The Top 10 Craziest Things Ever Said During a U.N. Speech

David Mitchell:

If academic endeavour had always been vetted in advance for practicality, we wouldn’t have the aeroplane or the iPhone, just a better mammoth trap.

Richard Laming

It is ironic that the people who complain most about the complexity of the treaty are the very same people who would complain if it was simple,…

Vaclav Klaus

The train carrying the treaty is going so fast and it’s so far that it can’t be stopped or returned, no matter how much some of us would want that.

Silvio Berlusconi

“I’m doing what I do with a sense of sacrifice. I don’t really like it. Not at all,” (…) “Very often there is a lot of dirty dealing; there is really the gutter press, worse than that, the shameless and sickly. It’s a difficult life to be responsible for leading the government in a country like Italy.”

“I never made any gaffes, not even one, every gaffe is invented by the newspapers.”

American official (asked about Cameron’s ECR group in the EP)

I do not see any upsides in the new grouping. I can only see downsides. In life it is normally best to do things when they have an upside.

Neil MacFarlane

We may be living post-historically. Russia is not.

Russia Today

Opposition candidates will get the right to lose elections.

Mark Danner

If Everybody Knew, Who’s To Blame?

Timothy Garton Ash

Europe is nice, boring and irrelevant. In many ways this is a great achievement. (…) The whole of Europe today is Greater Switzerland.

Horst Schlämmer

HSP is conservative, liberal, left-wing and a bit ecological.

The powers that the EU ought to have are those that the member states cannot exercise effectively on their own: no more and no less.

Nosemonkey:

the EU’s “democratic deficit”[...] is actually preserving the sovereignty of the member states.

Jean Quatremer:

(Solana) L’homme qui “parle toutes les langues sans qu’on puisse en comprendre aucune”.

Joschka Fischer:

Karlsruhe ballert in seiner Entscheidung mit verfassungsrechtlichen Kanonen auf imaginierte Spatzen: “ Wenn man das Urteil bis zum Ende lese, gewinne man den Eindruck, „man befände sich in einer Fraktionssitzung der britischen Konservativen“.

Norman Cohn (from the 1995 foreword to Warrant for Genocide (1967) – via Martin Amis:

There exists a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics [notably the lower clergy] for the benefit of the ignorant and superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally happens that this underworld becomes a political powerand changes the course of history.

Wolfgang Münchau:

A Europe presided over by Messrs Barroso and Blair is a modern European hell. Only it is no joke.

Tony Barber:

But it is almost an iron EU law that the people first mentioned in connection with big jobs are seldom the ones that get them.

Francisco G. Basterra (El Pais)

Global Vote, local mindset.

Lykke Friis

The EU elections are like a European soccer championship played in each national league with aggregated results.

Evenimentul Zilei

Send in the Clowns.

NikOs

To the 57% of Europeans: Not voting and at the same time speaking about a democratic deficit in the EU is pure hypocrisy

Kainde Manji

Nick Griffin is now a migrant worker. I wonder if he appreciates the irony…

Senior Swedish diplomat (on enlargement)

…the EU integration process is a qualifying process not a negotiation

A diplomat

It is not a pretty sight to have prime ministers drafting texts

Jason O Mahony:

Could it be that it was impossible to negotiate such a document between such a diverse bunch of reformers, religious conservatives, and people who are, shall we say, a little too fond of the stiff right arm?

Martin Kotynek

Finde ein Problem, das nicht existiert. Mache einen Riesenwirbel darum. Gib vor, es gelöst zu haben. Lass Dich dafür feiern.

Christian Meier (kressreport)

Es gibt sehr, sehr wenig, sehr qualifizierte Berichterstattung über Europa.

Leonard Novy

All das ist nicht nur banal und inhaltsleer – das ist praktizierte Europaverachtung (…) es bleibt es im Wahlkampf bei pro-europäischen Lippenbekenntnissen, populistischer EU-Kritik oder nationalen Themen

Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti

Zu komplex, zu schwierig, nicht in zwei Sätzen zu erklären. (…) So lange die Relevanz von Europa nicht täglich deutlich wird, so lange nur die nationale Karte gespielt wird, so lange werden die Bürger sich auch nicht an die Urne bemühen.

In 2004 Barroso was a compromise candidate, in 2009 he is a compromised candidate.

Daily Mail’s Chief Leader Writer

We couldn’t report on what is going on in Europe, and no paper can because the readers won’t wear it. It is simply not conceivable that we would cover, for example, the European Parliament.

Martin Wolf (FT)

The UK has a strategic nightmare: it has a strong comparative advantage in the world’s most irresponsible industry.

Stefan Kornelius

Europa ist eine Zumutung, die man sich zu-muten muss.

Daniel W. Drezner

Many social scientists focus on the myriad structural reasons why things are the way they are.  Policymakers believe they can help shape the way things are.  The last thing they often want to hear is why their ideas won’t work.  And while scholars can often explain why an idea won’t work, they are often at a loss to offer a superior, politically viable alternative.

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen:

I would have preferred the PES to have a candidate for the President of the European Commission, but we do not, and we will not before the elections.

Andrew Moravcsik:

Final anecdote: On my way back out to Heathrow I quizzed the cabby about the European elections. Exceptionally, he was not treating it as a “second-order election” on national politics but seemed really concerned about Europe. This meant–predictably–he was voting UKIP, consistent with the principle that extremists are disproportionately mobilized around Europe. Why UKIP? “We signed on for a free trade area,” he said, “and now Europe is taking over British politics, one issue at a time.” I asked him what issues concerned him most. “Not really sure,” he said. When I pressed him, he named human rights and criminal law (Council of Europe not the EU), and troops in Afghanistan (NATO), and third-country (Moslem) immigration (not a European competence at all). Only an anecdote, but multiply it by a million and you have the record of every West European EU election and referendum of which we have records. Need we say more about the prospects for meaningful deliberation on European politics?

Jean Quatremer (via Julien Frish and Opinion Corner):

Our newspaper is convinced that [the European Parliament election] is an event that has to be covered – but in the same way a plane crash has to be covered. We don’t have a choice.

Fredrik Reinfeldt (Prime Minister of Sweden):

…the voters are rational, they realize that the EU election is not (as) decisive for their everyday life and for the future.” He continues to say that there is a “tremendous difference” between national parliamentary elections and elections to the EP since the EP “has no influence on formation of government or influence”

Libertas:

Libertas.eu, the website of the pan European people’s movement for more democracy, accountability and transparency in the EU, had more visitors mid-week than any other political party in the world. Figures from Alexa, the web tracking company, for Wednesday May 13th , show Libertas blazing ahead, leaving even the US Democratic party website trailing.

stefanhapper:

you can cheat with alexa stats, especially for smaller sites (as it depends on people having the alexa toolbar)

On David Cameron:

Former PR man is said to apply ‘Daily Mail test’, asking ask how a claim would look on front page of a brutal tabloid

“I don’t want to run auto companies, and I don’t want to run banks. I’ve got two wars I’ve got to run already – I’ve got more than enough to do.”  Barack Obama (via euromatt)

At first sight the idea of centre-right communists sounds as odd as “moderate Trotskyites” or “secular jihadists”. Economist.com

“The real European election happens on 27 September.” Timothy Garton Ash

“Erfahrung heißt gar nichts. Man kann seine Sache auch 35 Jahre schlecht machen.” – Kurt Tucholsky

“When your business depends on people paying for the privilege of being locked up, the prison better look and feel luxurious, and the bars better not be too visible.” Lifehacker

“Wetter, Verwandtschaft und Staatsoberhäupter hat man nun mal.” – Karel Schwarzenberg

via Times Online

I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?”

Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”

Certain ideas of Europe:

Foreign visitors arriving via Eurostar at London’s St Pancras station on Thursday might have wondered just how badly Britain has been hit by the credit crunch: more than 100 people turned up at St Pancras wearing only their underpants.

Jochen Bittner’s blog “planet in progress”:

Neenee! Lassen Sie mal. Sie wurden gelobbyt!

Meiden Sie zuviel Champagner, er ruiniert Ihre Magenschleimhaut.