The parasitism of German media

Politicians and the media are rarely ever a good combination when it comes to the result of their “working together”. Still, combined they form a symbiosis where the media and press take over the role of a parasite. Since the media needs a host, in this scenario being the politicians, they cause both support and damage to the politicians. Normally, it is the latter.

And not surprisingly, this is once again the case in good ol’ Germany. This time I feel like everyone has been brainwashed by the media. Like they control the very words coming out of society’s foul, stupid, narrow-minded mouth. Now in natural science brainwashing is an extremely interesting phenomenon and the Emerald Jewel Wasp does it so well. I could watch this video over and over and over again:

But let’s get back to the topic I am actually referring to. One gets the feeling that the media has targeted one party in particular over the last couple of months: the Free Democratic Party (FDP). This party has been suffering from internal quarrels over the last year, with the climax having been reached when parliament had to be dissolved in the state of Saarland just over a year ago, because governance could not be carried out anymore. More recently though, the chairman of the FDP parliamentary faction, Rainer Brüderle, became a personal target for the press. More specifically, he became the victim of an apparent political smear campaign, as a young female journalist made allegations against him on sexism grounds due to a late night interview she did with him at a Hotel bar a year ago. Allegedly, Brüderle was flirting quite heavily with the young journalist and made comments on her chest measurement, stating that she would “fit in a Dirndl very well”. This has caused a huge sexism debate in Germany, which I actually consider justifiable. But the fact that this young female journalist did not care to report on the incident just after it occurred, but rather waited until Brüderle was nominated as leading candidate for the Bundestag elections in September this year, one cannot help to notice that the timing cries out for a smear campaign.

Just around the time the Rainer Brüderle debate moved into the background again, another FDP politician had to be selected for the media to feed on. This time, it has hit Jörg-Uwe Hahn, the vice prime minister of Hesse, who allegedly made a racist comment on his superior, Philipp Rösler, who is the chairman of the FDP and Vice Chancellor of Germany. He is of Vietnamese descent and has been criticized on his job continuously both within his party and outside.

In an interview, Hahn made the statement: “On Philipp Rösler however, I would like to know whether our society is ready yet to further accept an Asian-looking Vice Chancellor.”

While I admit that this statement can be misinterpreted under false circumstances, Rösler himself said that he does not understand what the fuss is all about and that Hahn is a colleague and friend of his and that he did not interpret it as a racist comment. But apparently this is not enough. If the media says he is a racist, then by God’s grace he must be a racist.

In my eyes, Hahn criticizes society for not being open enough when it comes to racial heritage of politicians. And I think he is spot on. Quite a few people have gotten the impression that criticism of Phillip Rösler is proportionally high compared to other politicians. Of course, one cannot ignore the fact that there is a staggering number of problems the party has to deal with, but I think Rösler’s Asian roots might be perceived negatively, even if this occurs involuntarily in the subconscious.

The chairman of the Young Liberals (JuLi), Lasse Becker, made this quite clear when he said that people come to the election campaign booth in the pedestrian area and say “I would vote for your party, but the Chinese guy would have to go first”.

Now when I read the comments of users on the Internet on this topic, I can’t help but think that society is becoming more stupid by the day. For me, the term “racism” is abused so much nowadays, that many people do not know the difference between a statement on racial heritage and actual racism anymore. If you want to know what racism really is, I can only recommend you ask someone in South Africa or Namibia, where Apartheid is still a topic today. Unfortunately though, the media is part of this society and stupidity does not get excluded when the word journalism is used. At least the Emerald Jewel Wasp knows what it’s doing.

Can you imagine your world of music without YouTube?

Well, can you? Did you watch Gangam Style on the infamous video platform when it just became popular? Do you look for music videos of your favorite artists and songs or try to find songs that you caught the melody of at last night’s party? If you do some of these things, you probably don’t live in Germany…

Because around here, almost all music videos or videos just containing copyrighted music are blocked on YouTube. What sounds like internet censorship in China and other non-western parts of the world is actually the sad everyday life of people in Germany. So why is that?

The Süddeutsche Zeitung released an article with some statistics at the end of January. It turns out that of the top 1000 videos on YouTube, most of them being popular music videos, 61.5% are not watchable within Germany. If you click on one of these videos, you’ll see a message like this:

So, in a nation where freedom is spelled with a capital “f”, music videos are not accessible on the world’s largest video collection platform. Even if the artist himself has uploaded the video, chances are it cannot be watched in Germany. In comparison, of the top 1000 most popular videos on YouTube, 15.3% cannot be accessed in South Sudan, 5.1% in the State of Vatican and 4,4% in Afghanistan.

To put it into a few words: it’s a disgrace. A hypocrisy for a nation that criticizes countries like Ukraine, Russia and China for not being as democratic, lets its people access less music videos than the freshly established, third-world and islamic nation of South Sudan. And it’s not even close.

The reason behind this is that YouTube itself blocks these videos for German viewers. It does so in order to protect itself from copyright infringement claims by GEMA – the Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights (Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte), the private but state-authorized copyright society in Germany.

Now people outside of Germany might ask why this is a problem, since many other western nations also have similar institutions. Well, Google, the parent company of YouTube, managed to settle on a deal with each on the amount of money the respective copyright society receives for each video clicked. Unfortunately, this is where the notorious German stinginess dominates again – because GEMA demands a resounding 0,00375 Euros (or 0,375 cents) per view. That is more than three times as much as the copyright society in Britain receives from Google. So in the end, GEMA is the reason for Germans not being able to watch videos that contain any sort of copyrighted music. Google/YouTube tried to solve this problem by asking GEMA for a list of artists and titles which they represent the copyrights of, but GEMA denied the request, saying that it would not make sense to send Google such a list, since it is Google itself that blocks the videos.

GEMA has since become an organization which the majority of people in Germany love to hate, especially young people who enjoy keeping up in the music world. The Germafrican contacted GEMA and asked why they insist on demanding such an outrageously high amount. I received the following answer:

“…in other countries, YouTube put pressure on the copyright societies. Higher sums have also been demanded there. We believe that our demands are not too high, but fair and adequate for our members.“

In the end, it comes down to how greedy GEMA is and whether it could settle for less money. Considering that the board members receive an annual salary of nearly 500.000 Euros, one might think they are in a position where negotiation with lower sums should be possible.

GEMA is obviously not aware of any social responsibility. Music is one of the most important parts of culture and in our modern times, where technology enables us to share pretty much anything, it is a real shame that a country like Germany is so far behind when it comes to simply listening to some music on YouTube, which normally is taken for granted in pretty much every other nation on our planet…

Germany’s ex-First Lady cleaning up

Wulff. A name not that uncommon in German-speaking parts of the world.  It is only one of the different variants we have. Some others include Wulf, Wolff and Wolf. Although the exact meaning is unclear today, it established itself as a reference to the legendary canid. If you would ask people on the street to describe the behaviour of a wolf, quite a few different terms would come up. Personally, I would describe a wolf as a very beautiful animal, powerful, fierce, cunning. Who knows, some attributes might also be applicable for people carrying the name.

Germany’s former president, Christian Wulff, who resigned in February, after the department of public prosecution of Hanover filed for the abrogation of Wulff’s legal immunity as president of the Federal Republic of Germany in order to be able to begin with investigations of corruption, at least managed to get German linguists to get creative. As a result of his more or less legal intrigues, a new verb came up: “wulffen” – which means to babble onto someone’s answering machine, as Wulff did with editor-in-chief of Bild, Kai Diekmann.

Since Wulff stepped down as president, another big discussion started because of the “Ehrensold” – the gratuity sum Germany’s former presidents receive after their services for their country have ended. Of course, in Wulff’s case “services” get a whole new meaning. Germans got furious after they found out that Wulff was to receive 199.000 € per year of tax payers money. Immediately, debates arose on whether such a scandalous and rather fruitless period of presidency was worthy of receiving such a large sum of money for the rest of his life. And for quite a long time too, since Wulff was Germany’s youngest president in history, at age 53.

I have to admit that I also do not agree with the Ehrensold for Christian Wulff. I do not want to play down the work Wulff has done in his time as president and I think it is difficult for third parties to rate Wulff’s efforts. But this large sum of money seems a bit too much, considering that he was only president for about two years. Furthermore, his predecessor Horst Köhler, who stepped down as president due to controversial statements on foreign deployments of the German Bundeswehr, turned down his Ehrensold, even though he was in office much longer than Wulff, having been president of Germany from 2004 – 2010.

Since it was the media who started to uncover the alleged scandals surrounding Wulff, claims have also been made about his wife, ex-First Lady Bettina Wulff, who allegedly has worked in the sexual services industry in her younger years, before she met her husband.

Apparently, she googled herself and was rather unpleased with the results and keywords that popped up. On Friday, she filed an action against Google and also against famous German TV host, Günther Jauch, who had quoted from an article in the “Berliner Zeitung”. According to local newspapers, she pursues a declaration of discontinuance from Jauch about mentioning the topic.

Let’s think about this for a second. I can understand that Mrs. Wulff dislikes connections of her being brought into connection with prostitution from an ethical point of view. And the media making statements without actual facts is also a never ending story. But to order a TV host from keeping his mouth shut and not being allowed to quote what or whom he wants is unacceptable in a nation that so proudly speaks of freedom of press/speech/opinion. In the meantime however, Günther Jauch agreed to the request within a few hours of these legal steps.

Another point that makes you think is the fact that you are allowed to say: “I think/heard that John Doe worked as a toilet cleaner from 2000 to 2001.” Now I am not a lawyer, but in my opinion I only made a statement about a profession I think a certain person had performed in a certain period of time, irrespective of the ethical point of view of the profession. Since prostitution is legal in Germany and employees of the sexual service industry also have to pay taxes and also get statutory health insurance, I really do consider seeing Mrs. Wulff succeed with legal cases for reputational damage as incorrect, when speculating on a former profession. A prostitute who meets the legal requirements such as majority age, health issues etc. is not performing an illegal profession. It would be a whole different story if I would make the statement that a certain John Doe worked as a hit-man or a drug dealer.

A large number of people commented on this story on the internet. Since Mrs. Wulff also filed for compensation for pain and suffering, many believe this is just another addition of the Wulff family trying to increase their wealth. And of course this is not the first time a member of the Wulff family tries to get a muzzle on the press…

If I recall correctly, the majority of Germans do not consider the greater part of  statements from Christian Wulff to be true. Of course, no one can say Bettina Wulff worked in the sexual service industry for sure without having any proof supporting the statement, but honesty is a term most people do not bring into connection with this now infamous surname…

UEFA Euro 2012

Many of us have been looking forward to this years European Championship, since European club competitions and domestic leagues have come to a pause. Spain, Germany, Netherlands and France came into the competition as favourites to win the cup. Nevertheless, we expected teams like Russia, or the two host nations, Poland and Ukraine, to be in for a surprise as well.

Unfortunately, some key players in the likes of Carles Puyol and David Villa for Spain, Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard and Gareth Barry for England, as well as Domenico Criscito and Giuseppe Rossi for Italy, among others, will all miss the Euro 2012 due to numerous reasons. The most disturbing of these is another huge corruption and bribery case due to a new betting scandal in Italy. It will be interesting to see how this will affect the squadra azzurra during the competition. So far, they performed remarkably well, considering the circumstances.

But it was not just Italy in the spotlight of the media before the start of the competition. Certain racism and fascism allegations made the headlines in numerous western European countries, claiming so-called ultras in Poland and Ukraine depict a serious problem and potential threat to tourists visiting the two nations during the sports event. Furthermore, politics also got into the way of a clean start, as big-name politicians in the likes of Angela Merkel as well as the entire French government decided to boycott the matches taking place within the Ukraine. This is due to the political situation concerning the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the conditions of her prison arrest. Animal cruelty also played a huge part for many tourists deciding not to visit the Ukraine, as a large number of stray dogs were brutally killed off by the government, allegedly. Photos of the extermination have been posted across many social networking sites like Facebook for example. However, the authenticity of these photos should be viewed with a certain amount of objective skepticism.

But let’s leave politics and related topics off the football pitch and get back to the sports part. The group stage is now over and half of the teams progressed to the quarter-finals, the other half had to go home. Let’s have a look at each group individually.

Group A:

Host nation Poland was in with Greece, Russia and the Czech Republic for some interesting football. Poland played quite well and tried very hard to get to the quarter-finals, but in the end they were unlucky. Russia started quite strongly, beating the Czech Republic by 4:1 on the very first match day. Greece on the other hand already seemed to be out of the competition after losing 1:2 to the Czechs and facing Russia on the last match day, people did not really expect the Greeks to come home with anything but a loss. But we were all in for a surprise, as the Czech Republic finished as group winners and Greece managed to beat the Russians in an intense match to progress to the quarter-finals.

Group B:

This group was named this years group of death by the press. And they had every reason to call it that: Netherlands, Germany, Portugal and Denmark faced each other in this face-off among European heavyweights. The big surprise: the Dutch sucked! They lost all three matches and went on home with no points and only two goals scored. The Netherlands have never been this bad in the European Cup. The second surprise was Denmark. They played some pretty solid football with great team spirit and made the Germans tremble in the last match of the group stage. Still, Germany went on to the quarter-finals with a pretty solid performance overall, as well as Portugal, who managed to beat the poor Dutchmen with a 2:1 win.

Group C:

Spain and Italy. The last two world champions in one group. It really sounds to good to be true. And it sort of was. The other two teams they faced in this group were the Irish and Croatia. Spain and Italy were a rather big disappointment in the opening match of group C, as they only managed a 1:1 draw and neither side managed to dominate the match. On the other side, one can applaud Italy for playing quite well, considering they are handicapped due to the scandal.  The Irish tried their best under coach Trapattoni, but in the end they did not stand a chance against the other teams. Their fans did not know how to support their team, you’ll have to give them that, as the Irish singing in the football stadiums is always lovely. Croatia nearly managed to cause an upset, as they would have kicked out Spain if they had won the last match. Nevertheless, Croatia showed a solid performance in all three matches.

Group D:

Ukraine, Sweden, France and England complete this years competitors for the Euro 2012. Andriy Shevchenko made Ukraine, the second host nation, shine and nearly managed to get his side through to the quarter-finals, if it wasn’t for England winning with a Wayne Rooney goal and a “Wembley goal” denied by the referee in the last match. France and England were expected to get through to the quarter-finals and they did, but it was a close call. France lost their last match against Sweden by 2:0 and overall, the Swedes showed us some pretty good football.

Now, the quarter-finals start on Thursday, June 21st. Some interesting fixtures are included and will bring us some impressive football, hopefully:

Czech Republic – Portugal

Germany – Greece

Spain – France

England – Italy

My personal tip for the final is Germany vs. Spain, but somehow I see Spain as the winners in that match, considering the last two meetings of the teams all went in Spain’s favour…
Let’s see how it will work out 😉

How much did SHE influence HIM?

By now, the entire world knows that German president Christian Wulff resigned just 16 hours after the department of public prosecution of Hanover had filed for the abrogation of Wulff’s legal immunity as president of Germany, in order to begin investigations on alleged corruption and illegal favours from business partners.

Now that Germans got what they wanted, people ask themselves, why Wulff seemed to be a “glamour-president”, who liked his new life of luxury and free vacations too much, after becoming president just 599 days ago. Many speculate that his wife Bettina influenced him in such a way, that people did not recognize the same eager, trustworthy and honest politician they knew, before he married for the second time. According to tabloid and blog gossip all over the internet, Bettina Wulff’s past life – that is before she married Christian Wulff in 2008 – consisted of regular visits to discos in Hanover, parties on Sylt, a German island well known as a holiday destination, and even of alleged escort services. A lifestyle, that is the embodiment of the exact opposite of CDU values.

German tabloid newspaper “Bild” wanted to publish a big story on her past life in December 2011, but was requested from “above” not to do so. She also “desires” schools in Germany to include more practical teachings on sex education. Seems like she knows what she is talking about.

All in all, many people think that Wulff changed his views due to the influence of his young, attractive, tattooed and luxury-craving wife. It is difficult to say where the line should be drawn on privacy of the president and the first lady. Of course it is a president’s free choice to marry who he wants. But if you are the president of a nation, there will always be a certain amount of public interest and curiosity following you and your family’s every move.

Personally, I did not consider Mr. and Mrs. Wulff to be appropriate for the office of presidency and the associated position of first lady. As to the case Wulff, the past always seems to catch up. And when it does, it is not pretty.

Finally: President Christian Wulff steps down

German president Christian Wulff has finally resigned, after countless scandals were unveiled by the German press. The majority of Germans consider this move to be overdue.

In case you haven’t heard anything about his scandals prior to his resignation, let me enlighten you.

The affairs started in early December, when German newspapers discovered certain questionable and unfair advantages, that Christian Wulff may have had profited from personally. They unveiled, that Wulff supposedly received a home loan with conditions, that no other private person would ever be offered by a bank. The rate of interest was much lower than normally charged by any bank in Germany.

This particular story started, when Wulff had received a private loan of 500.000 € from the wife of a wealthy business man in October 2008, in order to buy a house. At that time, Wulff was prime minister of Lower Saxony. In February 2010, he replied to an oral enquiry in state parliament of Lower Saxony, that he has not had any business relations to entrepreneur Egon Geerkens, whose wife had granted the home loan to Wulff, in the last 10 years.

By the beginning of December 2011, German tabloid newspaper “Bild” wanted to publish a story on Wulff’s private loan. On December 12th, Wulff left a message on the mail box of editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann, that he does not want the story to be published and at least wants the release of the report to be postponed. Apparently, he also threatened Diekmann and spoke of a “final breach” and “war” with publisher Axel Springer AG, if the story were to be released.

But fortunately, Diekmann was not intimidated and released the first report on Wulff’s loan the following day. This was around the time, I started to follow the story and boy, we were all in for an endless list of scandals.

Wulff later regretted in a written statement, to have denied business relations to the Geerkens family in front of state parliament of Lower Saxony. On December 22nd, he openly apologized for any misunderstandings caused on his side. Simultaneously, he fired his spokesman Olaf Glaeseker, who was later accused of corruption and bribery. On January 19th, Glaeseker’s private and official premises were searched on order of the department of public prosecution of Hannover.

I honestly think that you can judge a person’s character by looking at the people he keeps closest to himself. Most people in Germany already considered Wulff to be a liar at that point in time.

On January 4th, Wulff did something many people consider to be incredibly stupid. He gave an interview on public television in order to clear things up and openly apologize for attacking and threatening the press, which is a violation of Germany’s fifth constitutional law. Wulff announced in the interview, that he will answer all questions the press has on the matter of his private loan and that he wants transparency in this matter.

What he did the next day, was the exact opposite. Wulff let his attorney publicize a rather short summary of the affair, which lacked his aforementioned transparency in all aspects. By that time, the entire series of scandals involving the president of the Federal Republic of Germany made other politicians, even of the same party, doubt Wulff’s credibility and honesty. Unfortunately, chancellor Merkel did not want to make any statement about the affair at that time.

The affair surrounding the private loan with the Geerkens family, which was later transformed into a home loan at BW Bank with questionable interest rates as well, was the main story behind Wulff’s string of scandals. He also profited from private vacations, free of charge for Wulff and his family – and paid for by wealthy businesspeople, allegedly “friends” of Wulff. Apparently, this was already the considered standard when Wulff was prime minister of Lower Saxony.

Personally, I could not care less if he took advantage of gratis vacations, these are peanuts in my eyes. But I honestly cannot support a president who owed a private person 500.000 € only a few years ago – this can indicate bias on his part. I don’t even want to think of how much Wulff has damaged the office of presidency in Germany. I am sure he also damaged Germany’s reputation in association  with the term corruption. There are certain cultures on our planet who do judge a people by their honesty and decide whether or not they should do business with them.

Unfortunately, we can’t measure the financial damage Wulff has and will cause by having dragged the office of presidency through a series of scandals, not comparable with any previous German politician.

As I said before, most Germans considered his resignation overdue. Wulff clung on the office of presidency like a dog would on a bone. Politicians are supposed to know when to let go of their jobs before causing irreparable damage. In a certain way, one could compare Wulff to president Assad of Syria, minus the violence.

So what made Wulff finally let go of his job? What scared him so much, that he finally loosened his grip on the office? On February 16th,  the department of public prosecution of Hannover filed for the abrogation of Wulff’s legal immunity as president of the Federal Republic of Germany, in order to be able to begin with investigations of corruption! I think that is enough said at this point to let people decide for themselves, what kind of person the former German president is; I will monitor the outcome of the investigation closely.

What makes me sad, is the fact that it took this long for such a disgraceful person to step down as president. It really bothers me, that there was no pressure from chancellor Angela Merkel to make Wulff step down. Because nowadays we all know, once the credibility of a politician and most of all, a president of a nation that is responsible for an entire continent in a political and financial point of view, is in doubt, chances of a recovery are infinitesimal – 2011 was a great example of that.