Suddenly, next month's German election looks like the 2002 vote which Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder narrowly won after wading into deadly Elbe River floods and leading European opposition to the Iraq war.
Observers rubbed their eyes in disbelief as Schroeder -- nicknamed "The Comeback Kid" for pulling off upsets -- announced he would be rushing to Bavaria yesterday to visit regions devastated by floodwaters pouring out of the Alps.
The chancellery has declared the trip to Augsburg an official visit -- not a campaign stop -- meaning Schroeder can fly down in a sleek, Luftwaffe helicopter.
It was not clear if the German leader plans to use the helicopter to tour the entire flood region and make other stops. In 2002, he donned rubber boots and a Border Police raincoat during visits to devastated flood areas, showing that he was taking charge of relief efforts. TV producers and photographers loved it.
For conservative challenger Angela Merkel -- who leads Schroeder in opinion polls -- this year's floods are a worrying development, even if they appear to be receding and have caused less damage.
Alarmed that electioneering looks bad amid a natural disaster, her Christian Democratic alliance (CDU/CSU) abruptly canceled a rally planned in Berlin for Wednesday with its Free Democratic Party ally.
A political cartoon in the city's Tagesspiegel newspaper showed a glum Merkel watching flood coverage on TV, while in the next room Schroeder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer are almost jumping in glee over the same pictures.
"This is the turning point!" Fischer shouts.
Iraq was also injected back into the campaign on Tuesday when it was revealed that Schroeder has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in opposing the 2003 US-led Iraq war.
"Peace Prize for the Chancellor? Will this save him?" was the page one headline in Wednesday's Bild tabloid, Germany's biggest selling daily.
And further down was the caption, "And the floods are back again," followed by a photo of a Merkel election poster half-covered by rushing floodwaters.
Schroeder is widely believed to have pulled off his razor-thin election win in 2002 thanks to the Elbe floods and the Iraq crisis which drew attention away from Germany's soaring unemployment and economic problems.
In another parallel to 2002, the chancellor earlier this month shifted attention from Iraq to Iran and called on US President George W. Bush to rule out using military force against Tehran's nuclear program.
"Take the military option off the table -- we have already seen it doesn't work!" Schroeder said at a rally with thousands of cheering supporters in his native Hanover.
Schroeder later added: "The situation is very serious. I view the military option as highly dangerous. Therefore I can clearly rule out any participation of the German government under my leadership."
This was a clear echo of his repeated "nein" to sending troops to Iraq which was a stock part of his campaign speech in 2002.
Schroeder was replying to remarks by Bush in which the US president repeated that he would consider using force against Iran as a last resort to halt its nuclear program.
With less than four weeks to Germany's planned Sept. 18 election, the question is whether this mix of floods, Iraq and Iran can save the chancellor's ruling Social Democratic (SPD) coalition with Greens from defeat.
Most analysts answer "no."
Klaus-Peter Schoeppner, head of the Emnid polling agency, says Schroeder has remained a constant 13 percentage points behind Merkel and that there is no way he can catch up in the time left.
"The threat in 2005 is the economic situation," said Schoeppner in a Bild interview.
Although major German companies are posting record earnings, the economy has been in stagnation for five years and unemployment is at almost 12 percent.
Forsa polling agency chief Manfred Guellner agreed: "The whole thing won't help the SPD."
University of Mainz political scientist Juergen Falter also downplays Schroeder's chances by saying jobs and the economy are the top voter concerns.
Only Elizabeth Noelle of the Allensbach polling agency cautioned that Schroeder's charisma should not be ruled out as a major election factor.
Merkel's CDU/CSU and FDP ally lead in Germany's top six polls with between 49 and 51 percent. In contrast, Schroeder's SPD-Greens government has between 36 and 38 percent.
A newly founded Left Party is at between 8 and 10 percent. Some analysts predict that a strong Left Party result, combined with last-minute Schroeder gains, could hinder Merkel from winning a majority.
This could force Merkel to seek a grand coalition with Schroeder's SPD as junior partner -- a constellation both leaders say they don't want.
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS