Re: Radbruch1929 Merkel plays the Yank bashing card again!
Personally I'm not concerned with whether Merkel fiddled with physics or chemistry (bit of both apparently), it doesn't mean that she understands the innerned anyway. However, there does seem to be value in parts of those policies. If the amount of traffic (e.g. for inner-German email providers) that leaves (1) Germany and then (2) Europe can be reduced, that'll make it harder to intercept and even more of an affront when someone's caught red handed.
And as for compromised nodes, Germans tend to be thorough and they'll certainly see what can be done, longer-term not necessarily just in Germany (hell, there were significant German investments in the Czech Republic to reduce the amount of chemicals Czech companies released into e.g. the river Elbe a few decades ago, why not help out with secure networking infrastructure). While it's obviously impossible to attain complete security, it's certainly possible to make it harder/more expensive for an attacker.
I'm neither a big fan of Merkel nor of the nuclear exit that's being performed. However:
> In fact, she has done SFA other than be another vote-chasing, opportunistic, European politician. She used the Fukishima event in a cynical attempt to reduce the impact the Greens were having: ...
What she has done is reacted to the vast protests and overwhelming public opinion (which in large parts had been there well before Fukushima). Yes, presumably largely to ensure she stays in power and prevent the Greens taking a massive surge in votes. Not sure what's wrong with bending to voter's will. Looks almost like a functioning democracy.
It seems a pretty decent feature of German democracy that thanks to proportional representation small parties can and do effect the way things are going, sadly for the Greens in this case Merkel managed to neuter them by embracing one key aspect of their policies. Looks similar to what Gerhard Schroeder did when he realized that participating in an attack on Iraq would be the end of his days in power. Germans are certainly chuffed they had no part in "hmmm-now-where-are-the-WMDs?"
Biting the hand that feeds IT
