Do Yourselves a Favor – Turn a Blind Eye to Who I Am

My false feathers - too beautiful to be rejected! (courtesy justrecently.wordpress.com)

As early as in summer 2010, it apparently dawned on several German scientists that then defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg had, to say the least, been sluggish when writing his doctoral thesis. A postgraduate had written an essay about inconsistencies in Guttenberg’s work, and offered it to several professors – but neither of them was interested, reports “Die Welt”.

And why should they? If you show similar misdemeanor, umm, sluggisnhess, as a sales clerk, you’ll be fired, and it may take you years before someone will employ you again. If a small bugger tries to fiddle his dissertation and gets caught – I mean, if he works so negligently -, he can kiss all his academic ambitions good-bye, and rightly so. But when you are a defence minister, and some gripers simply don’t allow you to look  the other way anymore, you’ll give the ex-minister a job in a North-American think tank.

If Guttenberg wants to return into politics is a question he hasn’t yet answered, even though he gave a long interview to the chief editor of “Die Zeit”. But you bet that he is working towards that goal.

“Der Spiegel”‘s Jan Fleischhauer is making fun of Guttenberg, and compares him to former protestant bishop Margot Kässmann. Guttenberg’s “apologies” sound pretty much like Kässmann’s, he believes, and the religious effect makes such apologies so powerful, Fleischhauer adds with more than just a shot of irony. “How can you not forgive them?”

One problem that Fleischhauer doesn’t touch upon though is that a true confession would have to include a detailed description of how the fake, umm, sluggish approach had been conducted. But there are no such details.

There are two things to learn from this: there is one kind of law applicable to upper classes in Germany, and one for the lower. When Helmut Kohl flatly refused to name the gentlemen who had provided his political party with illegal donations, he wasn’t even taken into coercive detention.

Guttenberg’s “apology” to the German public amounts to this: “I’m so sorry, but my life will be destroyed, if you aren’t prepared to forget what I have done. After all, I must become federal chancellor. There is no other way!”

If that’s the chancellor the German people really want, they will get exactly the government they deserve. If his lack of character and substance isn’t obvious enough, any man will be good enough to lead this country.

The current government, led by Angela Merkel, might still be way above what should be good enough for this country.

There seems to be a Dolphin Submarine on Offer…

Dolphin submarine (Wikimedia Commons)

Israel may not get this one, reports DER SPIEGEL, and Taiwan could use one (or many) of these diesel-electric (and fuel-cell propelled) submarines.

If only the technology would stay in Taiwan. With some help from Taipei, China might re-engineer that thing within ten years. The KMT and the CCP are said to be very close. Almost like brothers. And the Taiwan Strait is a flash point. China told the German government so.

But what are we supposed to do with that thing? Putting it into a thema park?

Simply Put, “Genocide”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (Wikimedia Commons): wish you were here.

I’m wondering if Ankara can see their demand for an Israeli apology – or severance of diplomatic ties – through. Does the Turkish government need something that would confirm and justify their own hubbub, in the face of the Turkish public at home? A face-saving operation from Tel Aviv?

Maybe Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s prime minister, and many of his fans, have become too used to their own rhetoric. “The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide”, His Excellency reportedly said last year. And in the books of many other “critics” – not Erdoğan’s, to avoid misunderstandings -, there is “genocide” in the Gaza territory. If there is any nation that never committed one, it is, for sure, Turkey itself. “After all, a Muslim can never commit genocide.”  Allah be praised!

Just two estimates – from the CIA Factbook:

Category	Gaza	Turkey
Death Rate	3.36 deaths/1,000 population	6.1 deaths/1,000 population
Infant Mortality Rate	17.71 deaths/1,000 live births	24.84 deaths/1,000 live births

Granted – no information that stems from the Middle East should be taken without a pinch of salt – but if this spells genocide in Gaza, it must be a human right to be on the receiving end.

From Tehran, for a Clearer Picture

Iran has supplied sophisticated radar to Syria that can monitor Israeli air force sorties and threaten its ability to attack Iranian nuclear targets by surprise, Reuters quotes the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ quotes – unnamed by Reuters – Israeli and US officials.

A spokesman for the Syrian embassy in Washington, Ahmed Salkini, denounced the allegation as “classic Israeli PR stunts aimed at diverting the world’s attention from the atrocities they are committing in Gaza and other occupied territories”.

The tech transfer was reportedly carried out about a year ago. In 2007, Israeli fighter jets bombed a Syrian site that the Israelis said housed a nuclear reactor in the final stages of construction. The BBC points out that there has been a UN ban on Iran since 2007 to sell or supply weapons to other countries.

Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad travelled Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil, and Argentina last week. MercoPress (Montevideo) writes that Syrian communities are very strong and economically influential in Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina, advocating the establishment of “a new and more just international order” by including Brazil in the U.N. Security Council.

On June 29, Radio Damascus, in a commentary, noted that

The countries currently visited by president al-Assad – Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and Cuba – all adopt stands that support the just Arab cause. At the same time, their stands confront the policies of hegemony, war, and terrorism in the whole world. Those states have suffered a lot from the American policies and interference in the affairs of states and peoples. The previous American administrations supported dictatorial regimes, and supported them against their peoples.

Now, Damascus apparently believes, it is time for America to support Syria’s dictatorial regime. And no more distractions, please.