Text 24008, 60 rader
Skriven 2008-11-23 09:17:44 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
  Kommentar till text 23974 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
Ärende: Diana, the Beautiful
============================
Roy Witt wrote to Robert Bashe on Saturday November 22 2008 at 10:12:

RW> Are you aware of the indictment brought against VP Cheney these past
RW> few weeks? I'll bet it never even made Der Spiegel...

Possible, since I hadn't heard of it, but on the other hand, I've been remiss
in reading the news the past weeks - so much of it has been bad, and I'm
depressed enough from the gray in gray weather.

Did the guy he once shot on a hunting trip finally get around to suing him?

RB>> The only way you can really get comprehensive news in the States is
RB>> by Internet, and even then it's best if you can read a couple of
RB>> foreign languages for the foreign websites.

RW> The German news I subscribe to (RSS) offers it in
RW> English/Spanish/French and Arabic. The British RSS also prints theirs
RW> in English.

RSS? Is that an Internet website, or perhaps a newsgroup? Can't say I've ever
heard of it.

RW> What affects Americans is what they want to know about and so, the
RW> news is oriented toward that aim.

Probably no different here, and I take the local paper mostly for the first few
pages with mainly local and regional news. But still, the balance is different
- I've often thought that's because Germany is, geographically, right in the
middle of things, whereas the US is fairly isolated by the two oceans. It's
only natural to concentrate on home doings under those circumstances.

RW> What happens in say, Germany, has no interest unless it's of interest
RW> to the local German community, who're too tied up with local German
RW> events to pay attention to anything outside this community.

And at the moment, the news from Germany isn't any brighter than that from the
States: financial crisis, rising unemployment, crists in the auto industry now
extending to the automotive suppliers. Not anything you'd want to read to be
uplifted.

Unfortunately, we don't even have an Obama in sight, someone who even
_promises_ change. Just the same old tired, hot air-filled bunch of politicians
who can only agree on raising taxes, increasing their own salaries, invading
the privacy of their subjects aka "voters" and otherwise sit on their hands
hoping the crisis will blow over.

I only hope we won't see such a massive "flight from the center" in politics as
occurred in the last years of the Weimar Republic, when the bulk of the voters
ignored the centralist parties and instead voted communist or NSDAP. But the
beginnings of such a development are unmistakeable - the "major" centralist
parties are losing members and support daily and we now have a new "leftist"
party with lots of unfulfillable promises and an increasing vote. So far
there's been no renaissance of any rightest party, at least not on a national
scale, but that may come too if things don't get better fairly quick. The
situation is worrisome.

Cheers, Bob

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