Speaking Of Corruption…

As far as I can tell, there isn’t a German automobile company that isn’t involved in emissions manipulation. Or maybe this is just another misunderstanding/accident kind of thing again.

Daimler

Remember when Germany used to have a clean image? Me, neither. It has been a while now, hasn’t it?

Daimler faces a recall order for more than 600,000 diesel-engine vehicles including C-Class and G-Class models because of suspected emissions manipulation, German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Friday.

Auch Daimler soll bei Diesel-Pkw bei den Abgaswerten getrickst haben. Das Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt könnte einen Rückruf von über einer halben Millionen Autos anordnen.

German Of The Day: BAMF

That stands for Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, which means the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. It turns out they should have translated that as the Bureau for Asylum and Migrant Fraud, however.

BAMF

This is one of those tip of the iceberg stories, folks. Employees at Bremen’s BAMF have been accused of improperly granting asylum in 1,200 cases between 2013 and 2017 and now an investigation has been launched in which 18,000 additional successful asylum applications will be reviewed. In the meantime irregularities at other BAMF offices have come to light.

Internal email correspondence at the Bremen office has emerged in which an upper-level manager appears to be aware of this systemic problem but asks that an internal investigation be carried out in a “noiseless” manner.  Nor should “everything be examined down to the last detail.”

Same old same old, isn’t it? We’re from the government and we’re here to help.

Angeschrieben wegen möglicher Unregelmäßigkeiten in den Bremer Asylverfahren, habe der zuständige Abteilungsleiter des Bundesamts im Februar 2017 zwar eine Prüfung angeordnet, zugleich aber verfügt, dass diese „geräuschlos“ geschehen solle. Er wolle nicht, heiße es in seiner E-Mail, „dass alles bis ins Detail geprüft wird.”

GETTING Fed Up?

Whoever wrote this doesn’t know much about Germany yet: Why Germans Are Getting Fed Up with America.

Germany

Check this out: It’s getting harder for Angela Merkel and the German elite to hold back growing anti-Americanism. Hilarious. I could read nonsensical stuff like this all day.

The poor hack who wrote this. If you don’t understand that anti-Americanism is one of the seven pillars of wisdom that defines what being German is all about, you’ll never get the rest of it (the other six are just variations on anti-Americanism – anti-capitalism, anti-freemarketism, anti-individualism, anti-Israelism, anti-hightechism, anti-anythingnewthatisnotGermanism).

But maybe this article is satirical or something. Some of this stuff is really, really good. As in funny as hell: The cautious German elite, led by Merkel with her preference for compromise in any situation, has been holding back the anti-American sentiment so far. But that position may become untenable as Germans realize their country isn’t getting much out of being a U.S. ally. A majority can’t imagine a situation in which U.S. soldiers would need to defend Germany against aggression, and as the values gap with the U.S. grows and the economic benefits of partnership shrink, anti-Americanism can become an increasingly attractive political card to play.

Germany has done the U.S. a favor by not seeking a leadership role in the decades since its reunification. There’s no guarantee, however, that post-Merkel it won’t take a more assertive stance, using the European Union as a vehicle for its ambition. Even if a post-Trump U.S. government walks back some of his unilateralism, the mistrust that’s been building up for years won’t go away overnight.

Please write more!

German Women Clearly Upset

Or at least that one down here is.

Women

There is simply not enough female leadership in Germany, they say. Boy oh boy can you ever say that again. I couln’t agree more.

Oh. They mean in cooperations. Yeah, I guess they could show a little more leadership there, too.

The biggest corporations in Germany lag behind their blue-chip counterparts in France, Poland, Sweden, the US and the UK when it comes to the amount of women they have in key leadership positions, according to a new report.

The study by the German-Swedish Allbright Foundation, a charitable organization which campaigns for higher female representation in business and economic leadership positions, finds that of the six countries examined, no country has a more male-dominated corporate culture than Germany.

The Trouble With Diversity Is That It’s So Monotonous

Take Eurovision, for instance. Please.

Eurovision

And this competition is so rigged. At least it was this year. It had to have been. Germany didn’t get last place.

Israel’s win at 529 points was followed by Eleni Foureira from Cyprus in second place (436 points). Austria (342 points) ranked third, Germany (340 points) came fourth and Italy (308 points) fifth. The other countries in the top ten, in descending order, were the Czech Republic, Sweden, Estonia, Denmark and Moldova.

 

German Of The Day: Klartext

That means straight talk.

And that’s the kind of talk Angela Merkel was talking today when she said at the German Catholic Congress in Munster: “If everybody does whatever he feels like doing then that is bad news for the world.”

Klartext

She was referring, of course, to her reckless, emotion-driven, unilateral and illegal decision to provide refuge to anybody and everybody coming from Syria or anywhere else (provided they don’t have any identification papers on them), this having led to the ongoing refugee crisis in Germany and the rest of Europe.

Oh, oops! Sorry. Actually she was referring to Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. But, I dunno, same difference.

“Wenn jeder macht, worauf er Lust hat, ist das eine schlechte Nachricht für die Welt.”

Father’s Day Is Sexist In Germany, Too

Not only are mothers here reduced to cultural stereotypes whenever it is suggested that they might be interested in things like cookbooks, vacuum cleaners, sewing machines and irons, fathers in these parts are not treated any better.

Muttertag

The German Father’s Day stereotype (Father’s Day is today, incidentally) consists of fathers and other so-called “men” celebrating it by turning it into a drunken orgy of day-drinking debauchery in which mindless Herrenparties (gentlemen party groups) pull their ridiculously decorated Bollerwagen (handcarts) filled with booze and food but mostly booze through the countryside or greener urban landscape. It’s scandalous. To assume that all men are interested in that kind of nonsense, I mean.

I’d like to address this subject in a little more detail but I have to go help my neighbor load up our Bollerwagen. It’s getting on noon and we haven’t had a drink yet.

Lidl Germany has come under fire for suggesting people buy their mums cookbooks, vacuum cleaners, sewing machines and irons for Mother’s Day.

The Iran Deal Is Not Dead

It just smells funny. At least that’s what Germany seems to think.

Iran

You see, spokesmen for German industry plan to call up Donald Trump and explain to him that the “US Iran call is illegal.” Then, once they’ve straightened that up with him, everything ought to be hunky dory, right? And they can go back to getting moola from the mullahs again.

They better hurry up, though. America’s new ambassador to Germany has only been in office for twenty-four hours and already has a really bad case of ITF (Itchy Twitter Finger).

For the past year, German officials have been urging their U.S. counterparts to send a new ambassador to Berlin. But after finally receiving one, many may be having second thoughts.

Within hours of assuming his new post on Tuesday, Richard Grenell triggered harsh criticism in this Trump-weary country after appearing to threaten one of the American president’s frequent targets: German businesses.

“German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.”

Turkey

Beautiful German weapon sale of the week.

Turkey

Because somebody has to admire them.

Einen Auftrag zur Aufrüstung von Panzern für die Türkei hatte die Bundesregierung vor einigen Wochen noch gestoppt. Jetzt aber erhält das Land sechs neue Jagd-U-Boote – geliefert von ThyssenKrupp.

PS: Funny how these expensive exports always meet the client’s expectations but the weapons systems used in Germany never seem to work. Hard to believe, actually. It’s almost as if it were intentional. Nah.

“Germany Needs a New Approach to Deport Migrants?”

Yes, it certainly does. It ought to consider trying the so-called “deportation” approach I’ve heard tell about. You know, like actually deporting the hundreds of thousands that have already been turned down?

Deportation

Germany has a problem with migrants who have been denied asylum. Many of them don’t want to leave, and getting them to go is far from easy.

Last week, police in Ellwangen in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg attempted to pick up a 23-year-old Togolese man at a refugee hostel to deport him to Italy, the country where he first crossed the border into the European Union. About 150 other Africans at the hostel wouldn’t allow it. They heavily outnumbered the 24 officers, and forced them to hand over the keys to the man’s handcuffs. The police had to retreat. They returned in force three days later and took the Togolese man away. Twenty-seven of the hostel residents are being held for rioting.

For 2016 and 2017, 406,153 people were denied asylum in Germany. In the same two years, only 49,300 people were deported or left “voluntarily” under pressure from authorities.