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Thursday, September 01, 2005

BUNDESTAGSWAHL 2005 / GERMAN ELECTION LOG: GERMAN LEFT TURN TO HYSTERIA AND PARANOIA IN ELECTION
Obviously being desperate in an election campaign require desperate measures. So it's time to open the German left's favourite bogeyman, America.
First up, the hopeless Left-Party's Oskar Lafontaine has found an intolerable infringement of German sovereignty:

Addressing the congress of the party, an alliance of Social Democratic dissidents and neo-Communists, in Berlin on Saturday, Mr Lafontaine said: "We are not a sovereign country; as long as the US can operate from here, we are a participant in the Iraq war."

Being a participant in the Iraq war or not is not really the defining characteristic of being a sovereign country but I'll let that slide as unfortunate rhetoric. So Germany is not sovereign because of US troops on its soil? Nevermind European integration, the Euro, the ICC, . . . It's obvious this is just Yank-bashing, and there is no evidence whatsoever that the US forces in any way have any influence over German policy. Quite obviously not when you come to think of it.
Of course Schroeder's governing SPD doesn't want to be left out of this, so for the SPD parliamentary vice-chairman Michael Mueller the opposition's expert on finance, Paul Kirchoff, is the German representative of the US "neoconservatives". Apparently Kirchoff has a secret agenda to turn Germany into a "different republic" (a very loaded term in Germany), allied as he is with Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who of course are responsible for the Iraq war. So there you have it. A finance expert with no public position on Iraq is given the German Left's standard "neocon!"-smear and associated with the Iraq war. (hat tip No Blood for Sauerkraut-Paul)
This obsession with Iraq continues of course with the governing Greens. On a poster which is hanging up all over Berlin, the party asks voters to "Yes! New Energy instead of oil and nuclear". It is illustrated with a picture of a desert, and you can see the shadow of three soldiers on the desert floor.
What has that to do with renewable energies? Well, Iraq of course. Those soldiers are of course Yank-imperialist-stormtroopers out to steal other peoples' oil! Everything is about Iraq! It is all America's fault!
Dear oh dear. They really must be running short on ideas for the future let alone actual achievements in government if this anti-American posturing is all that they can put up. (see John Rosenthal as well.)
Iraq! Iraq! Iraq!, but hang on, they can do empty ad hominem attacks too of course, as Schroeder's wife now demonstrates:

The life of Angela Merkel "is not such that she can represent the experiences of the majority of women," Doris Schröder-Köpf told Die Zeit. "They are busy trying to juggle a family and a career, or deciding whether to spend a few years at home after having a baby or wondering how best to bring up their children. This is not Angela Merkel's world," she said.
. . .
A woman without children could not claim to be a supporter of women's rights, she said.

Why not?! So women are only allowed to go into politics if they have had children? That's a pretty bizarre new form of sexism if I may say so. Also quite tall of Schroeder-Kopf to go on as if she had to make any of those difficult decisions she alludes to. It's not too difficult to juggle work and children if you're well off as she is and can afford nannies and all that stuff. So in fact the Chancellor's wife's credibility in this form is equally zero. This kind of smearing is doubly unacceptable because:

Mrs Merkel, 51, has deliberately avoided dwelling on her status as a woman in politics in the election campaign

It will truly be a joy when the Schroeders get in the removal van. I fear however that the German Left's anti-American hysterics and Iraq obsession will be with us rather longer.
Updated

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Comments:
A reader has pointed out that the link doesn't take youz to the Greens' poster anymore so I've uploaded the one I saved onto disk.
 




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