Chancellor Schroeder, respected in some areas because of his rejection of the Iraq war - has long since been backing down from that position and trying to mend fences with the Bush band. But he has used temporary popularity based on his seeming courage to push an all-out program to tear apart the social net in Germany, a welfare system which, with ups and downs, goes back in history to conservative old Chancellor Bismarck in the 1880's.

The excuse for cutting unemployment payments, chopping medical and dental care, hitting at the incomes of pensioners and similar plans - cheered on by the right-wing parties who always opposed him otherwise - is the economic catastrophe in Germany, with over four million unemployed - a rate in eastern Germany of nearly 20 percent. Another snake oil remedy is the "tax cut" trick - a very little cut for some middle class groups, a big cut for the very wealthy.

With the leftwing Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) chopped down to two lonely deputies in the Bundestag and full of internal quarrels, the main opposition to the anti-social plans have been the unions, united in the German Union Association (DGB). But while some of them also have a habit of buckling to pressures from above, the two biggest unions had been full of fight. One was the young union called ver.di - not a musicians union but a federation of five public service unions including everything from nurses to garbagemen, from postal and railroad workers to writers. The other, traditionally very militant union is IG Metall - for metal and electrical manufacturing trades and one of the biggest labor unions in the world.

read up on the german condition here.. comparison to thatcher crack at unions raises frightening prospects..

"If we are wrong, then we will have destroyed a threat that was at its least responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering,' Blair said. "I am confident history will forgive.'

Blair's confidence is justified. History has forgiven U.K. leaders for plenty. How else, for example, could U.S. News and World Report have dubbed Winston Churchill "The Last Hero" in a 2000 cover story? In that article, Churchill was said to believe in "liberty, the rule of law, and the rights of the individual."

As Sir Winston himself declared: "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

This is precisely why so few of us ever discuss Churchill as a war criminal or racist. In 1910, in the capacity of Home Secretary, he put forth a proposal to sterilize roughly 100,000 "mental degenerates" and dispatch several thousand others to state-run labor camps. These actions were to take place in the name of saving the British race from inevitable decline as its inferior members bred.

History has forgiven Churchill for his role in the Allied invasion of the Soviet Union in 1917. England's Minister for War and Air during the time, Churchill described the mission as seeking to "strangle at its birth" the Bolshevik state. In 1929, he wrote: "Were [the Allies] at war with Soviet Russia? Certainly not; but they shot Soviet Russians at sight. They stood as invaders on Russian soil. They armed the enemies of the Soviet Government. They blockaded its ports, and sunk its battleships. They earnestly desired and schemed its downfall."

blair + history with some churchillian fascist lyrics that would have made adolf blush

ALTOONA, PA—Will Zimmerman stepped into a local supermarket Monday to purchase a pint of half-and-half, but before he could fully comprehend the situation, the 28-year-old repairman was a member of the Feltz Foods $uper $aver's Club.

"Yeah, I've got the card right here in my wallet," said a pale and dazed Zimmerman as he revealed the 3"x2" laminated induction into the $uper $aver family. "I guess I'm supposed to present it at any Feltz Supermarket for super savings."