Ralf Goergens

Gerhard Schröder is finally gone for good, and stayed true to form in his farewell:

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who has led Germany since 1998, said for the first time on Wednesday he would not play a role in the next government, in an emotional farewell including broadsides at the United States and Britain.

I will not be a part of the next government — definitely not be part of it,” a tearful looking Schroeder told a rapt audience of union members in his home city of Hanover.

He quickly composed himself, hitting his stride in a passionate defense of a strong German state and lashing out at “Anglo-Saxon” economic policies favoured in Britain and the United States, which he said had “no chance” in Europe.

In an apparent reference to Hurricane Katrina, Schroeder castigated Washington for liberal, hands-off policies that left it exposed in times of crisis…

“I do not want to name any catastrophes where you can see what happens if organised state action is absent. I could name countries, but the position I still hold forbids it, but everyone knows I mean America,” he said to loud applause.

It took him some weeks, but he finally has realized that getting fewer votes than another party means that you have effectively lost the elections. I already had posted about his strange behavior on election night here. It is worth to look at in more detail, for it is, according to people who have know him intimately, not quite so strange for him after all, and indeed symptomatic for his whole personality:

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This is part of what I was getting at here:

Filmmaker Spike Lee on Tuesday announced he is making a film for HBO about the post-Hurricane Katrina flooding in New Orleans, and said he wouldn’t be shocked if conspiracy theories of intentional government involvement in the flooding proved true.

Lee’s appearance on CNN, to promote his new co-authored memoir/biography, Spike Lee: That’s My Story and I’m Sticking To It, followed a report on the rumors circulating among evacuees that the government somehow engineered the flooding of the largely black and poor Ninth Ward section of New Orleans.

…

Asked about the possibility that the rumors of government involvement had any truth, Lee said it wouldn’t surprise him.

“It’s not too far-fetched … I don’t put anything past the United States government,” Lee said. “I don’t find it too far-fetched that they tried to displace all the black people out of New Orleans.”

Also don’t miss this ridiculous article by Jesse Jackson.

I have seen this at several wargaming forums:

If World War Two had been an online Real Time Strategy game, the chat room traffic would have gone something like this:

*Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.*
*Eisenhower has joined the game.*
*paTTon has joined the game.*
*Churchill has joined the game.*
*benny-tow has joined the game.*
*T0J0 has joined the game.*
*Roosevelt has joined the game.*
*Stalin has joined the game.*
*deGaulle has joined the game.*
Roosevelt: hey sup
T0J0: y0
Stalin: hi
Churchill: hi
Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks!
paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks
T0JO: lol
Roosevelt: o this fockin sucks i got a depression!
benny-tow: haha america sux
Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool?
Hitler[AoE]; sure whatever
Stalin: cool
deGaulle: **** Hitler rushed some1 help
Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
Roosevelt: i dont got **** to help, sry
Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
Roosevelt: get antiair guns
Churchill: i cant afford them
benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
paTTon: stfu
Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
deGaulle: eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
Eisenhower: i cant do **** til rosevelt gives me an army
paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
*deGaulle has left the game.*

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Link via Daily Pundit:

Iraq’s Sunnis must recognise new realities

The truth is that a number of Sunni Arabs – notably those who were active Ba’athists – have yet to make the mental adjustment that their new status demands. Deep down, they still feel entitled to run the whole country. In much the same way, a number of Indian Muslims argued, in the 1930s, that, since the British had taken India from the Moguls, the entire subcontinent ought to be handed back to them. In time, of course, they realised that they would be better served by an autonomous Muslim polity. By the same token, Sunni Arabs will one day bless the federalism that their leaders currently decry. For, though they have yet to accept it, they are the minority now.

I don’t think that this really is the comparison the Daily Telegraph wants to make:

India had traditionally been regarded as the most valuable component of the British Empire, and its possession as proof of British world power. Yet the war had strained Britain’s capacity to direct a global empire and this helps explain Britain’s agreement to Indian self-government after the war.

However the transition to independence was not smooth and Britain failed to achieve a constitutional settlement which both the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League could accept. As a result, Imperial India was divided into the modern states of India and Pakistan. Communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims erupted into violence which the British could not quell and in which many thousands died.

There is no good reason to think that the Iraqi Sunnis will follow the example of the majority of India’s Muslims and try to form a state of their own, leave alone at this cost. But you really have to wonder why the Telegraph chose this particular bit of history, and on top of that seems to think they are citing an encouraging precedent. They really ought to know better, considering that it is an important part of British history. Maybe they chose to remember that Britain gave up on its colonies in a relatively graceful manner, and to forget the more unpleasant side effects.

Reader and commenter Jeff had asked in the comments to this post:

…I’d be curious for your opinion about the relationship between the European people and their media. Do European people hold these anti-American opinions because it’s the main (and sometimes only) perspective their media provide, or are the media simply providing the perspective that the European people are demanding?

I think that my response is a good enough summary of the problem to stand on its own as a post, so here it is in a somewhat edited form:

There is a kind of interaction here, people are used to a steady diet of anti-Americanism, and that serves as the background for what people expect from the media.

You have to keep one fundamental fact in mind: Anti-Americanism isn’t based on envy towards America’s greater wealth and power, rather anti-Americanism is designed to prevent its recipients from feeling envy towards Americans. The American way of life, and doing business, is undoubtedly producing better results than the various European ones, and is undermining the position of the European elites. To limit the damage, they have the media they own, and the public broadcasters they control, put out said propaganda, so that the unwashed masses, as they see us, won’t want to emulate those uncouth Americans.

Conversely, most people know that something is going wrong over here, but have invested so much work in what they own, that they desperately want to hear that all that time and effort has not been in vain. So they are more than willing to hear that American wealth and power comes with an unacceptably high price. This makes them eager consumers of anti-American propaganda, and they will come back for more on a daily basis.

In other words, anti-Americanism and socialism have become the new opiate of the masses, to quote Karl Marx. In a way this is absolutely hilarious, considering that he also had said: ‘History occurs twice, the first time as tragedy, the the second time as farce’ (alright, the quote is a bit streamlined :), for what could be more farcical than present-day Europe.