Corruption

[Aptrgangr]

I wanted to vote for

Bribery and corruption in general is a major issue

but I misclicked.

A short explaination: there are two groups of people that get this nice chipkey to access Bundestag (federal parliament): Members of Parliament and certain lobbyists. This says much; as well as the fact there is no law that makes bribery in the Bundestag punishable, there are discussions to change this though. In recent times there have been some corruptionscandals, some ended with an oh so surprising discharge. It is rumoured the right party membership can you save you much trouble
Once three brothers here in Frankfurt should have been prosecuted because of their involvment into dirty business such as prostitution, but the chief prosecutor found these were not judicable (they were Jews); the so-called cultural bonus in courts for Muslim/Jewish criminals are another proof of the liberal democratic equality in matters of law.


This map is very flattering for teh Banana Republic of Germany, in my opinion.



hindustantimes

[Weltschmerz]

Sweden isn't exactly free from corruption either. I think it's just a matter of definitions, and those of the United Nations just won't fathom what we have here. It's not so much a matter of government and authorities being pushed around by an independent mafia. The government and the authorities themselves are corrupt, they are the mafia, and the mass media ownership isn't exactly diverse. Three families own nearly all of our daily newspapers, and similar oligarchic situations prevail for TV and radio. The mass media are far from being independent commentators. The general rule is that they are intimately intertwined with executive power. So, the situation is actually worse in a sense, compared with societies where a mafia needs to employ measures of violence. It's all in the consensus realm here, with minimal friction. It's also been proven time and time again that the councils on communal level, that are supposed to watch over local authority, actually serve to protect them from any accusation of malpractice.