Will The Real ... Please Stand Up?

Ulrich Speck raises an interesting point in his blog (German). After Chavez ludicrous speech before the UN assembly followed (or precedented?) by Ahmadinejad's rant prompted Speck to wonder where in the world there is a serious antipole to George W. Considering the ridicolousness of Chavez and his lunatic side-kick (actually Chavez probably should be Doc Holiday to Ahmadinejad's posing as a gun-craving Wyatt Earp) one really has to be amazed that there is no national leader that would stand up to W at least every once in a while. Chirac is a lame duck already, Schröder cannot blindly follow his electorate anymore, Blair never was more than an American satrap anyway, now he is a lame duck too, while Merkel does dare to mention certain - before - unspeakable aspects (Guantanamo) she apparently does not have the will to try to form some kind of European front against the Bush's follies. The Chinese only care about their economy growth and the oil they need to fuel it, Lula has too many inner-state problems to worry about anything else, the smaller European nations (Zapatero, Prodi -- Kaczynski) are diametrically too opposed to ensure any kind of common European stand (making Solana as irrelevant as ever).

There seriously is no one who could be taken seriously and would present any kind of opposition to the current US-administration. A very sad state of affair this is.