Tag Archives: Angela Merkel

Photo: Frau Merkel

24 Jan

She’s the daughter of an East German Communist apparatckik Lutheran pastor.  I’m sorry, but that’s all I need to know…  How much more of a moralizing and, at the same time, morally compromised, background can someone possibly be from.

I don’t know if readers get the full connotation of the word “apparatchik.”  But it means a member of a Communist party in former Eastern Europe that enjoyed the kind of privileges that more than anything made the supposed egalitarianism of the “existing socialism” of Communist Europe a heinous lie and an ugly joke.  It meant living well — comfortable housing, summer houses, trips abroad — as millions suffered…terribly.  And to have been a cleric in that structure that enjoyed official favor, you had to have been the worst kind of collaborator and informant for a horrendous system of terror.  And Protestant on top of it…

And the future of much of humanity rests in her hands.

CeBIT ErËffnung 2010(click)

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Merkel, Spain, Greece and Nasreddin’s donkey

21 Jul

Nasreddin Hoca had a donkey.  One day he got it into his head that he could save a lot of money on feed by training the donkey not to eat.  So every day he gave his donkey just a little less food.  At first the animal seemed to labor on as if nothing had changed.  Even after his diet had been halved, the poor strong young donkey just soldiered on.  But eventually, as his daily caloric intake got reduced to almost nothing, he got weaker and weaker and slower and slower, but Nasreddin was so happy at the money he was saving through his brilliant austerity plan that he didn’t even notice.

Then one fine day, the poor, martyred beast just up and died on him, on the road, right from under his legs.

Dead.

“Damn,” said Nasreddin, “and just when he had learned not to eat.”

And without a donkey’s back to ride, he had to walk.

 

(All Nasreddin Hoca stories are versions learned from my father and I think would be public domain already anyway.)

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