919 956 
The stockmarkets cheered on Monday after the first round in France Macron won and polls show that Macron will win again with big numbers on May 7th. Obviously investors believe that it's good for France that Marie Le Pen (and also anti-Europe communist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon) lost. Good for France means good for business so good for the economy, employment of people and stability. After all, when companies thrive and grow in free European and global markets, they employ more co-workers, pay them more and create better opportunities.
Apparently, voters for Le Pen, Trump, Wilders, Brexit and many others are happy with their "economics" and choose for "protection from foreign influences", whatever that may be: Immigrants, imports of goods and services, different cultures, other currencies ...
They most striking recent event reflecting "heart over brain" was last weekend when co-workers of Alitalia, the Italian national airline, chose to revoke the restructuring plans. Effectively it means, that they all will probably not get paid next month, will be fired soon and that Alitalia will stop to exist this year. It's hard to imagine why people chose to commit suicide collectively like a slice of lemmings jumping from a cliff. Obviously there are reasons why people in the US, UK, France and many other countries drive themselves to decisions sound minds would not make.
The only reason I can think of is "proganda". KellyAnn Conway, senior Trump advisor, coined "alternative facts" as new Scrabble word, in fact a synonym for propaganda. Alternative facts are information items that focus on the hearts of people, creating an emotion that will prevail over any other real fact. They leave away the real nuanced world and context, create another virtual world and make people believe they are better off following that tale. Russian, North Korean, US, UK and many other "tales" don not differ from each other in terms of "alternative facts". They only differ in their enemies.
Even worse is that these tales are fueled by hard to eliminate feelings of discrimination and protectionism. And all of this happens in the "democratic free world". It's quite amazing how the definition of that has changed over the last decades since WOII and the Cold War. Obviously collaborations like NATO, UN and the EU are in dispute and priorities have changed from "Together we are strong" to "Me, me, me first". Or maybe the former was propaganda too :)
Stay calm, believe in yourself, friends and family. That is where your life is all about :D
(big thanks to Peter Schrank for the great cartoon)
101 
Bulgaria had an exciting weekend. Not only they humiliated the Dutch in a football world cup qualification match with 2-0 but last Sunday the advanced Bulgarian parliament elections came to a result. The GERB, conservative and pro-EU, won the elections. Not that surprisingly but still delicate because their leader Borisov resigned as PM after the loss of his candidate Tacheva to socialist and Russia focused Radev in the presidential elections in November last year.
However, GERB only won about a third of parliament seats so a (probably long) coalition negotiation is on its way. But, like most Bulgarians, even Borisov has a weak spot for Russia and Putin so maybe that will drive coalition success together with Ninova of the BSP (Bulgarian Socialist Party).
Deal maker or breaker could be Karadya of the MDL (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) representing the 700.000 Turkish minority. In a only 7 MIO population country this is something to take care about. The Ottoman sword of Erdogan as a neighbour reaches most definitely into EU borders here.
I was priviledged to drive through the Bulgarian inlands recently and was struck by its beauty but by its torn apart nature as well. Completely abandoned villages where older people moved to big cities like Sofia and the younger even left the country were interspersed with flowering EU sponsored towns looking to the future in good spirits. This country really deserves some good leadership and some help to flower again as it did centuries ago.
Election season is not over. Vote with your mind, heart and soul (in that order :)))
(many thanks to the great cartoons of STASKL)
Page 3 of 8