised by a commission of three professors. In fact, this latter option could then replace the 'Habilitation', another German academic institution which may well have outlived its usefulness. I suppose this reform would end up with the German system looking much more like the American system. But comparing the number of plagiarism and/or fake-doctor scandals each system generates, switching to something more like the US system might be just what the doctor ordered (sorry about that!).

Fighting Sexism in Germany: The Answer is Simpler than You Think

The New York Times publishes an op-ed on sexism in Germany:

Based on the global reputation and overall popularity of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany appears from the outside to be a country where equality between men and women has long been established.

Yet thousands of German women have taken to social media in recent days to tell a radically different story — one of daily sexism experienced by female interns who are told that “hot girls” receive special treatment or a young woman being informed that she will not get a job because she might become pregnant....

A woman who gave her name as Gudrun Lux posted about seeing her application for a job rejected because, she was told, “the boss does not want any women of childbearing age.” Another calling herself Su-Shee recounted interviewing a young male applicant who asked to see “the real boss, the man.”

Nicole Simon, 42, a social media consultant in Germany who also contributed to the debate, described the outpouring as an example of the years of pent-up frustration over episodes that are so prevalent that women learn to simply block them out.

“Consensus online seemed to be, ‘I thought I could not share these stories, but reading all the other things, I am surprised at how much I have suppressed over the years,”’ Ms. Simon said in an e-mail.

According to ministry for women and families, 58 percent of German women say they have been subject to sexual harassment, with more than 42 percent of the cases happening on the job.

In Germany, this sort of thing provokes a lot of thumb-sucking about What it All Means, and warnings that we must change our priorities, etc.

In other words, ineffectual hand-waving.

The first thing to do is separate out the serious from the not-so-serious problem. The not-so-serious problem is occasional flirtatious remarks. This is something that women can, and should, handle themselves. If you don't like a co-worker's clumsy or creepy remarks, tell him that, to his face, with increasing levels of acidulousness. You don't get as much respect in this life as you deserve, you get as much as you demand. What use was feminism if it hasn't put women into a position to set boundaries and denounce misconduct?

The more serious problem is women being denied job opportunities or asked for sexual favors by superiors, etc. First, though, let me list the things that don't work:

• bureaucratic reports
• vague laws
• finger-wagging speeches by superiors
• waiting for a 'sea-change in social attitudes'
• sensitivity training

None of these things will change ingrained attitudes and prejudices. What will change them is meaningful, painful financial penalties and public shaming. Germany has various laws that are designed to combat pregnancy and gender discrimination, but they're toothless, and therefore little-used. If someone in a position to hire people actually tells a woman she won't get the job because she might get pregnant, that should lead to a €10,000 penalty payable by the company and a public denunciation on a government webpage. Of course, the supervisor who made the remark will probably get fired for getting his company into so much trouble. Good! That's called accountability. Of course, the actual behavior will probably still continue underground, etc. But at least it won't be openly tolerated. And there are ways of rooting out even subtle discrimination.

To get an idea of what transparency and accountability looks like, just go here, to the website of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a government agency that enforces anti-discrimination laws. The agency boasts that it filed 100,000 lawsuits in 2012, and forced companies to pay $365 million in fines and compensation in 2012 alone. Also, as you can see, there is a running ticker on the webpage listing, by name, companies which have recently been forced to compensate people whom they discriminated against. It's not a perfect system, but it's certainly more effective than what Germany is doing.

What Jakob Augstein Actually Said about Israel

The U.S.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center just named left-wing German journalist Jakob Augstein one of the 10 worst anti-Semites of 2012, which is raising eyebrows (g) in Germany. This puts him in the company of European neo-Nazi parties who explicitly advocate forced resettlement/annihilation, fanatical Muslims calling for Allah to destroy the Jews, and Louis Farrakhan. I decided to go read the report (pdf) and see which statements they cited as proof. Here they are:

“With backing from the US, where the president must secure the support of Jewish lobby groups, and in Germany, where coping with history, in the meantime, has a military component, the Netanyahu government keeps the world on a leash with an ever-swelling war chant.”

“Israel’s nuclear power is a danger to the already fragile peace of the world. This statement has triggered an outcry. Because it’s true. And because it was made by a German, Guenter Grass, author and Nobel Prize winner. That is the key point. One must, therefore, thank him for taking it upon himself to speak for us all.”

“Israel is threatened by Islamic fundalmentalists in its neighborhood. But the Jews also have their fundamentalists, the ultra-orthodox Hareidim. They are not a small splinter group. They make up 10% of the Israeli population. They are cut from the same cloth as their Islamic fundamentalist opponents. They follow the law of revenge.”

“The fire burns in Libya, Sudan, Yemen, in countries which are among the poorest on earth. But those who set the fires live elsewhere. Furious young people burn the American, and recently, the German flag. They, too, are victims, just like the dead at Benghazi and Sanaa. Whom does this all this violence benefit? Always the insane and unscrupulous. And this time it’s the U.S. Republicans and Israeli government.”

“Gaza is a place out of the end of times….1.7 million people live there on 360 sq. kilometers. Israel incubates its own opponents there.”

To quote Joschka Fischer, I'm not convinced. First of all, you'll notice that Augstein never refers to 'the Jews', like most of the others on the list, many of whom are despicable and/or nuts. He refers to Israel or the current Israeli government or the 'Netanyahu government'. Further, his statements are based on fact (Haredi Jews are in fact about 11% of the Israeli population, and growing fast), or are legitimate, if provocative, statements of opinion. To take one example, the assessment that Israel's possession of around 200 nuclear missiles is 'a' (not the only, but a) danger to peace:

1. Israel has created a nuclear program and has 200 launch-ready missiles (some of them carried on German submarines provided free to Israel).
2. This has, unsurprisingly, has helped motivate other states in the region to pursue their own nuclear programs.
3. The Israel has bombed these states (Iraq and Syria) and is now threatening to go to war with Iran to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons, and has attempted to convince its ally, a world superpower, to join it.

You may disagree with this reasoning, but it's not irrational or stereotype-driven. Bombing other countries, whether justified or not, is a threat to peace. As for the notion that merely identifying the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. is somehow anti-Semitic, that dog hasn't hunted since at least 2006. One of Washington's most powerful lobbying groups, AIPAC, calls itself 'America's Pro-Israel Lobby', and all American Presidential candidates must make a pilgrimage to its annual meeting to declare their undying fealty to both it and Israel. Really, there is no other word for it. If you doubt me, read Obama's 2012 AIPAC speech here. I won't even mention Romney's speech, which is a self-parody of subservient pandering.

On a related note, why is it anti-Semitic to simply point out that 1.7 million people do, in fact live in Gaza? As for the notion that conditions there are creating future opponents, this is so obvious it hardly bears mentioning. I presume we're supposed to be outraged by the journalistic hyperbole 'end times'. Yawn. This is ar for the course in German advocacy journalism, and you'll find similar colorful exaggerations in article on tax reform.

Of course, the standard response is that Augstein is selectively criticizing Israel, without paying similar attention to the misdeeds of its enemies. This dog doesn't hunt either. Any polemic that's worth reading is going to be 'one-sided'. Further, none of the English-speaking readers of this report will have any idea whether it's actually true that Augstein only criticizes Israel, since they have no access to the other 99.999% of what Augstein has said on the Mid-East. Overall, Augstein's argument is that the extremists on both sides of the conflict, who are unfortunately in power at this point, have no interest in peace, and feed off each other.

The report cites Henryk Broder as proof of Augstein's anti-Semitism:

Respected Die Welt columnist Henryk M. Broder, who has testified as an expert in the Bundestag about German anti-Semitism, labeled Augstein a “little Streicher” adding: “Jakob Augstein is not a salon anti-Semite, he’s a pure anti-Semite…an offender by conviction who only missed the opportunity to make his career with the Gestapo because he was born after the war. He certainly would have had what it takes.”

Now that's what I call reasoned debate! I imagine Augstein will sue Broder for this comment under German law, and he'd have a pretty good case. What we have here is an unfortunate incident of cross-cultural blind spots. Broder is not to be taken seriously, he's a crank who reflexively smears mainstream German politicians as anti-Semites when he disagrees with them on Mideast policy. In 2011, for example, he declared that the leader of the Green party, a woman named Claudia Roth, would have been happy to visit the concentration camp Theresienstadt and compliment its commandant. He was sued (eventually unsuccessfully) for libel when he criticized Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, a German Jewish activist who criticizes Israeli policy, in the following terms (clumsy translation courtesy of Wikipedia): "Any carnival drunkard with two promille of booze in his blood is able even to recognize on women's carnival that Hecht Galinsky is just a hysterical, selfsupporting housewife with nothing more in mind than to promote herself. Her specialty is intellectually vapid anti-Semitic anti-Zionist phrases -- such as are currently in fashion."

Nuff said.

How Many Bullets Can Your Disney Princess Absorb?

Hammel's law: Sooner or later, every American gun massacre will give rise to commercial exploitation and unintentional self-parody. Or, in this case, both:

Amendment II is a company that makes lightweight body armor for obviously, military and police. But six months ago, in reaction to the flux of school shootings we've needlessly seen in this country, they've moved into a new area of the market—Avengers- and Disney Princess- themed backpacks for young kids and a SwissGear for teens. The innocent-looking $300 knapsacks are fitted with the company's carbon nanotubes to fend off bullets. And sales are at an all-time high. While Amendment II won't give out specifics, since the horrible tragedy in Newtown, it's basically sold three times what usually does in a month in less than a week.

And from a libertarian political commentator Megan McArdle:

I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once.

As frequent commentator Martin might say, how can you be too paranoid when you never know when THEY might strike again?