Faced with affidavits from participants, Correctiv backpedals virtually completely. What remains are a tattered gov't, stupid MSM, and loads of gaslit people
Your referencing Watergate seems apt, though I doubt this whole affair will lead to any serious consequences for any of the major players.
I have started to think of Correctiv's reporting as perhaps more like the infamous Steel Dossier in which political oppo "research" was subsequently laundered into a smear campaign discrediting Trump's presidency and simultaneously deflected from Clinton's woefully incompetent presidential campaign.
In this case, the Correctiv Dossier has been used to deflect attention from a woefully incompetent German government and simultaneously launch a smear campaign discrediting the opposition party AfD as a legitimate electoral option for disgruntled voters.
I can't top this and I don't want to - this is beyond stupid. Fire all of them, is what their employer needs to do. Fire and blacklist them from journalistic work.
Paralleling it, we have a nice little brough-ha-ha going in our media right now.
Henrik Jönsson, classic liberal blogger and podcaster and succesful businessman, has for several years run a Youtube-channel criticising the swedish Socialist Democrat party and their politics and history (because they have been in power for 75% of the time since we got semi-universal franchise).
In an interview in DN, Dagens Nyheter (the paper all the politicians read) Magdalena Andersson, leader of the SDP and almost-but-not-really the first female PM a few years back, openly asked "Who funds Henrik Jönsson? In the interest of whom is he attacking us?".
This started a ruckus because a politician, and the leader of the major party at that openly attacking a journalist is still very much a taboo - and the journalists are very much a guild in how they think.
Andersson then claimed that she just answered a question from DN's interviewer, but DN's editor replied with that this is a lie from Andersson, and offering to make the whole tape of the interview public to proce it.
Andersson's press-secretary and token ethnic hire the name of whom I can't be bothered to look up replied that all of this hoo-hah was still Henrik Jönsson's fault. . . implication being that by existing and criticising the Party, he is a threat and problem.
It is nice to see the total PASOKification take hold.
Oho, I have more political emetics to share from here, never fear!
Morgan Johansson is a born-to-the-party Socialist Democrat from Malmö, who held the ofiice of minister of Justice for eight years until 2022. In that position, among other things he did, was blocking a changing of the law to make it criminal to transport stolen or fenced goods out of Sweden.
But here's the fun bits:
His current wife works at SÄPO, the swedish Sicherheitsdienst. She was found out in 2018 to have accessed files she did not have clearance for, using the information for private matters.
That's bad enough. But she wasn't charged until 2022, after the election when her husband was no longer minister of Justice (under which SÄPO is positioned). The local criminal court in Malmö found her not guilty. The Royal Court (Hovrätten, mid-level court) found her guilty and sentenced her to 9 900:- in fines.
She gets to keep her job. Her excuse was, she (who has worked at SÄPO for many years) lacked the understanding of that what she did was forbidden.
Even more icky is, police and prosecutors vehemently and empathically state that there are zero grounds to investigate interference from her husband as to why charges were so late in being brought. As in, they state that without anyone asking about it specifically.
Comparable stories I have many, from Austria and Germany, but there are also some from Switzerland. I think it's got to do with the in-built dynamics of modern-day bureaucracy in the absence of external stressors.
A good bureaucrat, of course, does his or her daily grind at his or her own pace, rules, regulations, or the law being damned.
The biggest problem here is when the amount of work is smaller than the workday is long; thus, the bureaucrat sets up meetings, tries to solve 'problems' that previously didn't exist, thereby increasing 'complexity' (more structure, more organisation'.
(At the U of Zurich, within less than 15 years of implementing the Bologna Process, the manual for a master's degree at the Faculty of Arts exceeded 3,000 pages; when I attended university in the early 2000s, i.e., the pre-Bologna days, it was perhaps 20 pages. In Switzerland, they then set up a working group that, in two years, suggested a reduction by about 50% and were proud of their achievement.)
The ultimate test for states and societies is, of course, war; I'm not coming out in favour of war, but such tests typically, swiftly, and cruelly so, lay bare the deficiencies of any system of government. Reform or perish, that's what's going to happen.
In our day and age, as regards these politicians and their ilk, one thing is obvious: Mr. Trump and the very few like him apart, they all grew up in this entirely artificial environment of apparatchik-dom, which has its own 'rules' (para-ideological purity first, followed suit by 'loyalty' to the chief/party/rules) and don't know anything about 'the real world'.
As a funny aside, it's a bit like this in academia, even though 'peer-review', citations, and external evaluation committees provide a much-needed, if imperfect, counterweight; now, the question is--why don't we have this kind of system in place for politicians? (Oh, sure, the court system, but you already addressed this one…)
Your referencing Watergate seems apt, though I doubt this whole affair will lead to any serious consequences for any of the major players.
I have started to think of Correctiv's reporting as perhaps more like the infamous Steel Dossier in which political oppo "research" was subsequently laundered into a smear campaign discrediting Trump's presidency and simultaneously deflected from Clinton's woefully incompetent presidential campaign.
In this case, the Correctiv Dossier has been used to deflect attention from a woefully incompetent German government and simultaneously launch a smear campaign discrediting the opposition party AfD as a legitimate electoral option for disgruntled voters.
You're of course right--and your point about the fabricated 'Steele Dossier' is very well taken.
Apart from the thing you mentioned, I'm more or less asking myself 'what else' is this absurdity trying to deflect attention from?
I can't top this and I don't want to - this is beyond stupid. Fire all of them, is what their employer needs to do. Fire and blacklist them from journalistic work.
Paralleling it, we have a nice little brough-ha-ha going in our media right now.
Henrik Jönsson, classic liberal blogger and podcaster and succesful businessman, has for several years run a Youtube-channel criticising the swedish Socialist Democrat party and their politics and history (because they have been in power for 75% of the time since we got semi-universal franchise).
In an interview in DN, Dagens Nyheter (the paper all the politicians read) Magdalena Andersson, leader of the SDP and almost-but-not-really the first female PM a few years back, openly asked "Who funds Henrik Jönsson? In the interest of whom is he attacking us?".
This started a ruckus because a politician, and the leader of the major party at that openly attacking a journalist is still very much a taboo - and the journalists are very much a guild in how they think.
Andersson then claimed that she just answered a question from DN's interviewer, but DN's editor replied with that this is a lie from Andersson, and offering to make the whole tape of the interview public to proce it.
Andersson's press-secretary and token ethnic hire the name of whom I can't be bothered to look up replied that all of this hoo-hah was still Henrik Jönsson's fault. . . implication being that by existing and criticising the Party, he is a threat and problem.
It is nice to see the total PASOKification take hold.
Wow, what a clusterf***.
It's the wave of the future, though, it seems.
Oho, I have more political emetics to share from here, never fear!
Morgan Johansson is a born-to-the-party Socialist Democrat from Malmö, who held the ofiice of minister of Justice for eight years until 2022. In that position, among other things he did, was blocking a changing of the law to make it criminal to transport stolen or fenced goods out of Sweden.
But here's the fun bits:
His current wife works at SÄPO, the swedish Sicherheitsdienst. She was found out in 2018 to have accessed files she did not have clearance for, using the information for private matters.
That's bad enough. But she wasn't charged until 2022, after the election when her husband was no longer minister of Justice (under which SÄPO is positioned). The local criminal court in Malmö found her not guilty. The Royal Court (Hovrätten, mid-level court) found her guilty and sentenced her to 9 900:- in fines.
She gets to keep her job. Her excuse was, she (who has worked at SÄPO for many years) lacked the understanding of that what she did was forbidden.
Even more icky is, police and prosecutors vehemently and empathically state that there are zero grounds to investigate interference from her husband as to why charges were so late in being brought. As in, they state that without anyone asking about it specifically.
Comparable stories I have many, from Austria and Germany, but there are also some from Switzerland. I think it's got to do with the in-built dynamics of modern-day bureaucracy in the absence of external stressors.
A good bureaucrat, of course, does his or her daily grind at his or her own pace, rules, regulations, or the law being damned.
The biggest problem here is when the amount of work is smaller than the workday is long; thus, the bureaucrat sets up meetings, tries to solve 'problems' that previously didn't exist, thereby increasing 'complexity' (more structure, more organisation'.
(At the U of Zurich, within less than 15 years of implementing the Bologna Process, the manual for a master's degree at the Faculty of Arts exceeded 3,000 pages; when I attended university in the early 2000s, i.e., the pre-Bologna days, it was perhaps 20 pages. In Switzerland, they then set up a working group that, in two years, suggested a reduction by about 50% and were proud of their achievement.)
The ultimate test for states and societies is, of course, war; I'm not coming out in favour of war, but such tests typically, swiftly, and cruelly so, lay bare the deficiencies of any system of government. Reform or perish, that's what's going to happen.
In our day and age, as regards these politicians and their ilk, one thing is obvious: Mr. Trump and the very few like him apart, they all grew up in this entirely artificial environment of apparatchik-dom, which has its own 'rules' (para-ideological purity first, followed suit by 'loyalty' to the chief/party/rules) and don't know anything about 'the real world'.
As a funny aside, it's a bit like this in academia, even though 'peer-review', citations, and external evaluation committees provide a much-needed, if imperfect, counterweight; now, the question is--why don't we have this kind of system in place for politicians? (Oh, sure, the court system, but you already addressed this one…)