2011/12/07

Salami slicing doesn't seem to work in Germany any more

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The political reactions to the revelations about a small gang of murderous Neonazis* were as predictable as often times cynical.

It took only few days till the old gang of closet pro-police state folks resurfaced with their stereotypical call for more surveillance, more data collection, more law enforcement and intelligence powers.

The hip shot political proposals of the federal ministry of the interior mirrored this, but were apparently stopped cold by our liberal (anglophones read: "libertarian") minister of justice Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.
This woman is really the only excuse of their party for being in the gubernative.

As usual, the pro-police state folks forgot to make a connection between their claims and real-world effects of their proposals. Too many of our domestic security laws never proved more than marginal effectiveness, and to propose even more of that kind was disingenuous.
The ministers of the interior and the so-called 'law and order' faction should rather pay attention to fight against bullshit in law enforcement. There's too much politics involved in police leadership. The highest of the three police career tracks is most often being dominated by party affiliations, not by meritocracy or -even better- a proper personnel selection based on potential for the job.

On top of that, I'm still waiting for news about people getting demoted for failing in the affair.


The good news is that the salami slice tactic of adding one police state element after another appears to have come to a halt. Maybe sometime in the near future we'll even have a minister of the interior who's got the ethics, humility and self-discipline to not jump on the pro-police state bandwagon on his first opportunity?


S Ortmann


*: They don't really fit the description of "terrorists", since they did not do any actual propaganda. They were rather a murder-robber gang living in the underground and enjoying an incredible series of law enforcement failures.
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2 comments:

  1. A frog placed in boiling water will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. True or not of frogs it shows the point.

    Constitutional monarchy with a king that has the power to check the politicians. The king wouldn't have legislative power (certain reserve powers for a crises though). The lack of legislative power for the king would be a check on him. The legislature would handle day to day bills. The King could call referendums on some more important issues. The king would have judicial power and share executive power with the premier. The premier would oversee the legislature and the king would oversee things like trials of politicians accused of crimes.

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  2. If would be terrorists knew for a fact that they would be caught 100% of the time, would they still do it? Of course, such a question is entirely hypothetical, as no such perfect law enforcement can exist without infringing on too many civil libertys to be justified. Rather than clogging the internet with cyber police (or airports with TSA) waiting to militantly bag citizens authorising their right to free speech -I.E, terrorism- and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to do this, I suggest we abolish the patriot act and homeland security, and let the legitimate law enforcement agencys do their jobs.

    BTW, sven, I have begun hearing excellant arguments for a reorganisation -more like a simplification, in practice- of the infantry sqauds combat role. They would no longer conduct both fire and maunever at the same time. Though this would make them more vulnerable in sqaud vs sqaud actions, once such changes are translated up to the platoon level, the payoff would be tremendous. The 1946 infantry conferance at fort benning, georgia, concluded that breaking the sqaud up into two differant fire teams made them too difficult for the sqaud leader (even with the aid of an assistant leader) to excercise effective command and control over them. That realisation leaves 3 options:
    -Reduce the sqaud size, making them easier to control, but less able to absorb atttition.
    -Maintain the current sqaud size, and accept all the limitations that this brought on. Or
    -Limit the role of the infantry sqaud so that they either conduct fire or maneuver, but not both simultaneously. This would eliminate the fire team organisation.

    This is explained further in the monograph: The infantry sqaud, size is not the only problem. What do you think?

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