just curious
First surveys conducted in front of the polling booths estimates 45% for the CDU. Livestream (in German) here.
estimated results at 6:14 p.m. :
CDU 44,5% +7,5%
SPD 38,0% -4,8%
Green 6,0% -1,1%
FPD 6,0% -3,8%
other 5,5%
The universities are going to miss the government’s financial support – the students are going to pay tuition fees to make up for the public funds.
NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia), Germany’s most populated state with its 18 million citizens is going to the ballots today. The election is – almost – exiting – since the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) ruled for 39 years with the CDU (Christian Democracic Union of Germany) in the opposition. Since 2002, the federal government is lead by Peer Steinbrück (SPD) who formed a coalition with the Green Party (Alliance ’90/The Greens). The Green’s website features a Star Wars-related campaign video, the SDP is fighting to the end as well. Balloting is over at 6 p.m., then you can watch the results coming in here, it’s one of the offical sources provided by the government.
Last election, May 2000, 13 million people were allowed to vote, but the turnout was only 56,7%, with only 7,336,411 valid votes. In 2000, the SPD got 42,8%, but right now, Infratest Dimap sees them at about 37%, CDU 43%, Green and FDP (Free Democratic Party 7,5%. Two days ago, SDP was at around 29% and the CDU at 45%. High unemployment rates – in some areas of NRW as high as 30% – unpopular national politics by the SPD and reforms as Hartz IV drove 800,000 SPD members away. They and the undecided are the ones who count most this time. Thus is looks pretty good for the CDU (and FDP).
On the other hand, Mr Steinbrück is more popular than Jürgen Rüttgers, but half of the people asked in a survey last week want a change of government. Another problem for Mr Rüttgers are excess mandates: If he doesn’t win in his constituency, as it happened five years ago, and the CDU wins too many direct mandates, he won’t be able to move into parliament. Unfortunately, this is a precondition to be elected for state prime minister. It’s a minor obstacle though, another delegate can step down for Mr Rüttgers in case he doesn’t make it. After the U.S. election, debates in television became popular, Mr Steinbrück and Mr Rüttgers met twice during the campaign with both times Mr Steinbrück narrowing the margin to his opponent.
The election is a test and thus important for the upcoming national election next year, too. Chancellor Schröder will be under heavy fire in case NRW is lost to the CDU, after all, it’s the last SDP-Green Party coalition in Germany – and FDP’s Politicians already asked for advanced elections. The result of the election won’t have any impact on the Federal Council of Germany though – even if Schröder’s SDP looses this state, the opposition wouldn’t achieve a majority of 2/3 of the vote in the chamber.
Once a year, the Japanese community in Düsseldorf organizes a second hand market between main station and the VHS (a public adult education institute) in early May. This time, it was smaller than in the years before. We got a Doraemon puzzle for a friend. If you’re living in the area and want to buy all kinds of stuff cheap, take a look at Duesselnet. You’ll need somebody who translates Japanese for you, though. Over 5,000 Japanese live in Düsseldorf, in Europe, it’s the biggest Japanese community. The Sarariman are sent here to work for four or five years, and usually they come with their families. When their time has come, they sell their belongings before returning home to Japan, and lots of it is on Duesselnet‘s black board or the one in the Japanese club at Marienstrasse.
My family doesn’t really know what my (south-korean) wife and me eat. My brother is married to a German, my mother is with an American, my father is married with a Croatian – diversity whereever you look, even on our dishes. My wife’s family in Korea is curious, too, so I’ll post food every now and then. Today we had spring rolls, whic are not very difficult to cook, but I need more practice with the rolling – I did the ugly roll in the back.
Where is the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? Since 9/11, the United States have been beating the big drum on the international level to fight terrorism. Now a terrorist – or freedom fighter, depending on your political view, policy and definition – who has been trained by the U.S. Army and was on the run for about 30 years, has been apprehended by the U.S. Homeland Security. Venezuela and Cuba requested his extradition and it is the U.S. government’s turn to act. Right now, Carriles is only charged with immigration-related crimes. If the government doesn’t measure up to its own words (“If you harbour terrorists, you are terrorists”), its credibility will suffer another hard blow. The San Francisco Chronicle suggested several solutions, the best one in my opinion was to hand him over to the International Criminal Court.
In the following months, I would like to introduce you to a few interesting people. Some of them I had the pleasure to meet in person, and a few others, although not very high-profile, deserve their five minutes of publicity.
I’d like to start with Mr Joseph Chamie, speaker at New York Model United Nation Simulation 2004 in the general assembly third, the body in which I’ve had the pleasure to participate. Our group represented Luxembourg – note the “Non-Violence” (a.k.a. “The Knotted Gun”) by Fredrik Reuterswärd, a gift from the Government of Luxembourg to the United Nations. The job I’m going to apply for is related to demography, so during the preparations for my portifolio I came across a U.N. webcast aired on November 30th 2004. If you use Real Player (bloated software, try Real Alternative), you can watch the video here or read the transcript here. To be honest, if you want to get an impression of an interesting Demographer, watch the video, the 28 minutes are well invested, I promise.
In the general assembly, Mr Chamie started with a little demonstration of how the world’s population changed over the last 50 years. After explaining the three pillars of demography, birth rate, death rate and migration, Mr Chamie said the second half of the 20th century was the most extraordinary in human history. Exemplifying why, he first outlined the world he was born into in 1944. Then he asked all delegates in the room who had highschool education to stand up. There were over two hundred delegates in the room, all of us standing up. We looked at each other, then he asked all delegates who don’t have a university degree to sit down. Again another impression, then everyone who lived in the city had to stand up, after that everyone who was born in the countryside. There was only a handful of delegates. Then the married delegates were asked (I stood up again), then the female delegates with one child – both times, there were only a few people. Mr Chamie asked who had more than two children, then three – only one delegate, coming from Africa if I remember correctly, was standing. This demonstration was the basis for his inspiring speech. The collection of 20th century records were:
From the video, a few statements:
CHAMIE: Well population change is very simple. There are only three ingredients: mortality, fertility and migration. And…ah…for most countries, migration is relatively secondary for most countries. So it’s fertility and mortality. With low mortality the real engine is fertility and that’s what accounts for these differences. And they’re very…
JENKINS: Fewer women having fewer babies? That’s the bottom line is it?.
CHAMIE: Exactly. Lower birth rates, the lower replacement explains why we would be going three hundred years back to two point three billion.[...]
CHAMIE: They’re many reasons bringing down fertility. One, of course, is mortality rates have come down; that’s a pre-condition – you have to have mortality rates coming down. Second, people are moving to cities, life is changing, children are not as needed as they were on farms and agricultural work. Third, women are becoming educated – once they become educated, they join the labor force – they are delaying marriage, they’re delaying their first birth. Tastes have changed. Now all those ingredients put together – and effective contraception to boot – means that people are choosing smaller families because that’s what they want – and we’re seeing this globally.
[...]
CHAMIE: Well, our projection indicates that India will add another half billion people – five hundred million people – over the next fifty years.
JENKINS: That’s a large growth…
CHAMIE: Pakistan over the next fifty years – despite the fact that Pakistan now is a hundred and fifty-five million and China is one point three billion – over the next fifty years Pakistan will add more people than China. O.K.? Pakistan will move up the list and become the…our projections indicate the fourth largest country in the world[...]
CHAMIE: By mid century the population of Iran will overtake Russia’s. The population of Palestinians would be larger than the Israelis, the population of the Moroccans would be larger than the Spaniards. The population of the Philippines would be bigger than Japan.
[...]
JENKINS: There are countries I believe, like Italy and South Korea that are already trying to encourage women to have more babies as a way of addressing this problem. Am I right, and if so, have they had any success?
CHAMIE: They’ve had pro-natalist policies and trying to raise it, but so far, they have not been able to raise it back to replacement and most demographers do not believe that they will be able to get it back to replacement in the near future. And the reason why is that people choose according to their own interests and most women are saying, I will have one, possibly two but we are not going to three, four and five simply because we don’t have the time, we are working and we need more help if we’re going to have this and there’s no help coming.
I read estimations a few months back that Germany would need three million immigrants each year to stop the population aging. No politician will be able to explain such an influx. I’ll probably be alive in the next 50 years – I’m curious how nations will deal with Mr Chamie’s prognosis.
Blogging will be a little bit light until Friday, since an unexpected opportunity came up – I’m applying for a job that could feed my family and allow me to write my doctoral thesis at the same time. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
Draxblog reported in detail about the outcome of the election in Croatia, here, here, here , here, here and here (wow). All in all, the HDZ lost much influence throughout the country, with barely more than a third of the people going to the ballots at all. In Knin, the turnout resulted in a day of revelation for Sanaders HDZ. The Serbian minority, represented by the SDSS, won 8 out of 17 seats, but instead of forming a coalition with them, Sanader’s HDZ chose right wing parties, which in the end might disrupt Croatia’s path into the European Union. The issue with General Gotovina, low public participation in politics, anti-EU right-wing parties gaining ground… difficult times for Croatia indeed.
“Who are our friends?” asks Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff in his article about German foreign policy. The author puts Chancellor Schröder’s and President Bush’s policy on peace and freedom into an interesting perspective and gives a good explanation about the cultural and historical roots of its difference, going back to the American Revolution and the beginning of the nation state in Europe. The author fails to draw a clear line between twiddling one’s thumbs and unobtrusiveness, since diplomacy is often low-key and pressure on another government can be open or concealed. A point I agree to is that hypocrisy, in respect to foreign policy, living up to expectations, promises and own ideas, is not monopolized at all.
Two years ago, the campaigns for the upcoming election in Croatia were late, if at all existent. Since the exact date for the election was announced only one and a half months in advance, some parties started campaining hesitatingly and some didn’t do anything at all, it was quite bizarre. The parties don’t seem to have changed their modus operandi as Dragan Antulov reports in his Draxblog. The democracy fatigue was worse than in Germany two years ago, unfortunately, there’s still a lack of interest in politics.
One of Germany’s best newspapers, “Die Zeit” appearently started blogging about different topics, you can take a look their blogindex here. I accidently stumbled over Elternzeit, a blog by Matthias Braun about children, getting children, becoming parents and all that. It’s fairly new, too, the first entry was posted in early March.
Here’s a great list with tips for every aspiring weblogger. The most important ones imho are “Frequency, good writing, and personality”. Oh-oh. Also, there’s a warning that people lost jobs, friends and even spouses because of their blogs. As usual, there’s quite a lot on the net about it.
The daughter of Richard Feynman, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, published her father’s letters. From the introduction:
When I was very young, I thought my father knew everything. Indeed, Omni magazine once declared him “The smartest man in the world”. Upon hearing this, his mother exclaimed,”If Richard is the smartest man in the world, God help the world!” My father was the first one to laugh.
Here’s how he experienced the first atomic explosion:
I was blinded by a terrific silver-white flash — I had to look away. Wherever I looked an enormous purple splotch appeared: it was just as bright when I closed my eyes. “That,” said my scientific brain to my befuddled one, “is an after-image caused by looking at a bright light — it is not the bomb you are looking at.” So I turned back to look at the bomb.The sky was lit up with a bright yellow light — the earth appeared white. The yellow gradually became darker, turning gradually to orange. In the sky I saw white clouds from above the gadget caused by the sudden expansion following the blast wave — the expansion cools the air and fog clouds form — we had expected this. The orange got deeper, but where the gadget was, it was still bright, a bright orange, flaming ball-like mass. This started to rise, leaving a column of smoke behind, below looking much like the stem of a mushroom. The orange mass continued to rise, the orange to fade and flicker. A great ball of smoke and flame three miles across it was, like a great oil fire billowing and churning, now black smoke, now orange flame. Soon the orange died out and only churning smoke, but this was enveloped in a wonderful purple glow.
Another after-image I thought, but on closing my eyes it did disappear, and appeared on opening them again. Others said they saw it too, probably caused by ionised air produced in the great heat. Gradually this disappeared, the ball of smoke rising majestically slowly upward, leaving a trail of dust and smoke.
Then suddenly there was a sharp loud crack followed by resounding thunder. “What was that?” cried the man at my left, a war department representative. “That is the thing,” I yelled back.
The – unfortunately – neverending story goes on: Pyongyang claims again the have or are close to achieve nuclear weapons capabilities and puts its neighborhood on the edge. This time the threat was more precise, news from North Korea’s capital arrived that they removed fuel rods from its nuclear power plant. The only (peaceful) way to convince Pyongyang to let go is a concentrated effort by all parties in the six-party talks. The opposite, threats to take down the North Korean government could easily result in a burning Korean penninsula.