Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

After years of acting as Chancellor Gerhard's Schröder's mouthpiece, Germany's leading newsweekly, Der Spiegel, seems to have had enough. The straw that broke the lapdog's back is the German leader's deranged insistence on ending the EU arms embargo imposed on the Chinese communists in the wake of their massacre of pro-democracy protestors in Tiananmen Square in 1989. In a blistering attack today, the magazine's website pokes into Schröder's past and comes up with some choice stuff about his empathy for tyrants. For example: With the East German dictatorship on the verge of collapse in 1989, Schröder was still saying the likes of: "After 40 years of the Federal Republic one shouldn't delude a new generation in Germany about the chances of reunification. It's not going to happen."

Long depicted here as an iniquitous opportunist who stoked the fires of anti-Americanism to secure his re-election, Schröder has now gone off the deep end and seems intent on ripping up the tattered remains of what counts for German foreign policy. But why? Well, seeing that his economic policy has delivered nothing but zero growth and mass unemployment, Schröder is cornered and the only card he can play is the pro-China, anti-American one. With a crucial regional election in May in the state of North Rhein-Westphalia, which is seen as dress rehearsal for next year's general election, and the polls showing Schröder's SPD losing after having ruled the state for 39 years, desperation is in the air. History shows us that it is in exactly such times that unprincipled men such as Schröder can be expected to do crazy things. Things such as calling for the arming of despots.