Bill SprichtJust another WordPress weblog

The Left owns political and economic Germany. That’s my opinion, anyway. By saying this, I’m not ignoring the FDP’s suprising success in today’s election. What I’m suggesting is this: Germany is in a very difficult economic situation after seven years of the SPD and Greens, a leftist coalition. Yet no amount of misery seems enough to tilt people towards trying out a more free market economy.

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The outrageous coverage of Hurricane Katrina here in Austria and Germany has included many references to “third world” similarities. See, for example, Ray’s blog posting concerning Stern magazine’s editorial, “Somalia in America’s South.” The sneering arrogance, the gruesome Schadenfreude and the completely over the top moralizing reminded me of something that occurred two years ago in the United States, which also elicited “third world” references.

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You know that Germany’s Der Spiegel and others are convinced — or, probably more accurately, pretend to be convinced — that the U.S. media is gleichgeschaltet, meaning it tows the U.S. government’s line. They like to suggest that there is no opposition media in the United States. I say “suggest”, because these intelligent German “elites” know full well that there is more variety in the U.S. media than the Germans could even dream of having in their own country.

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From the excellent Kiev News Blog: “Poll Says Russian Spin Doctors Bracing for ‘Velvet Revolution’”. Snippet:

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Try not to cringe when you read this release from the Center for Applied Policy Research (CAP) titled “Non, Nee, Ne, Nie or No – Consequences, Options, and Recommendations if the Constitution is Rejected” (PDF). I know nothing about the CAP, though from a quick jaunt around their website I would say they look like a more than respectable European think tank. Here’s their “Key Points” summary, but you should read the whole thing:

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Isn’t this interesting?

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How left can a German Social Dem get? Apparently very, very left. The SPD’s former chairman, Oskar Lafontaine, is leaving his party after 39 years to join up with other lefties in what I cheerfully translate as a “Lefty League” (Linksbündnis). The central party in the Lefty League is the so-called “Party of Democratic Socialism” (PDS), more accurately called the German Communists or perhaps the “inheritors of the Worker’s and Farmer’s Paradise”.

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DEM 0,00. That’s the amount of money that the unified German republic gave out to the Stasi’s victims, including those who spent years behind bars for trying to leave the country or for saying or doing things considered politically dangerous. Contrast that with the pensions enjoyed today by former “civil servants” of the East German Communist Dictatorship. Frau Honecker, I imagine, lives large in Chile, a real Pensionistin enjoying her last years.

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This one is from a book I am reading about East Germany, Mary Fulbrook’s Anatomy of a Dictatorship (US, UK). It begins the section named “Coercion and Control: Stasi, Police and Military”:

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Kosmoblog has a nice summary of the major players in the next (we hope) German government. Is Angela Merkel a new name to you? Then go check out his blog entry.

These are people we can deal with. I talked about Ms. Merkel a few times in 2003.