Rip Eye

 

My transparent German butcher has Rip Eye steaks on offer. 

 

 

Merkel – the sad end

I used to like German chancellor Merkel, who is privately modest – nowadays hard to find amongst the world’s senior politicians. I also felt that I could support her basic values, which took the conservative CDU left of where it used to be. I also liked the way she handled the Corona crisis in the beginning, taking professional advice to guide her in leading Germany’s policy.

 

Merkel has to work within the limitations of the country’s federal structure (imposed on it by the Allies, to prevent a strong centrally run Germany). Sixteen federal states, each with its own ego-driven prime-minister, have made Merkel’s Corona job almost impossible.

 

Having understood the severity of the Corona problem at an early stage, Merkel should have demanded federal jurisdiction in Corona matters. Instead, she left logistics, tracking and tracing, testing and vaccinating to the sixteen states. And the chaos is great. She then left the all-important procurement of vaccines to an impotent and inexperienced EU apparatus. The result is that Europe’s richest country is vaccinating like a third-world country: It has neither enough vaccine, nor has it built the logistics for vaccinating its population.

 

After 15 years as chancellor, Merkel is doubtlessly tired, and it shows. Sadly, she is now a lame duck, at the very time when one needs an empowered and powerful head of the executive.

Frederiksen - The Not Great Dane

The prime ministers of Austria and Denmark travelled to Israel last week to discuss possible collaboration with Israel in research and production of vaccines.

 

I have no expectations, moral or other, of Austria’s prime-minister Kurz. It is, however, a bloody shame that the Danish social-democrat Frederiksen hands a propaganda asset to beleaguered corrupt Netanyahu, two weeks before a general election is held in Israel.

 

There was no need for such a top-level meeting, only to discuss vaccine collaboration – unless it was all about the show: Denmark and Austria expressing their unhappiness about von der Leyen’s failed vaccine procurements. To achieve that, they were willing to meet Netanyahu.

 

Mrs. Frederiksen – in case your intelligence briefing forgot to mention this – Israel is now being investigated by the International Criminal Court for war-crimes. Moreover, in January, the renowned Israeli NGO B’tselem has issued its report “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.”

 

Pfui Frederiksen.