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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (626521)	8/31/2011 11:37:16 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1587524

In Germany, Sex Workers Feed a Meter By NICHOLAS KULISH nytimes.com BERLIN — The city of Bonn has begun collecting taxes from prostitutes with an automated pay station similar to a parking meter, proving again that German efficiency knows few if any bounds. Bonn is not the only city in Germany to charge such a tax, but it is the first to hit upon the idea of a ticket machine that prints out receipts for the nightly flat fee of 6 euros (currently about $8.65) for the privilege of streetwalking. The meter went into service over the weekend, and by Monday morning had collected $382 for the city’s coffers. Prostitution is legal in Germany; the Reeperbahn in Hamburg is one of the largest red-light districts in Europe. Attempts are often made to regulate the industry, unionize the workers and tax the proceeds, but they are not always effective, given both the discretion and the unpredictability that are inherent in the business. Street prostitution as practiced in Bonn, once the capital of West Germany and a town better known for sleepiness than sexiness, would be unfamiliar to many people outside Germany for its unusual degree of organization and institutionalization. The women wait for customers on a stretch of the Immenburgstrasse in a largely industrial part of the city. In addition to the Siemens-built meter machine, which cost $11,575 including installation, the city has built special wooden garages nearby where customers can park their cars and have sex. “They are called, in fairest and finest administrative High German, ‘performance areas,’ but I believe the Italian prime minister would say ‘bunga bunga,’ ” said Monika Frömbgen, a spokeswoman for the city. Still, she said, the serious issue that the meter was intended to address boils down to tax fairness. “The women in the bordellos and the sauna clubs also pay the tax, and so should those working on the streets,” Ms. Frömbgen said. The city estimates that it has 200 sex workers, of whom about 20 ply their trade on the street. The Bonn government spends $116,000 a year for a private security company to guard the area and to provide security for the sex workers. Under the new meter system, street prostitutes must purchase the tickets to work between the hours of 8:15 p.m. and 6 a.m. Leaflets explaining the system, translated into several languages, are handed out to the prostitutes. After one warning, a sex worker caught working without a ticket would be fined up to $145. Opinion was divided Wednesday on Bonn’s blocklong strip where the women cruise for customers. “The other night I worked all night but didn’t get any work, but I still had to pay it,” said a young woman from Hungary who gave her name only as Monica and said she thought the new system “stinks.” Vero, a middle-age woman who spoke Italian but no German, said the tax was “proper.” “It’s like rent, food or all the other things everybody has to pay for,” said the woman, who declined to give her last name. Franz-Reinhard Habbel, a spokesman for the German Association of Cities and Municipalities, said he expected other cities “to follow Bonn’s example.” The country’s 11,000 municipalities are struggling under a combined $11 billion in debt and are searching for new, “relatively simple” sources of income, he said. Advocates for sex workers say the tax is unfair because prostitutes in Germany already pay income taxes. But the meter itself is not an issue, said Mechthild Eickel, a spokeswoman for Germany’s Alliance of Counseling Centers for Sex Workers. “An automat is no worse than a person,” she said. Josh Ward contributed reporting from Bonn.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (626521)	9/1/2011 12:44:48 AM
From: one_less	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1587524

"You truly believe that Qatar only had one "murder" in all of 2002?" What kind of question is that? I don't 'truly believe any statistic I didn't gather on my own and even then I am apt to have some lingering doubts. Some sources have earned more credibility than others but your standard (truly believe) is hardly worthy of a discussion on statistical reporting. TWY posted a hard to believe statistic qualified by the word 'suspected.' I posted statistics supported by a credible source, which he labeled jibberish, followed by a slurry of posts from guys who's experience of Islam is primarily via Monkey Man's hate thread and the like. I am experienced in research and so I know any statistical report requires interpretation by someone who understands the circumstances and qualifications of the statistic. I have never, however, heard the term truly believe associated with a statistical report ... until now. LnS made a good point that Qatar doesn't consider murders in the same context we do. It was Nation Master not Qatar establishing the basis for their statistic, so I don't know what their criteria was,. They may have just lifted the number from a report supplied by the country which would make it weak but probably not way off. I doubt they are so lazy as to just take anyone's word for it but I don't know that for sure. This doesn't change the gist of my position. Underlying conditions are the best determiners of crime statistics. This is an easy to understand concept by us all since we can easily recognize pockets in our own country where crime statistics are effected by underlying living conditions. We prefer to move to relatively crime free neighborhoods and when we do we usually find ourselves surrounded by economically successful families who are well educated and affluent vs the crime zones which have a high population of poor people, who are unstable in lifestyle and as a group have high drop out rates from school. Qatar's statistics may not be 100% valid by our standards but I have no way of knowing that personally. It is fairly well know that it is a relatively crime free region of extreme wealth and affluence. Compare that to regions in the world where poverty and desperation to survive from one day to the next, and in which crime statistics are through the roof, regions where slavery is still employed and survival may involve stepping over dead bodies. Some of our thread members would prefer to raise Islam as the primary underlying condition. Do you truly believe that Ten? What I believe is they are serving political agendas more than they are considering common decency and their genuine conscience. I chose statistics from Qatar because those statistics help to demonstrate that point. They/you may chose to dismiss that position for their/your own purposes but not without facing some facts in the process. I live in America and move through the general population with relative ease, I also move through Muslim communities without causing a stir. I can tell you, there is all kind of crime in every community and animus is the norm rather than the exception between groups and individuals. Decent folk, if there are any left, manage to rise above all that for the sake of goodness. In America, crime in most Muslim communities pales in comparison with the general population. Of course, some immigrants find it difficult to assimilate, largely because they are holding on to their own cultural norms but especially since it is obvious they represent the new N-word. Second and third generations are like most other waves of immigrants have been. They are productive and hardly noticeable in one's day to day affairs, especially since few of them wear the distinctive cloths styles of their ancestral home land, and no funny accents. If you were to do a study on the history of immigration to America you would probably see many parallels with what we are experiencing in this time. Most people are fully aware of this. When I attempt to point it out on this thread I am met with attempts to discount or dismissal. Why do you s'pose that is... you know why, we all do.