It's a pointless debate. Fact of the matter, weapons and wars are as old as humanity itself. If you erased all weapon technology from our collective memory, the race for advanced weaponry would just start anew because there will always be some human beings willing to exploit weapons for their own selfish gains and if you can't defend yourself, you'll be enslaved/killed/suppressed/whatever. You'd need to change human nature to eliminate the need for weapons.
BVB (Bottlespielverein Borussia Dortmund) watch | You love to see it | Absolute weapons
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It's a pointless debate. Fact of the matter, weapons and wars are as old as humanity itself. If you erased all weapon technology from our collective memory, the race for advanced weaponry would just start anew because there will always be some human beings willing to exploit weapons for their own selfish gains and if you can't defend yourself, you'll be enslaved/killed/suppressed/whatever. You'd need to change human nature to eliminate the need for weapons.
And cigarette lighters.
I don't think I've ever seen an arms manufacturer advertise anywhere before, have I?
How else do you choose the company where you buy your tanks and anti aircraft missiles if not based on the ads?
on a serious note, depending on the location I’d sometimes get google ads from Raytheon or Lockheed Martin
The times they are a changin‘.
I guess this is also about being visible to potential employees for them. Germany is about to get hit hard by the demographic changes that are about to come and finding qualified personnel is about to become incredibly difficult.
Obviously just one aspect for this decision. Won’t be the only one.
I looked around and there is FN Herstal sponsoring a basketball team and I'm almost sure that I have seen Lockheed somewhere.
The whataboutism of people never ceases to impress me. Comparing beer companies to a company that has more than 80% of it's business in making weapons and ammunition is ridiculous.
What the hell was the Borussia board thinking?
What the hell was the Borussia board thinking?
Lockheed has sponsored college bowl games in the US.
The USA is a different animal to European football though. We simply do not have the same view of the military/industrial complex as they do over there.
Depends on what you categorize as arms manufacturer and where you look.
They've always been advertising, but more amongst the "in"-circle who are already somewhat related to arms manufacturing, and of course governments. There have always been arms shows all over the place - England is host to two of the most prolific shows also featuring past and present weapon systems with Farnborough International Air Show and Bovington's Tankfest. And there's plenty of companies involved in arms manufacturing who (intentionally) don't advertise that to the average civillian, so it doesn't come to mind to them often.
Chemical companies, steel and other materials companies, and obviously tons of engineering companies are involved in the arms business, yet nobody bats an eye at those. How many people refuse to fly Boeing or Airbus because they also make weapon systems? How many people refuse to ride a bus made by MAN or send the firetruck away because it was made by them? How many refuse to buy Mercedes or Audi because of it? Avoid riding a train or tram made by Thales? Even United's sponsor Chevrolet can be counted if you want - sure the days when they were the ones to manufacture the M1 Abrams main battle tank are behind them, they sold that business in the 80s, but their Colorado model has been and still is used for the military. Here's their photo gallery from when they presented their new Colorado ZH2 at the US Army Show: https://media.chevrolet.com/media/u...vehicles/chevrolet/concepts/Colorado-ZH2.html
So yeah, the idea of an official partnership with what is pretty much purely a manufacturer of military equipment is new for top level European football, but the partnerships with companies who also sell to the military has long been a thing. As is associating with other companies and regimes whose money has plenty of blood on it. Just a short while ago the majority of this forum would have been happy, according to the poll, to have the Glazers bought out by the Qataris over Ratcliffe. Every single one who voted for a Qatari ownership there should be very, very quiet about judging Dortmund.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a godawful choice for a sponsor by Dortmund, and announcing it a few days before the CL final is so incredibly stupid that it boggles my mind. But we should also be aware that there have always been tons of sponsors who make at least part of their income in ways that people rather prefer not to think about.
But as far as only Rheinmetall is concerned, this isn't even the first sports club they sponsor. They're also partners of the local handball club Bergische HC as well as Borussia Duesseldorf's table tennis club and the women's team of Capitol Bascats Duesseldorf (basketball), as well as official sports partner of the town in general in their program "Sportstadt Duesseldorf". So it's not a new thing for them.
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Hala Madrid
Good post.
Based on Watzke's interview I believe it's even worse than just selling your soul for money.
It looks like he is idealogically on the same wave length as Rheinmetall. He seems to be genuinely convinced that it's the right thing to do.
What about those who were against Qatar, but have no problem with this sponsorship, I’m allowed to judge them, right?
I really haven’t found someone who is okay with Rheinmetall being the sponsor. What I have seen is people who point out that those arguing against Rheinmetall are/were quiet in regards to other „problematic“ sponsorship like Qatar, Saudi, Gazprom et al.
"Stop mixing sports and politics!"
Every choice has an ethical dimension, Dortmund chose wrong.
Every choice has an ethical dimension, Dortmund chose wrong.
Interesting. I believe we used to call that “whataboutism” back in the olden golden days.
It would be, if those pointing it out would support the Rheinmetall sponsorship or be neutral about it.
Saudi are sh*t that I wouldn't touch and I wouldn't equate Qatar to them. Qatar, for it's enormous faults in terms of human rights, are not actively engaged in a brutal war killing thousands of people and inducing famine in a foreign country.
Rheinmetall are the same as Saudi. Let alone that they are helping arm Saudi themselves but also Israel in their war in Gaza. Can't in any way support, or be neutral, with that.
Feck Dortmund and an extra feck you to Sancho.
This was in dec 30, not October. December, when Gaza was already flattened and and about7k children murdered.
Hope they win, would be good for the sport
This thread is very interesting, because it shows the disparity between perception of a bad ethical business and those that truly mask it well and attempt to hide it - and it shows that it works.
Rhinemettal are a defense company, who don't pretend to be anything other than a defense company and when things like this happen, the public recognizes the ethical problem and there is legitimate pushback.
Then you have a company like Airbus, which was developed and formed and grew through the amalgamation and acquisition of the worst of the Nazi war machine that was allowed to live on post 1945 for geopolitical reasons, but have marketed and positioned themselves so well that most people are not even aware they are a defense contractor.
This just proves that whitewashing, marketing and careful propoganda works a charm.
I mean, Airbus in itself should be a case study of marketing in itself. A clothes producer like Hugo Boss still has the "They made uniforms for the SS" attached to it, but Airbus, which is an amalgamation of companies such as Messerschmidt, Junker, Dornier etc, have been allowed to proceed without that hanging over them.
You have Blohm and Voss, with the Wartime shipbuilding still damaging its reputation, but Krupp Steel is now firmly associated itself as being an elevator manufacturing company despite still being a weapons manufacturer to this day as well as its very sordid past.
Rhinemettal are a defense company, who don't pretend to be anything other than a defense company and when things like this happen, the public recognizes the ethical problem and there is legitimate pushback.
Then you have a company like Airbus, which was developed and formed and grew through the amalgamation and acquisition of the worst of the Nazi war machine that was allowed to live on post 1945 for geopolitical reasons, but have marketed and positioned themselves so well that most people are not even aware they are a defense contractor.
This just proves that whitewashing, marketing and careful propoganda works a charm.
I mean, Airbus in itself should be a case study of marketing in itself. A clothes producer like Hugo Boss still has the "They made uniforms for the SS" attached to it, but Airbus, which is an amalgamation of companies such as Messerschmidt, Junker, Dornier etc, have been allowed to proceed without that hanging over them.
You have Blohm and Voss, with the Wartime shipbuilding still damaging its reputation, but Krupp Steel is now firmly associated itself as being an elevator manufacturing company despite still being a weapons manufacturer to this day as well as its very sordid past.
Is it not more that, at that level, we have absolutely no control over those companies and our interactions with them?
I've never joined a march against Airbus and their activities and the same applies for Rhinemettal. I know arms companies exist, I know a lot of them probably engage in shady practices and I also appreciate the argument that, like it or not, its just a function of the world we live in.
A poster above mentioned how you don't hear people boycotting flying on Airbus or Boeing because of their defence businesses. How exactly would I go about boycotting those companies? They have a total monopoly on commercial air travel. I'm pretty sure I've never flown on a plane that wasn't one of those two and outside of a few rogue nations or China trying to develop their own, I'm not sure an alternative does exist? Nor am I even aware of how to check which plane is flying when I'm booking flights.
I don't think anyone in this context is even criticising Rhinemettal, the criticism is all going towards Dortmund for their decision to sign a sponsorship agreement with them.
Rheinmetall is just doing what is good for itself, benefiting from wars and the suffering of children in the middle east, they have been doing that in the past decade providing weapons to murder Yemeni Children. But the blame does not lie with them, they are just a heartless organisation that wants to profet even if it means killing children.
The problem here is BVB, why would a football club want to sponsor a profiting children killing machine? Why Are BVB expecting this sponsorship means to the world?
Another reason to hate this shithouse club. Hope they get battered and feck off into the obscurity from whence they came. They also have pathetically shit banter.
Moral and ethical quandaries aside, what's the economical reasoning behind this as civilians are obviously incapable of buying their products and I seriously doubt defense contractors would benefit from any sort of publicity of this nature.
Whitewashing. They just made billions selling tank shells to Israel, where do they go with all this money?
I think the criticism is indirectly forwarded to Rhinemettal based on the fact that public majority owned fan centric club has decided to sign on with a Weapons contractor.
If the public perception of such a business was not so negative, the reaction would not be as such. I would not expect this level of pushback were the new sponsor to be....General Electric or Airbus?
But I agree with you, we have very little control.
We can say to the world how evil Mosanto, Bayer, J&J, Pfizer, Astrazenika all are, yet we know without them we could die tomorrow.
Some businesses are so entrenched in our way of life that no matter how much we hate it, we have to accept their presence and their products.
There is something called the Alphabet challenge. Try go living about your daily life without using a single product by Google/Alphabet. (It's actually impossible), just by owning a smartphone you are using Google products, even if its an iPhone.
But onto the more pertient topic which is, of all the clubs I expected this from: BVB was the last one.
I would expect Leverkusen, Werder, Bayern, etc to pull this kind of shit - not BVB. Don't they need a vote to get this sort of stuff through?
Did they? That would quite possibly be the worst arms deal in terms of value I've ever come across
Wow. feck Dortmund. Hala Madrid!
Did they? That would quite possibly be the worst arms deal in terms of value I've ever come across
Yes, they did.
Disgusting club - hopefully they get battered.
At certain point, surely it’s just past the point of caring. Do I care that Airbus and and Hugo Boss were linked with the Nazi’s? Not particularly, it’s more about what they are doing now.
I’m not really sure on this but I’m assuming the company in question is making weapons for Germany, and the government are then selling them on to whoever they choose, rather than directly selling arms to Israel?
Either way, what were Dortmund thinking, just take the next lowest offer and avoid the bad PR.
Do you have a link? I cannot find anything on the contract itself, just that they were selling 10k 120mm standard NATO's.
Nah, Foreign governments make purchase bids in a pretty convoluted procurement process with both the private contractor and a relevant government agency at the same time.
Multiple private companies in that country can make bids on the same project.
When the private company and the third party country have come to an agreement, the government agency that handles weapons exports must then sign off on it, usually from a parliamentary/congressional vote, but not always.
For example, F-35 terms had been agreed between Qatar and Lockheed years before Congress signed off on the deal.
I mean, I'd agree and disagree. There is obvious criticism about Rhinemettal but the kind where you shrug your shoulders because you know they're going to do what any arms manufacturer does.
I have criticism for Lockheed Martin but its not something I think about on a regular basis. I would have much more constant criticism of Levy though (and sure, by extension LM) if they were to sign a sponsorship deal with us.
The criticism is why the hell Dortmund would do this at all in the first place. Seems like complete insanity to me, even regardless of the current political climate.
Dortmund can get fecked, it's all about Madrid tonight baby. Come on Don Carlo.
There's also the part where you fight what you can within what you know. I don't have time to research every company (not the capacity and ability to learn about all the relevant intricacies) and I have to live my life (e.g., as you said, I can't choose my plane for a flight). So I try to keep an eye out for these issues and act accordingly to the extent possible. I try to avoid Amazon and Walmart, I don't drink Coca-Cola, I drive a hybrid car, and so on - but I can't make those choices everywhere and my knowledge isn't always perfect (Coca-Cola may have cleaned up their act, and the alternatives might be just as bad). That doesn't make alone a hypocrite, that makes me a well-intended person who does what he reasonably can.
So in this case: I'm saying in this thread that Dortmund made a bad choice here. That's the extent of what I can do, pretty much, and all that most can do on here, not being Dortmund supporters. Linking that all the way back to me not being sufficiently aware and criticizing that Airbus has a Nazi history and makes military equipment is an absolutely unnecessary stretch.
(I've made this about myself, because the general public isn't an amorphous mass, it's a collection of individuals making these choices. They can't be treated as a unified herd.)
So essentially, it doesn’t happen without government say so. I’m not naive enough to claim that any big organisations or countries are innocent, but I can’t for the life of me understand why Dortmund bothered with this.