Easy Money

A government program that’s easy to scam? Wow. That’s never happened before.

COVID

It’s not the government’s money in the end anyway so who cares, right? Money for nothing and the click’s for free.

The government of North Rhine-Westphalia, a province in western Germany, is believed to have lost tens of millions of euros after it failed to build a secure website for distributing coronavirus emergency aid funding.

The funds were lost following a classic phishing operation.

Cybercriminals created copies of an official website that the NRW Ministry of Economic Affairs had set up to distribute COVID-19 financial aid.

Crooks distributed links to their sites using email campaigns, lured users on the sites, and collected details from locals. They then filed requests for government aid on behalf of the real users but they replaced the bank account where funds were to be wired.

I Just Had To Look

Having read the book…

Movie

Not. If it weren’t for Corona, I’d go watch Corona – The Movie. I mean, if it were a movie that acutally existed and all that.

‘Corona – The Movie’ is our project. First we need the kind of director who nails the son of a bitch, a guy who will not rest until the virus is turned into lasagna, in its own movie. We need a director who rocks big-time, a man whose name is Martin Scorsese.

The Cast?

Mrs. Corona: Balle Herry
The bad virologist, Professor Pandemia C. Galore: Sigourney Beaver
The good virologist, Professor Vacuna Matata: Sandra Bullocks
The protective mask: Jim Carrey
The individual on the respirator: Brad DiCaprio
The narrator: Bernie Sanders
The arrogant ICU doc: Harrison Dodge
The helpful nurse: Angela Merkel
The Sheriff: Clint Westwood

The Plot? Who cares.

German Of The Day: Mundschutz-Pflicht

That means the mandatory wearing of face masks (Mundschutz actually means mouth protection in German).

Mundschutz

Coming to your German neighborhood soon – as soon as the face masks the German government failed to hold ready in stock are available.

Then everybody can move on to the “new normalcy,” whatever that’s going to be. Anything’s better than the old normalcy, I suppose.

Zusammen mit Lockerungen der Corona-Beschränkungen – Mundschutz-Pflicht wird immer wahrscheinlicher.

The End Of Amerika Again

And again and again and again.

Amerika

In this episode we die of coronavirus. Stay tuned for the next one.

How Trump Is Fueling a Corona Disaster – Donald Trump’s disastrous crisis management has made the United States the new epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic. The country is facing an unprecedented economic crash. Are we witnessing the implosion of a superpower?

“German schadenfreude knows no bounds, particularly when it comes to the United States. The country loves to feel superior to a superpower like America. The reasons are psychological. The criticism of America has always been a bit infantile. One is familiar with the theory from psychoanalysis, when people talk about transference, or when suppressed feelings or emotions are overcome by projecting them onto others. It may work for a while, improving one’s feeling of self-worth by devaluing an imagined adversary. But it always falls short. Which is why the ritual must be constantly carried out anew.”
– Jan Fleischhauer (a German journalist who used to work for Der Spiegel itself)

PS: The quality of Spiegel journalism should never be placed in doubt.

Scientifically Correct?

Perhaps. But who cares? It’s politically incorrect. Angie says something else.

Heinsberg

A virologist from the University of Bonn is using the hard-hit region of Heinsberg, Germany, as a living laboratory to study the coronavirus

The death rate in the district is five times lower than what has been recorded by Johns Hopkins University as the national average, according to the German newspaper Die Welt.

Only 44 people — or 0.37% of people who lived in the district — have died from the disease…

Streeck went on to say that though the virus could “live” on various surfaces for up to seven days, he believed there was little chance that someone could become infected via surfaces, contradicting both the Center for Disease Control and National Institute of Health guidelines…

“There is no significant risk of catching the disease when you go shopping. Severe outbreaks of the infection were always a result of people being closer together over a longer period of time.”

German Of The Day: Voraussetzungen Schaffen

That means to “create the conditions” or “lay the foundation” or “pay the baksheesh,” if you prefer.

Angie

That’s what Angela Merkel just did during a direct call to her Virenschleuder (virus spreading) buddy Xi Jinping. She has layed the foundation for an “airlift” of face masks and other protective clothing to be flown from China to Germany using passenger planes that are no longer in use.

You got to have friends. And money. Not necessarily in that order, though.

Mit gegenwärtig nicht genutzten Passagierflugzeugen der Lufthansa werde zudem eine “Luftbrücke” zwischen China und Deutschland eingerichtet, um die Masken zu transportieren.

Germans Still Pretending That This Didn’t Happen

Honestly, how long have we been hearing that it isn’t a question of “if” a pandemic is coming, it is only a question of “when?”

Masks

Well, then here’s yet another example of government planning in action because Germany was caught with its Lederhose down big time when the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Take face masks. When not shipping off the few that they did have to China before realizing they needed them for themselves, or falsely accusing the United States of stealing face masks destined for them once the panic set in, Angela Merkel’s government spends a considerable amount of energy letting its state media outlets explain to the worried citizenry that face masks really aren’t that important anyway – while frantically trying to organize and produce them in the background.

So we all know what’s coming next. It’s right around the corner, folks. The German government will soon announce – once enough face masks are finally available – that although face masks are not absolutely, positively necessary to protect you during the pandemic you will nevertheless now be required to wear them any and every time you leave your apartment. But don’t thank us for being overly cautious like this, they will say, we only want to take every precaution necessary to keep you safe. They will soon want a pat on the back for not having done their job in the first place, in other words. A failure and a scam from start to finish. We’re here from the government and we’re here to help.

It’s now clear that the German government was ill-prepared for this pandemic, even though a 2012 risk analysis by the federal government sketched out a crisis scenario that is eerily similar to the current situation.

Corona Spares Audience Annual Lola Award Ordeal

There are rays of hope out there, if you just look.

Lola

German Film Awards to Go Ahead Without Audience Amid Coronavirus – Instead of canceling the Lolas, the German equivalent of the Oscars, the local film industry has decided to do a live broadcast of the awards on April 24 without the usual gala.

Thanks, German film gala Volk. German audiences have suffered enough.

German Of The Day: Wildwest-Methoden

That means “Wild West methods.”

SPD

What it really means is US-Amerika sucks. As usual. Yawn. That the German on the street is anti-American while vehemently denying being anti-American is certainly nothing new but whenever German politicians openly spread fake news allegations about evil Amerikan intentions just to play to the crowd – and everybody bends over backwards not to notice afterward – that still surprises me.

In this case it was Berlin’s red-redder-green city government with Interior Senator Andreas Geisel (SPD) in the lead role.

When face masks for the Berlin police that were supposedly ordered in China and shipped over Thailand never arrived here Geisel ranted in a press statement that the Americans had confiscated them and redirected the shipment to the USA using their “wild west methods” in an act of “modern day piracy” and that the German federal government needed to take action here immediately. None of this ever happened, of course. Just as there will be no consequences for this guy now. Other than he’ll maybe get a raise. It’s a natural instinct, folks. It’s just what Germans and German politicians do.

Als angeblich in China bestellte, über Bangkok nach Berlin verfrachtete Schutzmasken für die Berliner Polizei nicht ankamen, wetterte Geisel in einer Presseerklärung: Die USA hätten die Ware für sich konfiszieren, umleiten lassen – „Wildwest-Methoden“ und „Akt moderner Piraterie“, wütete der Innensenator. Die Bundesregierung müsse eingreifen!