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Spain

Spanish Daily El Pais Compares Angela Merkel To Hitler, Apologizes

EL PAIS (Spain), DIE WELT (Germany), BBC MUNDO

Worldcrunch

MADRID - After publishing a column comparing German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Adolf Hitler, Spanish daily El Pais has now retracted the piece and apologized following an outcry from Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

In the column titled “Germany Against Europe”, economist Juan Torres Lopez wrote: “Angela Merkel, like Hitler, has declared war on the rest of the continent, this time to guarantee (Germany) it’s vital economic space.”

El Pais has since taken down the article and published an apology in which it laments “that an error in supervision tasks allowed the publication of the material.” The column was published in the paper’s Andalusian regional edition says BBC Mundo, and El Pais emphasized that the views were the author’s own.

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photo by � (Aleph)

In the column, Torres Lopez wrote of Merkel: “She punishes us to protect (Germany’s) big companies and banks, whilst hiding from her electorate how the shameful model has seen the level of poverty rise to the highest it has been in 20 years, how 25% of her employees earn less than 9.15 euros per hour or how the half the population represent a miserable 1% of the total wealth of the country.”

On his website, Torres Lopez also made a statement on the retraction. “It’s true that in my article I said that in my opinion Germany has declared economic war on the rest of Europe, and that I compared it to the search of vital space that Hitler began the war for, but I believe that this should be understood as the comparison of two regrettable historic facts about unequal policy and not as the comparison of two political leaders.”

The column has provoked a backlash, particularly in Germany. Die Welt wrote that Germans are getting used to the backlash after each economic failure in Europe, but that the ugly German appears where people are looking for scapegoats.

I guess I am not the only one that feels that #Germany has crossed the line w their constant propaganda attacks on other #Europeans. #ElPais

— pedro dlv hernandez (@BcnFox) March 24, 2013

If @el_pais is so dumb to compare #Merkel to #Hitler at least make a #Guernica reference rather than #Lebensraum. ow.ly/jnwi1

— The Local (@TheLocalGermany) March 25, 2013

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Geopolitics

Why The World Still Needs U.S. Leadership — With An Assist From China

Twenty years of costly interventions and China's economic ascent have robbed the United States of its global supremacy. It is time for the two biggest powers to work together, to help the world.

Photograph of Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden walking side by side in the Filoli Estate in the U.S. state of California​

Nov. 15, 2023: Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden take a walk after their talks in the Filoli Estate in the U.S. state of California

Xinhua/ZUMA
María Ángela Holguín*

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — The United States is facing a complex moment in its history, as it loses its privileged place in the world. Since the Second World War, it has been the world's preeminent power in economic and political terms, helping rebuild Europe after the war and through its growing economy, aiding the development of a significant part of the world.

For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.

Its model of democracy, long considered exemplary around the world, has gone through a rough patch, thanks to excessive polarization and discord. This has cost it a good deal of its leadership, unity and authority.

How much authority does it have to chide certain countries on democracy, as it does, after such outlandish incidents as the assault on Congress in January 2021? The fights we have seen over electing a new speaker of the House of Representatives or backing the administration's foreign policy are simply incredible.

In Ukraine's case, President Biden failed to win support for the aid package for which he was hoping, even if there is a general understanding that if Russia wins this war, Europe's stability would be at risk. It would mean the victory of a longstanding enemy.

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