I am very disappointed with the German law. Increasingly, it is only to the service of rich people. If someone sues you, even if you are right it will cost you money. An efficient way to hurt a fellow citizen. The only people that benefit are the lawyers and they do not particularly care wether you win or not - they get paid handsomly either way.

If that is not enough to make you cry out loud, wait until you get in the way of the interest of a big institution like a corporation: Most often it is easier for them to sue you out of their way instead of talking things through and coming to an agreement.

This calls for civil disobidience. I wonder what it would take to bring a change in this about?

This is so discouraging. When you do something, anything really, you are set to be in violation of someone elses interests. So, the only course of action that keeps you safe is not to do or say anything in public. But even then people can cause substantial damage to your financial health by simply putting some claims before a court.

And if you go before a court, the issue wether you are right or wrong is beside the point because a judge can never be sure whose claims are right and whose are wrong. Depressing. - Discuss

In Germany we have National Broadcast agencies financed by monthly fees collected from everyone who owns a radio or a TV. From 2005 there will be a fee also for Computers. In addition, every institution or household will only pay a flat fee as opposed to now where we have to pay for every device in use. This means that my company with 6 computers pays the same as Siemens with 25000 computers. Quite ludicrous. The primary focus of those institutions now is public TV. They claim higher grounds based on their mission to provide the German public with high quality TV program. But they often simply copy the private channels, for example with a quiz show where they waste millions of the fees in prize money. ARD is spending close to $150 Million on their website and take this as an argument for including the PCs in the fees. I think they should close their sites and save the money. They provide no extra value. - Discuss

On the Rules for Revolutionaries list there is a discussion on journalistic and academic integrity. The question is wether people are allowed to voice controversial views and back them up with questionable facts. To which I say: every "fact" communicated now is questionable. For example, I noticed that when Bush announced the beginning of the action against Afghanistan, he said that in addition to US and British forces there are German forces operating in the region. The German TV voiceover translation did not mention the German troops, however. Now the big question is: Who made a mistake and why? Was there someone making an honest mistake or did they deliberately lie in order to manipulate? I say, it doesn´t matter, the outcome is the same. Others argument, that there is a great difference between being wrong on purpose and being wrong by mistake. From my position it doesn´t matter: the information is wrong, I do not know who made a mistake and to what end it was made. - Discuss