Monday, October 23, 2023

Seven German News Stories

 1.  Anne Will public forum show (ARD, Sunday night, 9:45 PM) had the topic of the Palestinian war business.  So they had CDU political figure Norbert Rottgen on.  He made the comment at some point: "Hamas wants as many Palestinians as possible to  die."

I paused over it....yeah, that's probably one of the top five strategy problems in this mess, and they wouldn't be bothered if 100,000 would die over the next month or two. 

2.  Ulrich Reitz wrote a piece for Focus and talked over the new political party being formed by Sahra Wagenknecht (supposed to be chat points released today).

His gut-feeling?  This political party is likely to have one key reference....to be the anti-Green Party of Germany.

Just about everything that the Green Party pushes....the AfD Party has some negativity about.  So, he believes Wagenknecht will go and focus entirely on being a anti-Green agenda party.

Pretty weird strategy but one factor plays out here....the Greens have had a serious problem in selling their brand of politics over the past two years since joining the SPD coalition government.  

3.  Election over the weekend in Switzerland.  Generally, the right-of-center folks did a 'bump-up' and won in the election.  The Green Party of Switzerland did a 'bump-down' and lost seats in the election.  Rest of the parties all stayed in the same numbers for the most part.  

I don't consider this a radical change, but some folks are a bit stressed over the implications.  Asylum agenda is likely to change and fewer numbers to be accepted.

4.  RBB (the Berlin public TV network) is going to court to demand a quarter-million Euro that the fired director misused for her past salary.  

From the various sources that I've read over her firing....she might have been popular within public TV circles (management friends), but had no mindset on budgets and controlling spending.  This court action?  She might delay this for two years before it goes final, but it's probably going to lay out a number of stupid things she did.  

5.  100 folks (roughly) arrested in Berlin over the non-sanctioned pro-Palestine demonstration from yesterday (Sunday).

6.  I had a ex-German (now American) living in the US.....contact and ask about this 'level-2' terror warning business.

So, the hype is the US State Department deemed Germany (to be honest, 95-percent of the EU is on level 2) to be somewhat safe but you need to be vigilant and prepared for possible terror operations.

What EU countries are still on alert level 1 (safest level)?  Well....Greece, Ireland and Norway.  I won't argue about Greece.  It's probably one of the safest places on Earth presently.  

What countries are on level 3?  That's a curious thing....Turkey and Poland.  Basically, they say unless you really have a good reason, you shouldn't visit either.  Do I consider Poland a problem?  No, but they had that stupid missile (from Ukraine) that landed in eastern Poland, and killed a person or two.  Turkey?  They have that Kurd problem and about every couple of months....another bombing. 

Would I worry about threats in Germany?  Look....compare Frankfurt and NY City.  You are a hell of a lot safer in Frankfurt at 10 PM at night, than in NY City.   You might step in some dog-crap in Frankfurt, or be pick-pocketed, or smell some really funky crap smell....but it's a dozen times more safe there than in SF, Chicago  or NY City.

The terror business?  Well.....that's slightly different.  You always have some nutcase walking around Germany, with a marginal IQ and all mentally screwed up.  Then they get some jihad-thought in their head, and things go 'south'.

7.  Package prepared for Bundestag by the Interior Minister (Faeser, SPD).....to process deportees at a faster pace.  Green Party pretty negative about it.....SPD is counting on support by CDU-CSU and AfD to pass this agenda item.  

For 2022, there were around 13,000 deportations conducted.  Presently, what the government says....around 220,000 are on a list to be hauled off/deported.  This means the application was reviewed, and they did not pass the asylum/migration situation.

Now, I'll just say this....if you go look up the September 2023 numbers....around 20,000 folks illegally entered the country and asked for asylum.  If you were to do the numbers business....at least half of them probably won't pass the German review. 

Politically, this whole issue is a top three problem now, and the public is hyped-up.

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