Saturday, May 27, 2017

German News Bits (Sun Morning)

Because of the increasing amount of 'URL cannot be found' on a number of German news sites when you try to post a story to Facebook....I've come to the decision that it's an unusual timing that this started in the last four weeks.  It'll usually revolve around a controversial story which the news media will report, but they don't want you to cite it or pass it around.

So my new strategy is to post one single essay per day with the dozen odd short 'essay-notes' via Schnitzel Republic and just post that 'news collection' in one single Facebook listing.  I'd prefer to cite the source of the news.  I've become particular about real citings....refusing to use fake news listings.

So for Sunday, the 28th, I noted the following news items:

Boat migrants off Libya: Yahoo-Australia reports 10,000 migrants on rafts have had to be rescued within the past four days off Libya.  At least 1,200 were rescued by Libya vessels and taken back to Libya.  This may be the start of the summer season migrant bulk-movement that BILD talked about last week.  Course, if you paid a $1,000 expecting the charity folks or Italian navy to rescue you...dragging to European land.....you might be kinda upset that you got dragged back to a Libya port.

RV spots booked: SWR reports that most all RV sites around Lake Constance (to the far south) are fully booked up.  When you start to notice real warm weather....the RVers go full-blast turbo now for weekends.

Facebook and naked butts: One of the immortal statues around Germany....is the Hercules up at Kassel....on top of the hill.  One of the local tourist accounts wanted to post up a picture of the Hercules statues (which has a naked butt) and FB said no.....so they had to invent some swim-wear fake insert....to make sure FB was happy.  Picture of the 'before' and 'after' at the HR site.  Bit amusing but people really can't handle naked statue butts.

False German narrative.  Focus wrote up an entire piece to tell the alternative story to why German car-makers are getting negative coverage in this Trump episode.  Oddly, they don't bring up BMW-Mexico.

The best way to explain the effect of BMW-Mexico?  Imagine that VW stock dropped big-time (for a fine or diesel troubles) and General Motors decided to take profits and buy control of VW.  It would not be a happy event for the Germans.  But imagine six months later that VW announces that two new VW vehicles (in planning stages for three years) were to be finally produced...but in Romania, under a creation of VW-Romania.  They'd naturally produce the vehicles at 30-percent less cost, and import them into Germany.  Hostility at not only losing the job potential, but having these vehicles sold with the profits going to VW-Romania and possibly avoiding the German tax structure.  How angry and frustrated would Germany get with that type of commercial activity?

Helene Fischer soccer game 'concert'.  Last night, I sat and watched the Frankfurt-Dusseldorf soccer game (championship game) on TV.  At the half-time point, they dragged out the legendary Helene for a ten-minute period and she sang a couple of songs.  Sound?  Extremely lousy.  I don't think the guys at the stadium (probably 95-percent men) really cared or not.  Total waste to even put on a half-time show at a soccer game.  Probably a quarter of the audience is lit up on alcohol or beer anyway.

G7 Coverage.  It's safe to say....German public TV (ARD) labeled the G7 meeting a massive failure, and blamed it on Trump.  The curious thing though, if you went and examined the last dozen G7 meetings....nothing of any real significance was ever accomplished except a lot of talking and some joint dinner.  It's amazing how one can tell the story and think that any of these G7 meetings ever turn into productive work.

Spain and unemployment.  Excellent N-TV piece on Spanish protests from yesterday (Sat).  For several years, Spain has been sitting in the midst of bad economic times.  In the last quarter, they've finally been able to edge the unemployment rate down to 19-percent, which is a positive but it means a heck of a lot of people are just sitting around.  Lot of blame goes toward the various political figures that have come and gone.

Former SPD candidate for Chancellor finally speaks.  The last guy to run for Chancellor from the SPD Party was Peer Steinbrucke.  After that loss, he retired from politics.  So, N-TV did an interview with him and he labeled the current SPD-Schulz effort in this campaign as mostly going nowhere.  He particularly noted that this idea of a SPD-Linke Party-Green Party coalition was the wrong thing to advertise in the western part of Germany.  He's suggesting that this will be a fairly massive loss for the SPD in September as the national election comes.

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