This month it is difficult to ramble in the German Jottings, considering the Libyan Slaughterhouse and the Japanese Inferno. John Lennon’s Imagine comes to mind and I feel that whereas we had made long strides towards a world living in peace, it is the famous one step forward, two steps backwards scenario.
But duty is calling because Germany is busy embarrassing itself. Do you remember the demonstrations in favour of Mubarak? People got paid to demonstrate for him but imagine the Germans doing it for free!
Remember our dear aristocratic Defence Secretary? He finally resigned (after being pushed) over his thesis, which he had copied in large parts, additionally abusing the scientific service of our Parliament for this purpose. People went to demonstrate for his return, because he is the most popular politician! The truth is, so far, he has achieved nothing apart from calling the situation in Afghanistan a war and refusing subventions for Opel (Astra), which is not surprising for a right-wing politician, whose election success does not depend on the Opel vote.
But apart from being loaded (wealthy) and connected, this less than truthful person never finished any job training and if he hadn’t been loaded and with good connections, he would be a prime candidate for long-term income support!
He is neither able nor glamorous. The problem is that the others are so awful that he seems able and glamorous. Look at our Environment Secretary, who does not even shy away from using arguments that strike so far below the belt that the Mariana Trench is on the same level as the top of Mount Everest by comparison.
The talk is about E10, a new fuel containing 10% bio fuel. Nobody wants it, because it can damage engines. Nobody knows whether its combustion is environmentally friendly nor whether bio fuel in reality is contributing to higher food prices and the clearing of rain forests. E5 already exists and is generally accepted. This guy has the guts to say publicly that refuelling with E10 damages Gaddafi, insinuating that refuelling with E10 is a moral duty. This way he would save a maximum of 0.4% of our oil imports from Gaddafi’s bloody hands, only to damage motors, the environment and perpetuate food poverty.
It is utterly disgusting to push an ill-conceived product that nobody wants, with the argument that it counters the slaughter of a nation by its dictator. Especially when he has been standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Gaddafi’s regime and exporting weapons to them for years. He is not a cheat, he is purely mean.
Fortunately our Angela Merkel remains the steadfast figurehead of German conviction. She has a real PHD (in physics), which seemed to qualify her particularly well to sell longer-than-planned running life of nuclear power plants. Now, six months later she established a moratorium of three months and closed eight nuclear plants temporarily.
The lights did not go off and I wonder why six months ago everything was so safe in Germany that everything just would have carried on for another eight years, if there had not been the Japan disaster?
The UN sanction on Libya was the German highlight of the month, siding with China and Russia, the Numbers One and Two in breaching Human Rights.
Now, after the rest of the ‘decent’ world is in favour of an intervention, Merkel feels strongly for it, too.
Do you remember, Angela, how you pushed for the Euro rescue umbrella so strongly after the other countries already had overtaken you twice? And how long you supported the plagiarism minister? May be you should get an alarm clock.