Talk about peace bis zum Umfallen (tell you drop). In a typical “yes we can, too” kind of unoriginal copycat statesman approach, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has played his obligatory Easter-time peace card by not so boldly calling for American Yankee nuclear weapons to be removed from Germany. But only after the head Yankee gave him the go ahead to do so, of course.

Not wanting to miss out on all the letting-there-be-peace festivities all those thousands or at least hundreds of other German peace activist types will be celebrating all across the country this weekend, Steinmeier, hoping to become the next Chancellor later this year, just couldn’t bring himself to take part in one of those cool sit-ins at at a US military base so he went for the more politically correct nuclear weapon ban thing instead.

He is however expected to call for “NATO out of Afghanistan” with everybody else before all too long.

“The US has promised to send 21,000 additional troops to the region to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban. Germany has pledged to send an additional 600 troops this summer to secure the Afghan elections.”

PS: One peace activist even tried to reach an olive branch over to our friends in the animal kingdom aber das ging in die Hose (but that went awry).