Germany...not doing the right thing AGAIN!!! and AGAIN!

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by BeBro
Well the story disturbed me so much that I mailed it to German media and asked if that is correct, and if so why this is not in German news. First time I did such thing.

Now let's hope they don't throw rocks at me

Any response?

[BeBMan]

Not until now. They ignore me

[Whoha]

Originally posted by molly bloom
Clearly Germany should take a leaf out of the United States' book when it comes to dealing with political parties the government doesn't like: use the secret services and national police force to hound them, plant evidence, give entirely false stories to pliant subservient media outlets, get people suspected of being sympathizers compelled to appear before parliamentary investigative committees, deny passports and travel outside the country to people suspected of being members, and encourage employers to fire or not hire people suspected of being members of any subversive group.


When all else fails, have big police shoot-outs and lose evidence pertaining to shooting related deaths, or use the Mayor Rizzo Philadelphia style treatment and burn down whole city blocks.


Banning a poitical party is so unsubtle, after all.....

we don't have parliamentary investigative committees, get it right

[Ned]

What I mainly object to is calling this racist party "far right." The only thing we seem to know about its politics is that it is racist and anti-Semitic. Communists can be racist and anti-Semitic just as much as Fascists.

[Bosh]

Germany does the wrong thing again and again and again (hookers and sperm oh my!)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/30/wgerm30.xml

'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'
By Clare Chapman
(Filed: 30/01/2005)

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.


Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners ?who must pay tax and employee health insurance ?were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job ?including in the sex industry ?or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. (god, what the **** is up with German bars?!?!?!) As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

When the waitress looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law. Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.

"There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry," said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. "The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits."

Miss Garweg said that women who had worked in call centres had been offered jobs on telephone sex lines. At one job centre in the city of Gotha, a 23-year-old woman was told that she had to attend an interview as a "nude model", and should report back on the meeting. Employers in the sex industry can also advertise in job centres, a move that came into force this month. A job centre that refuses to accept the advertisement can be sued.

Tatiana Ulyanova, who owns a brothel in central Berlin, has been searching the online database of her local job centre for recruits.

"Why shouldn't I look for employees through the job centre when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" said Miss Ulyanova.

Ulrich Kueperkoch wanted to open a brothel in Goerlitz, in former East Germany, but his local job centre withdrew his advertisement for 12 prostitutes, saying it would be impossible to find them.

Mr Kueperkoch said that he was confident of demand for a brothel in the area and planned to take a claim for compensation to the highest court. Prostitution was legalised in Germany in 2002 because the government believed that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut links to organised crime.

Miss Garweg believes that pressure on job centres to meet employment targets will soon result in them using their powers to cut the benefits of women who refuse jobs providing sexual services.

"They are already prepared to push women into jobs related to sexual services, but which don't count as prostitution,'' she said.

"Now that prostitution is no longer considered by the law to be immoral, there is really nothing but the goodwill of the job centres to stop them from pushing women into jobs they don't want to do."

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1401672,00.html

Big sperm race is staged on German reality TV

Luke Harding in Berlin
Sunday January 30, 2005
The Observer

After Big Brother and Jungle Camp, Germans can tune in to a TV reality show this week that breaks new ground in trashiness ... Sperm Race. Twelve men will compete against each other to see which one of them has the 'fastest' sperm.
The contestants, who include two German celebrities and a health freak, begin by donating sperm in a clinic, say the programme's producers, Endemol.

The sperm will then be frozen and sent to the company's studio in Cologne, where the sperm will 'race' towards an egg - lured by a chemical that encourages them across the finishing line. Three doctors, including a gynaecologist, will be on hand to make sure the sperm behave correctly, while cameras will record it all.

As well as laying claim to the title of Germany's most fertile man, the winner will also be given a suitably German reward, a red Porsche.

Endemol Germany's president, Boris Brandt, denied yesterday that Sperm Race represented a new low point in dumbed-down TV. He claimed that the show had a serious scientific purpose. 'Sperm Race is serious. Fertility is a big thing in Germany,' he told Germany's Bild newspaper.

'About 1.8 million German men are unable to have children because they suffer from poor sperm. And there are disappointed girlfriends and wives, as well as parents who wait in vain for grandchildren.'

Brandt, whose company is responsible for the German Big Brother , said the cameras would not follow the contestants into the cubicles when they donated sperm.

Germany is a strange strange strange place these days.

[Dinner]

Already a thread on it.

[St Leo]

In fact, the dastards closed my good thread in favour of some crap thread.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Already a thread on it.

*looks*
Bah, the hooker article was posted on the second page of a thread on nazi bans, that doesn't count and the racing sperm is new.

[Dinner]

We shall see if the axe shall fall,

[Bosh]

So we shall.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Oerdin
We shall see if the axe shall fall,

Well... this time... a merged thread with the original.

[notyoueither]

If the Telegraph article is anywhere close to accurate, I will eat my beaver hat.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Whoha


we don't have parliamentary investigative committees, get it right

I was clearly referring to the German parliament, not H.U.A.C. .



You get it right.

[BeBMan]

Well, I didn't found something on this special case since yesterday, but as far as I read job centres can indeed offer any kind of job, and there is no clear definition what a "reasonable offer" is. However, there's also a law here which basically says nonone can be forced to prostitution, and even if that law wouldn't exist, you'd probably could call a court about this, since article 1 of our constitution declares "human dignity" the first principle, which means that any decision or law which would violate this principle would be unconstitutional.

[Ned]

BeBro, I assume Germany legalized prostitution to help the status of the women in the work and to minimize exploitation by pimps and other criminal elements. Has this worked out as intended?