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Wednesday, August 2. 2006

American Bloggers in Berlin

Posted by Joerg Wolf in German Politics, Transatlantic Relations on Wednesday, August 2. 2006

• Michael Scott Moore is a Fulbright journalist starting in September and blogs at Radio Free Mike. His most recent post is about President Bush's unsolicited massage of Chancellor Merkel.

• Christy Leonardo blogs at Anglofritz "serving you the transcontinental Zeitgeist." Recently Christy wrote about US ads featuring Germans. USA Today has learned that "A spate of recent ads featuring Germans is putting a humorous spin on a culture not generally known for being lighthearted" and that "Humor rules in several German ads with oompah."
 
• Clarsonimus is an "amnesic American lost in Berlin," who writes about "the natives" in Observing Hermann. Recently he wrote about the deal hunters chasing Wal-Mart out of town.
 
• Scot W. Stevenson writes the only American Expat blog in German that I know of. In USA Erklaert, he explains how the USA works. Recently he explained how a law is passed, what real popcorn is, what the origin and meaning of wingnuts and moonbats is and discusses the different doorknobs in the US and Germany.
 
• Chirol is one of three editors of Coming Anarchy, an excellent blog about world affairs with some great graphics. Germany is not their main focus, but here are a few posts about Germany: The Magical Merkel Tour, Merkel on Iran, and Germany’s Past Military Deployments.
 
• The Exberliner is not a Blog, but a popular Expat magazine in Berlin.

•  Besides, there is Berlin Blogs, a blog aggregator featuring additional German-language Blogs and English-language Blogs by Berliners from all over the world.

Beyond Berlin:
With 211,000 American expats, Germany is the fourth most popular country for Americans (excluding military personnel). There are just 13,000 more Americans in the United Kingdom than in Germany. The top two countries are the U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico. I learned this from Republicans Abroad Germany. This volunteer organisation is dedicated to
conducting non-partisan voter registration for U.S. citizens residing in Germany, including assistance with absentee ballots for U.S. federal elections; voter outreach including providing information about Republican policies and candidates; promoting the principles of the U.S. Republican Party through hosting events, fundraising and public outreach; representing U.S. citizens living in Germany in the political process in the United States; and strengthening German-American relations through intercultural exchange and dialogue, including working closely with German organizations and media outlets.
•  Republicans Abroad Germany has started to recommend interesting articles as many bloggers do. Therefore they are included in his list of bloggers. Their rationale is:
The articles are not selected to reflect the views of RA Germany or its members, but to add to an environment of real intellectual diversity by amplifying Conservative perspectives. In the real world policy is about difficult choices and trade-offs. Transatlantic relations would be well-served by less simplification of the challenges before us and more serious discussion of the actual dilemmas we face.
The Democrats Abroad Germany do not provide much information online.

•  Another interesting non-Berlin based American expat blog is J Bittner's Germany Doesn't Suck or Does It? He is organizing the Second Whiney Expat Bloggers in Germany Meet Up.

Obviously there are many more great expat bloggers. Please feel free to recommend one in the comments section, incl. your own blog, if you like.
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"American Bloggers in Berlin"
Sounds like a good werewolf movie but this is more interesting and arguably just as gothic. Expat American bloggers now roaming Germany are highlighted in a recent post in Atlantic Review, the "digest on transatlantic affairs" edited by three German... Comments ()
Weblog: What About Clients?
Tracked: Aug 10, 06:37

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J - #1 - 2006-08-02 16:12 - (Reply)

Cheers for the mention and link. Any and all expat bloggers are welcome to come.

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Martin - #2 - 2006-08-03 00:38 - (Reply)

The Republicans have nice goals, but don't meet them.

"Environment of real intellectual diversity" and "less simplification" and "more serious discussion of the actual dilemmas we face" sound beautiful! They really do.

Yet, their press secretary wrote this article about German criticism of Guantanamo:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=032206A

He claims:
"Germany's most renowned media commentator on the Arab world, Peter Scholl-Latour"

That would be Volker Perthes. He is much more respected and more often interviewed and quoted than Scholl-Latour. There are many others who are more renowned than Scholl-Latour. Everybody in Germany who knows something about the Arab world also knows that Scholl-Latour is not an expert.

"There are many channels for broadcasting European anti-Americanism across the Middle East, from Muslim extremists residing in Europe, to the exchange of journalists who never leave the Green Zone in Baghdad, to the daily transmission of the BBC."

These damn journalists are bloody cowards and lazy as hell for not getting out of the Green Zone. Oohh, wait a second. The Voice of America does not have anyone in Iraq either. This was mentioned sometime here in the Atlantic Review or another blog.
Perhaps its too dangerous in Iraq to broadcast all the good news concerning the magnificient progress and the amazingly improved security situation...

"Supporting the war on terror may not mean supporting Guantanamo, but it does mean U.S. allies drop incendiary public accusations that the United States is indisputably in violation of international law. European officials and governments need to be reminded that friends do not participate in public defamation of an ally and when they do we take careful notice."

Is the US Supreme Court also guilty of "incendiary public accusations" and "public defamation"?
I am just asking.

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Marian Wirth - #3 - 2006-08-03 11:13 - (Reply)

Berlin:

[url=http://raskal.typepad.com/raskal_trippin/]raskal trippin - hopscotch adventures of an exiled new yorker in berlin[/url] ("exiled black girl/peripatetic/generally chilled out")

Beyond Berlin:

[url=http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/german_joys/]German Joys[/url]

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Bill - #4 - 2006-08-03 13:35 - (Reply)

I write and publish my stuff from Germany but I rarely cover topics on German-American relations (unless my pal Jörg Wolf at the Atlantic Review really begs me to). Your readers are welcome to visit my blog "Jewels in the Jungle" and the Mother Ship over at Global Voices Online.

211,000 ex-pat Americans in Germany!? That doesn't sound right. Are the Republicans Abroad cooking the books again? Does this number include the last 12 American POW's over here?

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JW-Atlantic Review - #4.1 - 2006-08-03 19:01 - (Reply)

The numbers are supposed to be from the State Department.

The website USAbroad.org by US Fulbright Alumnus Bob Neer uses the same State Department numbers:

Private U.S. Citizens Residing Abroad (Estimated) in Top 15 Countries by American Population, July 1999
1. Mexico 1,036,300
2. Canada 687,700
3. United Kingdom 224,000
4. Germany 210,880
5. Italy 168,967
6. Philippines 105,000
7. Australia 102,800
8. France 101,750
9. Spain 94,513
10. Israel 94,195

However, he shares your skepticism. Here's a long quote since I am not sure if the dynamic links from his website work: "The State Department has also tried to count the overseas population, preparing estimates on a country-by-country basis of thenumber of Americans resident abroad. These figures are deeply flawed, however, because they are based on the number of Americans who voluntarily register at a consulate or embassy, and most citizens havelittle incentive to do so, especially in advanced industrial countries.Due to the unscientific nature of the State Department procedures,estimates of the number of civilians overseas have varied wildly,jumping from 2.2 million in 1989 to 6.3 million in 1992, and then downto 2.6 million in 1993 (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1989; 1992; 1993). In1999, the State Department released figures indicating that 3.8 million Americans were living abroad (see Table 2 for a partial breakdown bycountry) (U.S. Department of State 2001).

Perhaps a better measure of the size and growth of the long-termoverseas population could be found in a different State Department indicator: the number of passports issued to citizens already locatedabroad. Remarkably, this figure has nearly doubled in the last decade,from 3.6 million to more than seven million (Nadeau 2003)."
[url]http://www.usabroad.org/showDiary.do;jsessionid=C7B5821CD84B5F350E629B39BB8F6F41?diaryId=253[/url]

That suggests that there are even more Americans in the advanced industrial countries like Germany...

An interesting discussion is also in the comments section of [url]http://crookedtimber.org/2004/02/10/americans-in-europe[/url]

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Consul-at-Arms - #5 - 2006-08-03 22:45 - (Reply)

Good information. I've linked to you here: [url]http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2006/08/re-fancy-that.html[/url]

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joe - #6 - 2006-08-04 15:00 - (Reply)

What all of the figures from DeptState don't report are how many of these Americans have dual citizenship.

I tend to believe a large number of those reported for most nations listed do.

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Consul-At-Arms - #6.1 - 2006-08-04 16:58 - (Reply)

It's possible that State doesn't have those numbers to crunch. It's not something I've ever gathered information on, nor is it part, IIRC, of the passport application itself.

The U.S. only recognizes American citizenship in its citizens.

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Martin - #7 - 2006-08-24 19:09 - (Reply)

Don't forget:

[url=http://www.americanvoicesabroad.net/cgi-bin/berlin.pl?button=view&pagetype=1067794047]American Voices Abroad - Berlin was founded in February 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War, and later formally organized as a non-profit association. We have continued to oppose the occupation of Iraq and the doctrine of preventive war, as well as the repressive policies of the Bush administration, as embodied in the Patriot Act. After mobilizing thousands of Americans abroad to participate in the 2004 elections, we have now expanded our activities to include support for American servicemen and women who oppose the war.[/url]

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Martin - #8 - 2006-08-24 19:15 - (Reply)

And:
[url=http://www.demsinberlin.de]Democrats Abroad Berlin[/url]

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