Politically, this has been a most eventful week in the Netherlands. As we head massively onto the streets today in our orange apparel to celebrate the QueensDay holiday, many of us will drink and dance in the sunny weather in part simply to forget the experience of the government falling, followed by the cobbling-together by a hastily-formed temporary coalition of a budget-cut package to meet EU demands.

So yes, it has been a remarkable past couple of days. This, however, just goes too far:

Paul Brill: ‘Begint in Den Haag de Europese lente?’ http://t.co/LgHpwSBb #vkopinie

April 28, 2012 8:16 am via bitlyReplyRetweetFavorite

@volkskrant

De Volkskrant

“Has the European Spring begun in The Hague?” asks commentator Paul Brill – as in “Europe’s Arab Spring,” you understand.

Thank God for that question-mark, for actually going through his piece makes it clear that Brill is hardly sure himself that the answer is “yes.” (What we also might have here is a rogue third-party headline-writer; I understand that column-writers for periodicals – as opposed to bloggers – usually don’t write their own headlines.) What makes Brill (or his headline-writer) think of the Arab Spring is the series of “No!” gestures to the EU austerity regime – mostly being pushed by Germany – now in the cards. You have the French presidential election run-off next Sunday, which according to most polls will elevate François Hollande to that position, who will then reject the EU’s new Austerity Pact. On the same day there will be national elections in Greece, and polls there forecast a defeat for the PASOK and New Democracy parties – now ruling in a grand coalition, but for decades the two main competing parties representing (respectively) the Left and the Right on the Greek political scene. As of next week they will likely be superseded by brand-new parties, all of them promoting resistance to the terms of Greece’s bail-out from the IMF, EU and ECB.

And then the Netherlands: Once seen as reliably in Germany’s austerity camp – indeed, Finance Minister De Jager has made quite a name for himself as scourge and hector of those irresponsible, debt-ridden Southern Europeans – this country effectively made its first substantial anti-austerity gesture with the collapse of the government, brought about when the right-wing, populist PVV party would not go along with the budget cuts being proposed. Yes, as stated, enough budget cuts to satisfy the EU were ultimately approved anyway via a one-time reshuffling of the political deck, but the fact that the PVV was effectively part of the governing coalition (it “tolerated” it, i.e. promised not to vote against it on important matters) meant that there would have to be new elections (in early September), to form a new government.

Notably, a couple of important parties held themselves aloof from those budget cuts, namely over on the Left in the forms of the Labor Party (PvdA) and the Socialist Party. The strategy here was clear: they won’t be tainted by those budget cuts in that election, so that a vote for the Left offers a means for the Dutch electorate to vote against budget cuts and austerity, and basically to join the likely French and Greeks “No!” against the EU austerity regime.

So that is what is really going on here. The Greeks and the French seem unlikely to accede to German demands for EU member-state austerity as the best way out of the financial and sovereign-debt crises. But the Dutch – the Dutch! those traditional lap-dogs of the Germans! – now seem quite likely to do the same. If they do that, however, they’ll do it in September, so forget about any “European Spring.”

For that matter, let’s give the peoples of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, etc. some proper respect for what they have accomplished/are accomplishing and simply drop any further hyperbolic talk about a “European Spring,” “Autumn,” or anything else. The Europeans have their own notable Days of Revolt to their credit in history, but they were back in 1789, 1848 and (to the East) 1989, and certainly not today.

Are you constantly on the look-out for the offbeat, even bizarre European event/festival/occasion to attend, both for the sake of the experience itself and for wowing your friends when you tell them about it later? Then consider the annual Luxembourg duckrace (website in French):

(Don’t worry, this YouTube video soon straightens itself out by turning 90° to the proper orientation. Also, just dig the announcer speaking in Luxembourgish!)

As you see, a more-accurate name for this would be The Rubber Duck Race: a load (~10,000) of classic yellow* rubber ducks (each with a number affixed at its bottom) is dumped with great ceremony upstream into the brook called the Pétrusse. This was once the mighty river that through the eons carved out the tremendous and picturesque canyon that gives Luxembourg a topography like no other city, but which in modern times has been tamed to flow meekly over a concrete riverbed down at the bottom of the gorge, a shadow of its former self and thereby a prominent instance of Man triumphing over Nature.

Nonetheless, it still has enough water flowing to function, in effect, as an idiosyncratic once-per-year lottery. For people pay €5 for each duck they wish to “sponsor” (“You will have up to 30 minutes before departure of the first wave to register, train and coach your champion,” the website declares), and those that emerge first downstreat at the finish line win prizes. This year’s run happened just yesterday, and the results indicate that a Renault Twingo automobile was the prize for first place, an electric bike for second, and so on down the line for the first 30 finishers.

Naturally, this is all done for charity. This year a pair of institutions for abused children and for children with cancer were the beneficiaries of the funds raised.

* Most are indeed yellow, although it’s clear from the video that the organizers are willing to make some gestures towards duckie diversity and multi-culturalism.

Ever hear of Clarence Darrow? You have if you’ve ever heard of the “Monkey Trial” of 1925 in Tennessee, which pitted him against William Jennings Bryan.

But I’m not referring to that here. For that matter, ever hear of Robert Servatius or Dieter Wechtenbruch? History now has an additional name to add to the ranks of these gentlemen, namely Geir Lippestad.

To żona namówiła go, by podjął się obrony Breivika. Kim jest Geir Lippestad?: Geir Lippestad podjął się ostatecz… http://t.co/6U02M8o1

April 28, 2012 5:52 am via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@polskathetimes

Polska The Times

Kim jest Geir Lippestad? “Who is Geir Lippestad?” we see in the Polska headline. Well, before he took on Bryan, Clarence Darrow was famous for accepting legal clients that no one else would touch, such as a pair of teenagers (Leopold and Loeb) accused in 1924 of a sensational murder; Servatius and Wechtenbruch were the defense lawyers for Adolph Eichmann, the key Nazi in the Holocaust who was brought to trial – and executed – in Israel in 1962. For his part, Geir Lippestad has taken up the defence of (alleged) Norwegian mass-killer Anders Breivik at his current trial. (And if you click through, that is him as the second head from the left in the photo up top. Please don’t mistake him with Breivik, the most-rightward figure.)

To be clear, then, these are all admirable characters. Yes, including Lippestad – even though that Oslo legal proceeding has mainly been about Breivik defiantly confirming his guilt and, in effect, mocking the Norwegian state for lacking the death penalty within its arsenal of criminal penalties. Because someone had to function as legal counsel for Eichmann, etc. and similarly someone needs to be there doing the same for Breivik, as odious as he may be. Because that is the mark of a society with the rule of law, that practices true justice, namely that the defendant is offered the maximum opportunity to put forward his side of the story, just to be sure that society’s sanctions (fines, imprisonment, execution in certain other states) are not applied by some horrible mistake to what is actually an innocent man. (As usual with this blog, “his,” “man” and the like are intended to be generic and apply to both genders.)

Further, it is not as if Lippestad is merely some court-appointed lawyer who happened to be in the wrong place in line at the wrong time when the judge had to designate someone to work with Breivik. No, he took the case voluntarily. Or rather (to give credit to where it is really due), his wife had him take the case. That’s even in the first part of the Polish tweet, that his wife persuaded him to step forth, “because democracy demands it.”

Now, this is Norway – pretty decent folk – but that still has not stopped Lippestad having to take up police protection because of all the various threats to his life that he has received for the services he is providing to Breivik. One would expect that all of that is just an ugly patch, and that he will be able to resume his former life with no penalty once his client is dispatched to the harshest sentence that Norwegian jurisprudence is allowed to impose – I suppose life imprisonment. (After all, there has been no attempt by him to deny or even mitigate his guilt in setting off that tremendous car-bomb in Oslo last July, and then shooting down all those young people afterwards on that island.) Still, Polska writer David Charter* does provide a useful service by taking the spotlight off the accused for a little bit to consider other players caught in their own poignant situations by the awfulness of this crime.

* A curiously non-Polish name! Is this piece actually taken (and translated) from some other publication? I find no indication that it is.

Free movement of goods; free movement of ideas; free movement of money; free movement of people: these all used to be points of pride for the European Union, milestone-accomplishments as it succeeded in bridging national differences to create unprecedented levels of cooperation between European states. And along with that, unprecedented levels of trust; all of those freedoms required each participant state to have confidence that the others would not let them down and cause them to regret such openness.

Now “freedom of movement” once again seems to be under peril, as can be seen in today’s Süddeutsche Zeitung exclusive article Berlin and Paris want to bring back border controls. This is all about the EU’s Schengen Agreement, begun in 1985 and expanded since then to include most, if not all, member-states in a regime where travellers are not checked at “internal” EU borders between member-states but, on the other hand, “external” borders between member-states and non-member-states are policed ever more carefully, since someone getting past those then has free access to other states party to the Agreement.

Or at least those external borders are supposed to be carefully policed. In reality, doubts have arisen as to whether this really is the case, particularly when it comes to asylum-seekers making their way from North Africa across the Mediterranean, usually to Italy. When the pressure got turned up last year due to the Libyan civil war and many thousands more attempted this boat trip than usual, French confidence that the Italians were performing their proper border-control duties disappeared, to the point that border controls were reimposed for a few days on those countries’ “internal” common EU border – in violation of the Schengen agreement, of course. Denmark last year also chose unilaterally to reimpose controls on its border with Germany for a while. (more…)

Wow: a $1 billion cash-and-stock pay-out (although there are rumors it could have been double that) for a firm with only 13 employees and a 17-month history! The spectacular cash-in of Instagram has eyes ringing like cash registers all over, and not just in the US:

Start-ups: Gründen per Mausklick – ein kurzer Vergleich von CH, D, USA und GB: http://t.co/SpTvVPyB

April 18, 2012 7:05 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@nzzdigital

NZZ Digital

Here, Juliane Leopold of the leading German-language Swiss paper, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, takes a look at comparative conditions in her country, versus the UK and the US, when it comes to encouraging start-ups to thrive and to strive for a similar jackpot.

The short verdict: Switzerland has come a long way, but still lags behind. There happens to be a portal there designed to ease the way for start-ups, called StartBiz, but it won’t actually get your company registered – you’ll have to do that the old-fashioned, forms-and-visiting-offices way. The usual business form adopted, the GmBH, is also legally-speaking not as attractive from the standpoint of investors buying equity interests in a company as is, say, the Limited Company one can form in the UK.

Similarly, there are of course institutions set up in Switzerland to bring inventors and investors together, such as VentureKick (and what do you know, that site is even in English!). But there are similar set-ups in most other places. Compare that to the UK’s Enterprise Investment Scheme, which offers tax-breaks to investors in start-ups. (The article also mentions a “Start-Up Pact” program there that supposedly grants £1,500 to new companies, but I was unable to find any on-line confirmation.) Oh, and it is true that one can do everything towards setting up one’s new company there on-line.

Then there is the US, specifically Silicon Valley. There is no tax-relief scheme in effect there to encourage start-up investments (that I know of; and none is mentioned in the article), but that is probably not needed in view of the many other advantages that continue to make this the world’s premier entrepreneurial hothouse. Foremost among these, as Leopold mentions, is the sheer quality of personnel that gravitate to the business scene there, whether one needs programmers, interface designers, or business executives. Added to that is the remarkably high tolerance for risk present – probably aided by the fact that, in the US, bankruptcy is often a badge of honor while in Europe it is a more devastating failure. There is also an ultra-open networking environment where – if Leopold’s article and the quotes she includes from those who have been there are to be believed – no one worries about whether their great new business idea is going to be stolen. Instead, everyone is just glad to offer a critique and encouragement.

Kremlinology is not dead – it has merely left the Kremlin and moved East. Especially now that a previously unknown twenty-something is apparently in charge of the North Korean dictatorship, a similar industry of analysts has sprung up to read between the lines of pronouncements and events there to try to figure out that regime’s basic motivations in the face of overwhelmingly uniform, Nazi-party-rally-style public demonstrations.

Now Kim Jong Un has deposited a hefty clue to his mind-set, in the form of his first-ever public speech on the occasion of celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the birth of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung. The German newsmagazine Focus sees encouraging signs here, as outlined in its (unsigned) article Kim Jong Un – a new leadership style for North Korea?

True, true, Kim did not use the occasion to announce any new policies. Indeed, he took pains to emphasize his country’s long-standing “military first” policy when it comes to public expenditures. Yet a certain Paik Hak Soon, from the South Korean think-tank the Sejong Institute who is quoted extensively in this piece, claims nonetheless to see in Kim’s speech and elsewhere signs of a new openness in the North Korean leadership. After all, the regime also acknowledged the failure of its rocket-launch last Friday, which in itself was unprecedented. Plus, what foreign observers within the country as there are have reportedly picked up other signs of a thaw, including bigger markets and more widespread (though still tightly controlled) mobile telephone use.

By themselves, these indicators given in the Focus article do not seem too convincing to me. Plus, the world is still awaiting an expected North Korean nuclear test, and we’ll see how the outside assessments of that regime change after that happens. As is often the case these days, though, these observers could just go to Twitter to find the signs of more North Korean openness they are looking for – most particularly to the @KimJongNumberUn account, where the country’s young Supreme Leader lays out the sort of dilemmas he is facing for all to see:

Etiquette question: if your rocket fails do you still have to feed the scientists? Askin for a friend.

April 13, 2012 8:30 pm via Mobile WebReplyRetweetFavorite

@KimJongNumberUn

KimJongNumberUn

He even offers occasional glimpses into his country’s culture, such as with his #NorthKoreanPickupLines series:

How’d you like a one-minute ride on my rocket? #NorthKoreanPickupLines

April 13, 2012 6:22 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@KimJongNumberUn

KimJongNumberUn

Admittedly, there are also persistent rumors that this Twitter account is not actually genuine.

Yesterday the efforts to stop the bloodshed in Syria finally seemed to make some forward progress. The UN Security Council voted to send 30 UN personnel there to enforce, or at least to observe, the cease-fire that is supposed to be in place. That vote was even unanimous, meaning that both Russia and China joined in voting “yes” after many months of obstructing anything to do with Syria at the Council.

Then again, you might recall that “observers” have already been sent there, namely last Christmas and by the Arab League acting alone. Those observers then departed again in fairly short order, as the Arab League formally suspended its monitoring mission on 28 January 2012, citing “a harsh new government crackdown [that] made it too dangerous to proceed and was resulting in the deaths of innocent people across the country.”

Spiegel Beirut correspondent Ulrike Putz has little more confidence that things will be any different this time:

Uno-Beobachter in Syrien: Scheitern mit Ansage… http://t.co/bgK9nAPf

April 15, 2012 12:57 pm via SPIEGEL ONLINEReplyRetweetFavorite

@SPIEGEL_Politik

SPIEGEL Politik

That Scheitern mit Ansage translates to something like “pre-announced failure.” The key is that, once again and by the UN resolution’s terms, it is to Syrian government forces that the security of the observers is being entrusted. As the December/January observer experience showed, that’s a clear-cut recipe for rendering meaningless the Security Council’s insistence that they be able to travel wherever they want, and interview anyone (individuals only) that they want without those individuals then getting into trouble.

There is another dynamic in play as well. That NYT article referenced above mentions the element of a full 250 observers, also with permission to travel anywhere they want, that was an original part of Kofi Annan’s peace plan, but implies that the Security Council will vote to up the total from 60 to that level of 250 soon and so dispatch reinforcements. But Frau Putz sees the current 60 (first elements arriving in-country tomorrow) as a replacement for those 250, not a down-payment. Furthermore, the Syrian government has won the right to determine the countries those observers will come from.

Finally, there is probably not much of a cease-fire to observe anyway. Anti-government activitists report additional bombardment of Homs; and government media alleges that its soldiers have been attacked.

“So the observer mission in Syria stands ready to fail, before it even has begun,” Frau Putz concludes. Then again, what does she know? After all, her report includes the damning sentence “Above the city [Homs] drones crossed overhead.” But the Syrian regime hardly possesses any drone aircraft capability.