Olaf Scholz Reportedly 'Mulls Resignation'
Don't get your hopes up, his replacement would be Defence Minister Pistorius, with Western Intelligence meddling, once again, in domestic politicking
As the ‘farmers’ protest’—some in German-language media are using the term Bauernaufstand, thereby referencing the German Peasants’ War of 1525/26 (more on this below)—enters its third day, there are reports of nerves cracking.
Support for ‘the farmers’—and let’s remember that those who are protesting aren’t merely the nation’s ‘farmers’ but many members of the middle-class* are protesting with them, too:
As an aside, note that ‘we’ German-speakers don’t like to be considered in ‘classes’ in an economic (and/or Marxisante) terms; after WW2, what has happened in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland is that we like to speak about the Mittelstand (lit. middle stratum or ‘estate’). Terminological qualms aside, you are a member of the Mittelstand if you’re, broadly speaking, in the middle classes of the income distribution but, unlike in Anglo-American contexts, as Wikipedia, of all places, quite accurately explains (here and in the following, emphases mine; references omitted):
The term is difficult to translate and may cause confusion for non-Germans. It is usually defined as a statistical category of small and medium-sized enterprises…with annual revenues up to 50 million Euro and a maximum of 500 employees.
However, the term is not officially defined or self-explanatory, so the English expression ‘small and medium-sized enterprises’ is not necessarily equivalent to the Mittelstand. In fact, even larger and often family-owned firms claim to be part of the Mittelstand, such as Robert Bosch, based on the Mittelstand's positive connotations. The term Mittelstand mainly applies to mid-sized firms as opposed to larger listed companies and, more importantly, Mittelstand companies are characterised by a common set of values and management practices…
Ludwig Erhard, the Economics Minister who crafted post-war West Germany's economic miracle (German: Wirtschaftswunder) warned against reducing the Mittelstand to a mere quantitative definition, but instead emphasised more qualitative characteristics which embody the German Mittelstand, as it is ‘much more of an ethos and a fundamental disposition of how one acts and behaves in society.’
As you can see, getting up early and working hard is about as German mittelständig (the adjective to the noun Mittelstand) as rye bread, cabbage (Sauerkraut), and the like.
And the reason why I even bother to bring up this wonderfully charged notion is simple: farmers are but a fraction of society; according to official information, there are 262,726 ‘agricultural companies’ (Betriebe) that employ some 937,000 people or approx. 2% of the total labour force of 46.1m (source).
Popular support for the farmers’ protests stands at 69%, according to a recent poll (which Bild hilariously calls a ‘Knaller’, i.e., bomb-shell).
That said, we now return to the above-mentioned report as Austrian legacy media is a tad removed from the protests and, every now and then, actually reports something interesting (see also, e.g., here for Egon Krenz, the GDR’s last prime minister, commenting on the Russian-Ukrainian quagmire); translation mine.
Rumours of a ‘Chancellor Exchange’ Circulate in Berlin
An Italian newspaper is speculating about a move from Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. The majority of Germans would like that. A report from Berlin.
By Birgit Baumann, Der Standard, 9 Jan. 2024 [source]
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) knows that many Germans do not speak well of him. At the moment he can see it clearly from his chancellery in Berlin: the farmers' protest is still taking place in the centre of Berlin [shockingly, the protesters didn’t go back home on Monday evening, eh]. The week of action is scheduled to last until Friday. There are banners on many tractors calling for the SPD, Greens, and FDP government to resign [orig. Ampel, a reference to the party colours of SPD (red), FDP (yellow), and Greens]. This is something that people like to see further east: in Moscow, former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev [no legacy media piece w/o anti-Russian histrionics] scoffs that they will continue to follow the protests with ‘sardonic interest’ and see whether the ‘liverwurst’ can keep it up. Who is meant [by that] is Scholz.
At home in Germany, the opposition CDU/CSU [note that AfD is also in the opposition, but they are, of course, ‘far right-wing extremists’] does not refer to Scholz as ‘liverwurst’. But the CDU/CSU, too, also want him to not remain chancellor for much longer. The demand for new elections comes primarily from the CSU. However, it's not that easy: before that, Scholz would have to ask the Bundestag for a vote of confidence. There are no signs that he will do so any time soon [I explained why: all gov’t parties stand to loose bigly in elections, hence no MP is eager to loose his job perks]. Nevertheless, there is lively speculation in Berlin as to how long the Ampel will last and what will happen next.
Stumbling Block ‘Wirecard’
According to claims in the Italian daily La Repubblica [orig. content, but it’s paywalled] Scholz will not end 2024 as chancellor. The reason for this also leads to Russia—via an Austrian. Jan Marsalek, former CEO of the collapsed payment service provider ‘Wirecard’, is said to be in Russia and has been spying for the Russian secret service for years.
When Marsalek was still working for ‘Wirecard’, Scholz was finance minister under then Chancellor Angela Merkel and was also responsible for the financial regulator, BaFin. BaFin did not notice [no irony here] billions of euros in effectively virtual transactions over the years. ‘Is Scholz open to blackmail because Putin has explosive “Wirecard” information through Marsalek?’, asks the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung [I’ll have more to say about this below]. According to La Repubblica, Scholz is to be replaced by the [more] popular Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD).
Even if this scenario is unlikely, the Germans wouldn't mind. 64% think that Pistorius should replace Scholz in 2024. This was the result of a survey by the opinion research institute Insa for Bild. Pistorius has been defence minister for a year and is the most popular politician in Germany.
Scholz's popularity ratings, on the other hand, are in the basement. In ARD's Germany trend, only 19% of those surveyed said they were satisfied with the Chancellor's work. That is one percentage point less than in December and, according to WDR, a historical negative record: no chancellor has had such a low popularity rating since the surveys began in 1997.
CDU/CSU is Preparing for Snap Elections
The next regular federal election is scheduled for fall 2025. A duel between incumbent Scholz and opposition leader Friedrich Merz (CDU) is considered more likely than Pistorius' rise. Officially, the question of the CDU/CSU's party leadership question is still open. But the Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) recently said in an interview with the Funke media group that this question had been clarified. He said: ‘Friedrich Merz is chairman of the CDU and the Union faction in the Bundestag—and is very supported by Markus Söder, Alexander Dobrindt, and me in running for office.’
In any case, the CDU/CSU is preparing for eventualities, including an early federal election, which could take place on the day of the EU election (9 June 2024). When asked whether his party could even organise an election campaign on such short notice, Friedrich Merz replied: ‘That would be challenging.’ But the CDU headquarters would be set up in such a way that it would manage the EU election and also a federal election.
In the Bavarian monastery of Seeon, the CSU party faction in the Bundestag has just passed a paper at its traditional meeting that lists ‘Ampel ideology-driven projects’ that a CDU/CSU-led government would rescind. These include the law [sic, it’s a regulatory ordinance deriving from EU Commission diktats] issued by Economy Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), which states that new heating systems must be powered by at least 65% renewable energy [why on earth end-users of electricity should—could—do anything about where the power companies get the energy in the first place is, of course, something Ms. Baumann never bothers to consider…]. CDU/CSU would also put a stop to the legalisation of cannabis and they would bring nuclear power plants in Germany back online [there’s a bunch of seriously grown-up proposals, which, of course, the woke-fied journos in legacy media—esp. at this hate-mongering leftist rag Der Standard cannot stand].
Notes on the Decline of Journalism
Let’s note, first, that I generally understand why newspapers should have foreign correspondents in place: to obtain otherwise un-obtainable information.
Why Ms. Baumann ‘reports’ from Berlin what she’s read in Italian newspapers is, I’d argue, not something such foreign correspondents couldn’t do from, say, staff offices in Vienna.
The above ‘report’—it’s not much more than a summary of someone else’s reporting (La Repubblica and the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung are at least cited)—is quite o.k., albeit on the intellectual level of elementary schoolers who are asked to summarise, e.g., their. summer vacation in writing.
There’s not a single line of journalism in this report, though, and I shall proceed to provide more evidence here: if you’d read this report by Michael Maier, which appeared in the Berliner Zeitung on 5 Jan. 2024, you get the impression of Ms. Baumann virtually copy-pasting wording and passing it off as her reporting from Berlin (albeit with waaaaaaaay less particulars):
Wirecard: Is Scholz Being Blackmailed by Putin?
A revelation envisions the end of Olaf Scholz as chancellor. Is Moscow's long arm behind the dark prophecy? Or are completely different forces at work?
There is great excitement in Berlin: the ‘Wirecard’ scandal, in which thousands of investors were deprived of their savings, could now be the downfall of Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Until now, Scholz had successfully hidden behind a wall of amnesia [no kidding, he really claims not to be able to remember anything about it], as was the case during the Hamburg Warburg baking scandal [during Scholz’ tenure as ‘governor’ of Hamburg State]. No amount of courageous investigative committee reporting could harm the former Federal Finance Minister and Hamburg mayor.
[here begins’s Ms. Baumann’s piece] A report by the respected Italian daily La Repubblica has now alarmed SPD supporters in particular: Scholz could be replaced as Chancellor as early as 2024 and replaced by Federal Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, who is popular in surveys. The newspaper writes that there are ‘rumors that the “Wirecard” case and its ties to Russian spy Jan Marsalek could deal the final blow to the Social Democratic leader’. There is a suspicion that Scholz is being controlled by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The ‘shadows of Russia’ lie over Scholz, according to the newspaper. The Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung asks: ‘Is Scholz open to blackmail because Putin has explosive “Wirecard” information through Marsalek?’ [you be the judge]
The scenario appears threatening because, among other things, the Wall Street Journal outed former ‘Wirecard’ board member Jan Marsalek as a Russian spy [I call BS here: the WSJ piece notes that Mr. Marsalek is ‘suspected’ of being a Russian spy]. Marsalek is said to have passed on information from former ‘Wirecard’ customers to Moscow. However, the former left-wing politician and incorruptible chief investigator in the Wirecard scandal, Fabio de Masi, warns against jumping to conclusions too quickly. De Masi told the Berliner Zeitung:
‘“Wirecard”’ was an intelligence dispute. Marsalek had contacts with western and eastern intelligence services. His exact role is still very unclear. Many of the publications on this subject are full of contradictions and seem to me to be influenced by security authorities.’
It is conceivable that Marsalek ‘is in the Russian sphere of influence’. However, there is no reliable information. De Masi: ‘The Wall Street Journal claims he financed covert espionage operations through a shell company, but this company was registered under his name in 2021 after his escape. That's a bit noticeable for a covert operation, since he was already officially wanted by Interpol. He can also climb Big Ben naked in broad daylight. That doesn’t convince me!’ (click here for De Masi’s comprehensive documentation of the scandal).
In any case, the idea of Marsalek's possible Russian activity irritates the German intelligence services: special investigator Wolfgang Wieland, appointed on behalf of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, already found out in April 2021 that the Federal Criminal Police Office had worked with ‘Wirecard’ on several projects [uh-oh, kinda ‘oopsie’]. Accordingly, credit cards issued by the [now-defunct] ‘Wirecard’ bank were used to research people undercover online. According to the investigator's report, Marsalek is said to have ‘requested and received a complete annual data set of Wirecard business partners for forwarding to the BND.’ However, this data set never arrived there. It is still unclear where the data went.
[more particulars on Ms. Baumann’s ‘reporting’] Repubblica's Berlin correspondent, Tonia Mastrobuoni, told the Berliner Zeitung that she had referred to other media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal or the British website Bellingcat [a MI6 front/shell outlet] when attributing Marsalek to Russian intelligence [let that sink in for a moment: the entire ‘Russia did it’ trope harks back to—Anglo-American intel ‘leaks’]. There is ‘strong evidence that Marsalek worked for Russia.’ However, she didn't come up with the topic on her own. Mastrobuoni: ‘I was unexpectedly approached by a source [who, I do wonder—but apparently, there’s enough kompromat on Scholz, which is only thing that appears ‘certain’]. The source said the continuation of the Wirecard trial in 2024 could be dicey for Scholz if the Finance Ministry under his leadership had more to do with Marsalek than previously known. Two other sources have confirmed this assessment to me.’ [line break added for clarity]
That sounds more like an internal SPD intrigue than the long arm of Moscow [yeah, sure, ‘internal’, as in a ‘source’ that ‘unexpectedly approaches’ a ‘journalist’ who resorted, among others, to known western intel front organisation Bellingcat]: There has long been great sympathy for Pistorius in the SPD’s powerful Seeheim circle. Polling numbers for Scholz are disastrous, and in Saxony the SPD is even fighting for survival [there, current polls show them at 3%, way too little to re-enter parliament]. It is entirely conceivable that panicked SPD grandees want to use ‘Wirecard’ as an excuse to get rid of Scholz [of course, because disastrous polling data and piss-poor prospects wouldn’t be enough for careerist apparatchiks worried about their personal futures].
The speculation about Marsalek as Putin's spy is likely to make further investigation of the ‘Wirecard’ scandal more difficult. The lawyer Annette Heinisch, who represents the plaintiffs in the ‘Wirecard’ trial against regulators, told the Berliner Zeitung: ‘It is difficult to find witnesses at the moment. They fear losing their job or ending up in prison themselves and, in the worst case scenario, depending on what they know, having a fight with the Russian secret service.’ The interlinking of politics and the judiciary is also a problem, ‘because the public prosecutor's offices give political instructions can receive’. [I’ve written about this before, see here for the European Court of Justice’s assessment, which found incestuous relations between politics and the judiciary in Germany] Heinisch: ‘The role of Olaf Scholz in the whole “Wirecard” scandal must definitely be examined.’ At the moment it is ‘very difficult for the plaintiffs to obtain redress of grievances’. The result is that, as is often the case with major crimes: ‘Small investors are left in the lurch.’
Bottom Lines
We hold the following:
Birgit Baumann talked to fellow journos in Berlin, read their reports, and copy-pasted together her ‘report’, which subsequently appeared in Der Standard.
There’s nothing new or original in Ms. Baumann’s report, although I’d move to the motion that she actually missed the point of her (most likely, if un-referenced) source, the above-reproduced piece by Michael Maier in the Berliner Zeitung.
As the latter report also makes clear in quite unambiguous terms, is that the entire ‘Russia did this to Germany’s Scholz’ trope is, nicely put, fake news as there’s no evidence to back up these claims. If anything, the entire ‘Wirecard’ shenanigans reek of Western intelligence meddling in the internal affairs of a notionally ‘sovereign’ country.
About that latter point: if true, what we see here is that the shady ‘colour revolutions’ are coming home to roost. If events around last month’s Serbian elections are any indication, it’s doubtful if the CIA’s playbook for régime change can be successfully applied beyond ‘Western’ countries.
My assessment here is—liar, liar, pants on fire, and that pertains to virtually the entire ‘story’ reported. To their credit, the Berliner Zeitung’s Michael Maier at least reports more honestly about these shady dealings, but imagine the outcry in, say, the UK or the US if it would be ‘discovered’ that the PM or President had questionable ties to either foreign intelligence (‘Russiagate’ comes to mind here) or ‘business ties’ to powerful foreign interests (why, oh why, am I thinking of the Biden grift op with their ties to China and Ukraine?).
But in ‘the best Germany of all times’ (Robert Habeck), this is entirely ‘normal’, if not expectable among the chattering classes and politicos.
The word ‘high treason’ never crosses the spotless minds of these critters.
So, where will this go? If we’d take the above-related reporting at its face-value, a few days of sustained protests might be enough to topple the chancellor, with party bigwigs—without question ‘assisted’ by consultants and advisors from ‘the intelligence community’—mulling replacing Mr. Scholz with yet another spineless politician.
If that happens, it will happen for cosmetic reasons (think: lipstick on pigs) and to defuse protest sentiment. To expect meaningful change is probably akin to believing in Santa Claus as an adult.
Re German Peasants War - would be great if you did a post on that!