Angela Merkel - the view from Italy

Angela Merkel's desk is dominated by a portrait of Catherine II, the great German tsarina who began a written correspondence with Voltaire. Every now and then, even the German chancellor takes a break from economic relations and political advisors and gives herself some time to reflect. To this end, she occasionally brings together a few writers and academics, specialising in radically different disciplines and simply listens. Last summer, during one of these dinners, she was asked how long she would carry on demanding sacrifices from Greece. "As long as the bags under Papandreou's eyes are smaller than mine," she replied.

Regularly crowned the most powerful woman in the world in international surveys, Merkel is aware that, after her rapid ascent to become not only the first female chancellor, but also the youngest in German history, the euro crisis will be her most critical test. It is that which will determine whether Helmut Kohl's former pupil is worthy of a place in the history books, and whether or not it is adorned with flattering adjectives.

However, the future of the single currency also depends on whether Germany can maintain its leadership role in Europe. Inevitably, it has provoked distrust in the rest of the continent: in which the chancellor's costly dilly-dallying during the debt crisis, led to remarks about a third world war in the British press. Even the new stability agreement, which has been subject to rigorous German accounting, incites fears that Europe is strangling its own growth potential.

In 1990, it was Kohl who discovered the woman he called "the girl". Then a 36-year-old physics researcher, she had grown up behind the iron curtain, wore enormous skirts and sported the haircut of a medieval knight. Within a few months the chancellor had catapulted her to the top of federal politics. There, she soon showed herself to have a great capacity for diplomacy and to be an unusually fast learner. As the daughter of a protestant minister, she took advantage of the fact that parties such as the CDU/CSU were almost entirely dominated by men who underestimated her.

It is common knowledge that, on her road to victory, she even pushed aside her mentor in 2000, when she called upon the party – then crushed by allegations it had obtained illicit funds – to liberate itself from the "Father of Reunification". But from 2005, when she took over the top job, Merkel has shown herself capable of being at the helm of a country that, since its entry into the euro, has lost the only symbol of power granted to it since the second world war: the deutschmark.

The chancellor's habit of letting reason triumph over visionary impulses and Kohl-type breakaways is clear to see. It may possibly owe something to the after-effects of a motor problem in her legs, which forced her since childhood to plan the smallest of manoeuvres in advance. And, as she has herself declared, the experience of living under a communist dictatorship in East Germany has above all taught her to distrust everyone. This distrust, in turn, has fed into her proverbial caution and pragmatic approach towards European politics.

A positive side to this pragmatism is shown in her attitude towards the European Central Bank and its extraordinary transactions – which more orthodox Germans continue to brand a violation of the treaties. The chancellor, however, is well aware it continues to be the only bulwark against an escalation of the crisis.

And when Axel Weber, a candidate for the German presidency, unexpectedly withdrew from the contest in protest against the bank's new functions, Merkel backed the installation of the Italian Mario Draghi as its new head.

The accession of the other "super Mario" – Monti, in Italy, which has served to bring that country more closely into the fold – has proved something of a relief for Merkel. Even the former head of the EU's antitrust body recently admitted that Merkel's mission is to "make Italians more similar to Germans". Who knows if she will succeed. And, above all, who knows if the Germans will then like us more.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/25/angela-merkel-italy-profile

Some little known facts about women

For Internationsl Women's Day

Women are half of world population, and put in two thirds of the working hours.

Women receive ten per cent of the wages and salaries, and own less than one per cent of the property.

Notes from oblivion

Notes from oblivion

Well, ‘Death sentence’ is putting it rather harshly, I guess, tho’ it happens to be quite true; kinder to say that human civilization has been found wanting as an appropriate steward and is therefore gently removed by the judge from whom there is no appeal, Mother Earth herself.

Feel any better?

No one owns the earth, she is too old. She owns us. From her we come, and to her we return.

Meanwhile, a little comparative sociology, or study of cultures, might be appropriate.

I pray to Mercury, god of thieves, also known as Hermes Psychopompos, conductor of the dead. All prayers are answered but sometimes the answer is No.

The streams of methane bubbles erupting copiously off the Siberian Peninsula in Russia, and also in the western European Arctic, as the permafrost melts, where all this methane has been frozen for thousands of years, do signal an important shift in stewardship, however. We really didn’t cut it, with all those circuses and no bread.

Hermes? Mercury? What’s that got to do with the price of fish?

Well, it’s pretty simple, actually. Thor, the thunderer, Zeus, Jupiter, the lord of hosts, they’re all models of the Thug, a fearsome figure in warm and comfortable climes where the living is easy and the women plentiful. Living in the frozen North is very different.

To understand the difference read a short story by Jack London, written with all his usual skill, ‘To light a fire.’ It’s only a few pages.

Once you’ve done that, you know without thinking about it why Hermes is now that speeding figure in winged helmet and winged sandals delivering long stemmed roses for Valentine’s Day. And why Odin himself, an old one eyed guy in a slouch hat, and Vili (Thought) and Ve (Memory) rule our icy world.

The Thug is no use in the frozen North, a permanent liability, in fact. But the guy who knows a thing or two, has some special knowledge, aha, yes!

[It’s worth mentioning, perhaps, that Uncle Sam might wonder if a white hat after all those black hats might not be a great idea.

Generations of schoolboys know, from lighting each others farts, that methane is highly flammable. Throw in Halliburton, and KBR, (and Red Whatsisname who put out the burning oilwells in Iraq)under a declared state of emergency, and start the factories mass producing flame throwers. With any luck the ascending streams of bubbles of methane could catch fire, the flames rising ever higher to burn the methane off.

A possibility, but not a very strong likelihood.]

Northerners, Scandinavians and such, tend to be scornful of Thor, the Thug, his defeat in the wrestling match against the old woman in the hall of the ice giants seen as the fate of the arrogant. That the old woman turned out to be old age, which nothing and no one defeats, is not really relevant.

But did not the poet say we must learn to laugh and to grow roses in the black stones of the meeting halls? Why not long stemmed at $25 a pop for Valentine’s? Life affirming, and they look good.

‘C’est toi, hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère.’

The Buddha does not strike one as a very bright guy compared to, say, Thomas Aquinas. The main reaction to any of his really illuminating statements is to clutch one’s forehead and say “My God! He’s right! It’s obvious! How come I never noticed that?” The answer is that like everybody else you didn’t start with an ingrained experience of normality, but got dropped straight into this sewer where you spend the rest of your days.

A reasonable example is his instruction to spend a year without opening your mouth, just doing your chores. At the end of the year, said the blessed Siddhartha Gautama, “You will know that there is nothing to ask, and there is no one to answer.” Indeed.

The Turks, much feared for their savagery in battle, are responsible, by the way, for a number of things we now see as distinguishing marks of Islam. Mohammed (PBUH), a junior member of a good merchant family, started life as a program manager for a company owned by a woman rather older than he was, who eventually proposed marriage to him, and he accepted. This should warn us his world was not what we’d now call Islamic.

It was the Ottoman Turks who had the custom of “hareem,” and the sultan used to wander in, when fancy took him, to the separate palace where he kept all his nookie guarded by large guys with important items of equipment removed. He might actually tell one to report for duty that night, an almost unbearable honor, but probably he’d look at a few with interest and exchange a few words. Persons thus honored got to wear a badge saying “smiled at by the sultan” and the others had to kiss their butts and make their tea and so forth.

These Turkish customs became the model of correct behavior during the hundreds of years the sultans were the head of Islam, right down to the remote and dusty province at the extreme limit of their empire called Arabia. Those in between not quite wealthy enough to afford a separate establishment and eunuchs for guards tended to adopt the Syrian habit of sticking a bag over their head if they went out, and forbidding by law contact with any male except relatives.

Still, most life went on inside, of course, and the typical Damascus house, all blank stone walls from the outside, looks terrific on the inside, all fountains, and gardens, and balconies.

Your typical bedu would be convinced you were deranged if you suggested any such thing to him, of course. “Who the hell’s going to look after the goats?” If you think the women spend all day inside the tent painting their toe nails while the lads get the work done and haul in the tucker for them, you’ve never been in a large family.