For well over a decade now, in the European air travel market the “legacy” airlines that everyone was used to from the past have been struggling to compete with low-cost carriers who have been able to offer substantially lower prices in return for a substantially lower level of service. The latter service has nonetheless consistently remained tolerable enough for cost-conscious travelers to keep purchasing tickets in droves (although recent developments suggest that things might be starting to go a bit too far).

Now an interesting article in the German news-magazine Focus (Advantageous – but not cheap) tells of a new plan for fighting back from the German flag carrier (although it is no longer publicly-owned) Lufthansa. In the main, this scheme calls for combining 133 of Lufthansa’s European flights with 150 flights from its Germanwing subsidiary into a new airline, provisionally called (within internal Lufthansa documents) “Direct4you.”

One truly hopes that they can come up with a better name than that prior to the planned launch next January. (Or perhaps just decide to go whole-hog with the text-speak and call it “Direct4U.”) Otherwise, the airline has been busy re-training its personnel in the whole low-cost template, something by now familiar to all within the industry: things like equipment standardization, more efficient jet turn-around, a simplified (and no longer free) on-board food & drink menu – and employees who are paid less, when they are not themselves lower-paid outsourced workers. One might also want to ask what happened with Germanwings itself, since that was supposed to be the low-cost airline that would save Lufthansa, back when it bought Germanwings at the beginning of 2009. Well, apparently that alone did not work, because the mother company is still in trouble, steadily recording financial losses, so that it has to try again, this time introducing cost-cutting techniques and procedures more thoroughly.

The problem is that this sort of thing does truly involve destroying much of the legacy of how the company has done business in the past, in order to try and save its future. This includes those past wage agreements, and in Germany overturning those is sure to be a tall order. Already the spokesman for the cabin personnel’s union is warning that this cannot work. We will be able to see shortly whether he is right.

Hooray! The London 2012 Olympic Games formally open today! Although of course some athletes have already been in action even from Wednesday, mainly the football players.

Let me repeat, though, that this blog is generally not interested, certainly not in the athletics. Attention is more likely to be attracted here by catchy and notable Olympic-related headlines – All of London sells itself to sponsors, is a good example.

That’s the title of the kick-off report for a series that the German journalist Imke Henkel (a female, FYI; her winsome smile you can inspect at the article’s very top if you click through) is undertaking for the German newsmagazine Focus, by heading to London to write an “Olympic Diary.” This first installment is all about the sponsorship madness that seems to have descended upon the city.

Or perhaps even – although naturally the term is grossly over-used – the sponsorship fascism. You might have already heard about that Cafe Olympic – located within sight of the new Olympic Stadium, actually – that has been forced to rename itself “Cafe Lympic” for the duration of the Games. That ain’t the half of it, though; Henkel actually provides a list of words that businesses are henceforth (through 12 August) not allowed to display, which go beyond any variation of the word “Olympic” to include “Summer,” “2012,” and of course “Gold,” “Silver” and “Bronze.” Lilagekleidete Aufpasser – translates as “Purple-clad monitors” – are even now roaming the streets, in London but also all over the UK, ensuring that any violations are reported for prompt sanction by LOCOG, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. (more…)

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.

So Putin has been “elected” Russia’s president for a third time. Well, some remain unwilling just to accept this lying down – er, fully clothed. Yes, one of the world’s favorite protest groups swung into action yesterday in Moscow to protest Russia’s crooked election. The group calls itself Femen, and it’s a media-favorite mainly due to its attention-getting tactics – so time-tested and traditional, in a way, yet now employed for political ends: they are all comely young women, and they take their tops off.

The result is frequent intriguing headlines such as Women Go Topless Against Putin and the like. (Click if you will, but the photo-series is of course rated PG.) But there is another aspect to this group’s operations that is intriguing as well, if one can pull one’s eyes away from the fleshly dazzle. For Femen is a Ukrainian organization – so what are they doing in Moscow, and what do they care about Putin?

Actually, this Moscow altercation – which apparently earned its Femen protagonists several days in jail, and which took place at the very same polling-station where Putin himself was scheduled to come vote, naturally: this has emerged as a standard Femen tactic – was a romp in the park compared to the group’s protest action in Minsk last December against the dictator there, Aleksandr Lukashenko. The Belarussian KGB – they still call it that there – proved itself to be quite unimpressed with the charms on display; they not only rather roughly arrested the Femen protestors, but then took them off to the woods to terrorize them for a bit, including cutting off their hair. But of course they did not want to go too far, given the constant media attention these women enjoy, and which to some extent is their protective shield even as they otherwise leave themselves naked.

Still: Ukraine, Belarus, Moscow – OK, it was once all one country, and many cultural similarities remain. But Femen activists have also reportedly been spotted in Milan, protesting in some way or another against the fashion industry. I couldn’t find much material on that, but what I do have is recent reports about how the Austrian political scene is about to get a bit more interesting. Yes, a two-woman Femen delegation – that’s them in the picture up above – recently traveled to Vienna to give the Austrian Green Party political-action tips. According to the report in the authoritative Austrian newspaper Die Presse, that included a how-to session on “boob prints,” which have turned out to be the #1 money-raising article from their Femenshop. (Unfortunately, the text on that webpage is only in Cyrillic – probably Ukrainian – which likely means that those too far removed from Kiev could find it difficult to mail-order the goods on display here. Any enterprising Western Internet-business(wo)man interested in helping out?) The German newsmagazine Focus actually has a photo-series showing them at their press conference, making the aforesaid print; the rather more staid Die Presse limits itself to collecting juicy quotes from the Femen representatives, such as “We want to show how you do it: go out onto the streets, disrobe, and win!” and that they all still call their mothers every day, who invariably ask “whether we are dressing warmly enough.”

In the final analysis, though, Austria is another culture entirely, as is Milan, so it is a significant step outward into the world. Why would the girls of Femen want to stop there? What I’m suggesting is that we might be seeing here the beginnings of the next great transnational political movement. Yes, after the Occupy Wall Street protests, it’s time to take it from the top!

Oh, check out this lede, from the German newsmagazine Focus:

Trash, excrement, corpses: pollution on Mount Everest is reaching dramatic proportions. Environmentalists are now demanding installation of toilets.

Is no place now safe from humankind’s depredations? Apparently even the top of the world’s highest mountain is now so frequented that it looks like some penthouse-lounge where no one particularly feels the obligation to pick up after themselves. (Oh, and corpses: that plus corpses.)

According to Focus, the organization currently bringing this dire situation to light is called “Eco Himal,” and their spokesman is the splendidly-named Phinjo Sherpa. These folks have been doing their best to try to clean up the mountaintop since 2008, already hauling away 13 tons of trash, 400 kg of frozen feces and – yes – 4 bodies.

But they claim they can’t handle it by themselves anymore – and they’re not bluffing. They refuse to butte out of the matter until proper sanitary facilities are installed up there

And yes, there at the top of the article you also have a magnificent panorama of a portion of the very same mountain. I squinted and looked hard: couldn’t make out any corpses. Can you?

With everything else going on in the world, particularly in the financial realm, the ongoing situation in Libya might have escaped your notice. There’s good news there, though: the tide seems to have turned. It’s no longer a matter of stalemate between the National Transitional Council’s forces and those still loyal to Muamman Qaddafi, but rather of a steady advance by the former on Qaddafi’s capital of Tripoli, and elsewhere. The German newsmagazine Focus (Gaddafi just about to jump) is among those publications bringing us these good tidings, including a quote from one of US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s recent speeches, “I think we can agree that Gaddafi’s days are numbered.” (You say “Gaddafi,” I say “Qaddafi.”)

My problem, though, is with something in their lede: “He is said to have concrete plans for an escape to Tunisia.”

Think about it just a little: what sort of sense does that make? Tunisia – the next door country! And one that had it’s own successful revolution, during which the revolutionaries on more than one occasion expressed their frustration that they were fighting not only against the ruling regime, but also against its supporter and bankroller over the border in Tripoli!

No, although it does seem that Qaddafi is destined sooner or later for that classic “dustbin of history,” the alleged imminent flight to Tunisia does not add up. What’s more, your favorite Middle East expert and mine, Prof. Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, has this post just out laying out in detail just how ridiculous the whole Tunisia idea is, and further speculating that what that really is, is something “from US intelligence for psy-ops purposes,” i.e. a fake story whose real purpose is to try to draw further defections from Qaddafi’s inner circle.

Now, it was NBC that was the recipient of this “scoop” originally, and indeed the Focus article does give credit – but then repeats that report. I can understand a US television network passing on questionable information from American intelligence sources hook, line & sinker, but what is the problem with Focus? What happened to those days past when anything coming to Germany from the intelligence services of the “American imperialists” was automatically suspect?

Don’t look now, but Blair House has a rather important guest staying there now. That’s “Blair House” – 1651 Pennsylvania Ave. – namely the official guest house for the President of the United States, and it is currently hosting a delegation from the People’s Republic of China headed by no less than President Hu Jintao. His four-day visit to the US presumably means important face-to-face discussions with President Obama and other US business and political leaders on such topics as East Asian security, the valuation of the Renminbi, and maybe even human rights in China (and possibly in the US, too).

In the background to all this, though, is China’s growing economic power and influence. You might be surprised, but much of that actually stems from a growing Chinese superiority in certain key modern technologies, and in R&D generally, if we are to believe the “MONEY editor” of the German newsmagazine Focus, Christian Bieker, who today offers a quite informative three (Internet-)page article entitled From Dwarf to Giant. Check out the lede:

From workshop to technology mecca: China is about to have a development-leap – and is already at the top in solar energy, electric autos, and mobile telecommunications.

Keep in mind that US Defense Secretary Bill Gates actually was in China just last week, obviously on a sort of preparatory visit there, and much was made of the Chinese military using the occasion to launch the first test-flight of their latest “stealth” technology fighter, the J-20. That provided a suitable foretaste of China’s growing technical skill, but things really go much further than that. As Bieker goes on to mention:

• China is now – from the turn of the year 2010/11 – actually a net exporter of R&D to the EU;
• One-eighth of all the world’s R&D spending takes place there;
• In 2010 it overtook the US in number of patents awarded. (This raises the question of how that relates to the Middle Kingdom’s notorious laxness when it comes to observing patents and copyrights issued from the outside!)

(more…)

Those (like me) who like to travel through Germany by train every so often were displeased last summer to hear about the misadventures involving malfunctioning on-board cooling units during warm days leading, in some cases, to passengers even being evacuated due to dehydration. (Indeed, I experienced something like that personally – i.e. air conditioning clearly not operating within a number of cars making up a packed long-distance train – but fortunately, although it was June, the day was not that hot so that at least no one actually became sick, to my knowledge.) The German government wasn’t so happy, either, and let the semi-private national railroad company, Deutsche Bahn, know that it needed to up its performance.

Now European weather has flipped the challenges it presents from hot to cold, and an article out now from the newsmagazine Focus shows how Deutsche Bahn is faring: Problems were partly internal: Winter chaos on the rails. Don’t worry: we’re not talking here about passengers suffering frostbite or hypothermia – “Entschuldigung, ve haff no more zeats affailable, ve must schtrap you zu de train-roof!” – but during the difficult spell of winter weather a few weeks ago there were apparently many trains canceled or at least running late – according to one report, up to 80% among long-distance service.

The piece features up top a grim-looking head-shot of Rüdiger Grube, Deutsche Bahn’s chairman, and it’s main message is yes, he acknowledges (once again) the performance deficiencies: “We have to get even better. Not the least for that reason we plan billions in investments in a new fleet of IC and ICE [trains – the IC are long-distance within Germany, ICE are that plus some international routes but are the high-speed trains].” The piece’s secondary message comes from German Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer, who threatens “consequences” and rejects the German winter as any excuse.

So could the fault really lie in the equipment, i.e. the trains, as Grube maintains? On the one hand, that could be an understandable explanation of why rail service there can’t handle extremes of heat and cold. On the other – this is Germany, and we’re talking about German technology! Top standard, by definition, exported to eager customers throughout the world!

As always, the electoral race for governor of the US’ largest state, California, is attracting considerable media attention both within the country and outside, what with the contest turning out to be a winner-take-all struggle between that state’s “Governor Moonbeam” of the 1970s, Jerry Brown, and the former eBay executive Meg Whitman. On the other hand, 2 November will also mark the beginning of the term’s end of the current California governor, a fairly interesting figure in his own right. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has himself been the subject of concentrated attention over the course of his original election campaign in 2003 (as a result of the recall of then-Governor Gray Davis) and then subsequently, particularly by the German-speaking press as the classic “local-boy-makes-good-in-Hollywood” story. And so we have this interesting piece in the German news-magazine Focus on the “Governator’s” possible follow-on acts.

(As you’ll see, if you’d like to click through, the piece’s title is “Hasta la vista, Governator!” and I can’t pretend to condemn that as trite or clichéd – actually, I had wanted to use just about the same phrase as the title for this post!)

Ah yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, survivor of two terms as California governor – meaning he did manage to win re-election, in 2006, although his current 28% approval rating means he wouldn’t be able to bet on doing it again, even if the law allowed – and the ultimate RINO. That’s “Republican in name only,” as he famously clashed with the Bush administration over environmental policies. Plus, it’s quite clear – even though he won’t admit it – that he’d prefer Democrat Brown to succeed him over Republican Whitman. The former is after all still his State Attorney General and in fact an enthusiastic fellow-warrior for a number of measures he advocates, most especially reform to the state budget process.

But anyway, where does the Governator go from here? What does the man say himself? He’d like to write “a book or two,” he has stated, but of course he’s already written a number of books, about body-building but also an autobiography. It so happens that someone else has a book out – entitled The Governator, natch, by Ian Halperin, in which he alleges that Arnold has long had a “master plan” to first persuade the American nation to amend the Constitution to allow the President to be foreign-born, and then of course to run for the office himself – not as a Republican, this time, but supposedly as an Independent appealing more to a right-wing Democratic political base. But the Focus piece is quick to add that the Governor’s official spokesperson was quick to dismiss The Governator as “trash.”

One thing does seem sure: He has long been interested in alternative energy, in particular his “Hydrogen Highway” project of bringing about a widespread automotive infrastructure based upon hydrogen-powered fuel cells, and this is something he has pledged to assist whether in or out of office. Otherwise, another clue to how he might occupy his time is contained in the recent Sylvester Stallone movie “The Expendables,” in which Schwarzenegger takes a cameo role as a mercenary-team leader. Then again, the Focus writer has clearly seen the film and was paying close attention: at one point Schwarzenegger’s character exclaims “only an idiot would take this job!”

Tired of hearing about all the French strikes (even if you haven’t been living/traveling there and so had to deal with them directly)? Finding it hard not to snort when you recall that the main point at issue is a raising of the official retirement age from 60 to 62? Consider it rather too convenient that that month-long wave of street-demonstrations has now dovetailed nicely with the week of Autumn vacation for French students?

Well then, you’re not alone, for much of the Fifth Republic’s recent behavior is attracting unfavorable notice among its neighbors, including that big one across the Eastern frontier marking the area of so many of the 19th and 20th centuries’ great battles. The lede paragraph of a recent article in the German newsmagazine Focus (Always annoyed with the French) sums things up well:

They strike like there’s no tomorrow, provoke Siemens with unfair attacks and undercut the German European Central Bank candidate behind his back. Is France doing away with herself?

Well, it sums things up well with a little unpacking:

• Provoke Siemens: The French government reacted rather badly to news of a few weeks ago that Eurostar, which runs high-speed trains from Paris and from Brussels to London, had decided to buy new equipment from the German firm Siemens rather than – as usual – the French firm Alstom. Of course, public procurement contracts such as this within the EU are supposed to be awarded based purely on cost/quality considerations, not nationality – but the French Transport Minister, Dominique Bussereau, did conveniently mention that the Siemens trains were not long enough and posed other safety risks, as he made his announcement that he was using his authority to invalidate the sale.
  
• Undercut the German ECB candidate: Everybody knows (doesn’t everybody?) that the successor next year to Jean-Claude Trichet at the head of the ECB is supposed to be Axel Weber, currently president of the German Central Bank, the Bundesbank. Actually, regardless of whether that really is the consensus among EU officials and European politicians who decide these things, it’s particularly important these days to elevate the Bundesbank president to ECB president, for political reasons: the Germans have been those mostly called-upon to come up with the money to bail out Greece and the whole Eurozone monetary system, and the same would be true if help were to be needed for Portugal, Ireland, and the rest. They know that, they’re getting tired of it, so it’s a very good idea at least to put one of their own in a banking/monetary decision-making position as vital as that of ECB president. Then again, nowadays French authorities profess to know nothing about any “consensus”; they have started pushing for the current head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), to succeed Trichet. This might also have something to do with the fact that, if DSK is not immobilized in a new job at the ECB, he may well challenge Nicolas Sarkozy for the French presidency in 2012.
  
• Oh, and there’s one remaining bit: Focus writer Uli Dönch finishes that lede-paragraph I’ve quoted with the question Schafft Frankreich sich selbst ab? and that’s a clever allusion to Deutschland schafft sich ab, which is the title of a current raging best-seller in Germany (written by a former member of the Board of the Bundesbank, Thilo Sarrazin) which posits that Germany is weakening itself fatally through a combination of its low birth-rate and readiness to accept non-Western immigrants (with their high birth-rates).

There you have it: this Uli Dönch hepcat manages to compress just about all he has to remark on into his one, short leading paragraph. I mean, is this journalism or is it poetry? All that remain to be considered are some speculations as to why unsere Lieblingsnachbarn – that is, “our favorite neighbors,” expressed with an ironic tone – would be acting this way.

This comes at the end, in a section headlined “Arrogance or Inferiority Complex?” Here Herr Dönch drops the ball, yielding to rhetoric better-suited to the dueling of rival fans on football commentary websites. It can’t be arrogance, he proclaims, because the times are long gone when France was “the clearly dominating Power on the European mainland. But now? La Grande Nation? Like how. La Grande Illusion! Only: who’s going to tell them?”

Economic coverage in Europe continues to be dominated by the plight of the euro and of the Greek government. In a way, that’s too bad, because there are plenty of other simmering problems which lose the spotlight when crises pop up elsewhere – even though that hardly means that their own situation has been resolved. One such remaining problem is the question of what to do about Opel, the European-based subsidiary of General Motors which got into trouble last year more-or-less because its parent company actually had to declare bankruptcy (on 1 June 2009) and be restructured, with a majority ownership share going to the US Government.

Reviewing my own Opel coverage on this blog, I have to confess to also being guilty of that “follow-the-spotlight” syndrome, in that my last Opel post, on September 14 of last year, came prior to the latest and most intriguing development in that saga. That happened in November, when GM decided to go back on an agreement that had been reached two months before with the German government to sell off Opel to a consortium led by the Canadian auto parts-manufacturer Magna. Yes, that deal was suddenly canceled, so it was back to the status quo ante: Opel remained a GM subsidiary and the German government could resume worrying about how much in subsidies to let GM extort against the threat of shutting down some or all the Opel plants in Germany and thereby throwing thousands out of work. (Then again, at least it had seemed back in September, before GM reneged on the deal, that the German government had found a solution to keep Opel going, and it was that timing that was the most important consideration – there was a nationwide election held in late September 2009, after all!) (more…)

Although the fascinating story of the celebrity polar bear named Knut, resident in the Berlin Zoo, got its start together with the animal himself back during the period that this weblog was taking a multi-year break, we’ve tried to cover subsequent developments of interest concerning this media star who has been visited more than 9 million times, been the object of affectionate comments from high German government officials ranging up to the Bundeskanzlerin herself, and has even featured on a postage-stamp.

The latest Knut developments have unfortunately taken a somewhat bizarre turn, verging on the gothic. As might be expected, there’s a woman involved. Her name is Giovanna, Gianna for short, and she was introduced into Knut’s cage-complex a while back to provide him with a little companionship – and, in particular, to further the fond hope that the two might do some great things together tending towards an enlargement of the stock of polar bears held in captivity. Giovanna, though, revealed a nasty streak in an incident reported by the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel a month ago, when a cormorant (a seabird) found its way into Berlin’s polar bear compound and Giovanna gave it a hit with her paw that left it wounded. Then again, perhaps she was merely defending her man: that same report states that the bird first had “pinched” (gezwickt) Knut’s nose.

Anyway, by that point it was clear that Giovanna was no shrinking violet. Now the German news-magazine Focus is reporting that she is also Knut’s cousin – the two share the same grandfather! Suddenly the thought of those two bearing some polar-bear cubs is no longer so desirable. This from PETA Deutschland spokesman Frank Albrecht: “Knut fans should be aware that only Knut’s castration will allow a lengthy life together with Gianna. All other hopes and desires bring the population of polar bears in captivity even faster to the end that is pre-programmed for them anyway.” This from an organization that is supposed to have Knut’s happiness at heart! (As you may gather, PETA Deutschland advocates simply not holding any polar bears in captivity, at all.)

She was set to be his lover – but she is also his cousin! And now he risks castration! I remarked before on these pages how interest in Knut (and the money resulting from it) understandably started to wane once he stopped being a cute baby polar bear and became a somewhat slovenly-looking teenage one – did Berlin Zoo officials go off in search of a publicist to tell them how to resuscitate interest in Knut and wind up with Tennessee Williams?

OK – so that headline is not precisely accurate. I meant it more as a striking analogy to the sports phenomenon reported today by the German newsmagazine Focus. Everyone can now rest assured that professional bicycle-racing is now an ultra-clean sport in which nobody would think of cheating – so declared infamous doper Jan Ullrich today in an interview on the “Eurosport” TV channel.

“Cycling is one of the cleanest sports,” Ullrich declared to his interviewer, “because there are so many checks/inspections [Ger. Kontrollen].” Why, his German colleague Andreas Klöden, now riding in the Tour de France, told him about being subjected already to no less than eight checks – and at this point the 2009 Tour still has four stages to go! Ullrich:

The guys are thrown out of bed at six-thirty in the morning, an inspector comes in the room and stays with them the entire time . . . always at your side, at the toilet, in the shower, as you brush your teeth, to take blood from you at any time. You can go too far with it.

I would wager that it is rather Ullrich who is going rather too far with his description. Just to remind readers who do not follow cycling closely, Ullrich was disqualified from participating in the 2006 Tour de France one day before it was supposed to start because evidence emerged linking him with “Operación Puerto,” a blood-doping sting operation undertaken by the Spanish authorities. Ullrich vehemently denied having anything to do with the doping operations by a certain Dr. Eufamiano Fuentes uncovered by “Operación Puerto,” but months later a sample of his blood did match the DNA of the blood seized in that investigation.

Upon announcing his retirement from cycling in Hamburg in February of 2007, Ullrich maintained that “I never once cheated as a cyclist.” On the other hand, don’t forget that embedded YouTube video I have at the end of my post on the Tour de France of earlier this month, showing Ullrich bicycling up a mountain in 1997 exhibiting an output of power – an estmated 480 watts – itself way outside the range which even doped Olympic sprinters find possible.

“I’m addicted to it,” President Obama reportedly told his interviewers on CNBC recently when they asked about his Blackberry. Still, could he be allowed to have it? The two presidents America has had so far during the Digital Age of e-mail and Internet – Clinton and Bush Jr. – famously had nothing to do while in office with e-mail and were never seen toting a mobile telephone. The concerns had to do both with the law (e.g. the obligation to preserve any written communications and the legal standing any messages might have) and with routine communications security.

On that latter point, at least, there might not be that much to worry about, according to a recent analysis in the German newsmagazine Focus (Blackberry security: The enemy in the telephone). The lede:

In contrast to his predecessors, US President Barack Obama may make use of a smartphone – but within strict limits. How insecure are Blackberry & Co.?

Not as insecure as you may fear, as it turns out, and that from German experience. As the article relates, back in June 2005 the auto-producer Audi decided to ban Blackberry use among its employees out of fears of industrial espionage by its competitors. The company was particularly concerned about the fact that all Blackberry e-mails are routed through the servers of RIM, the device’s Canadian manufacturer. But RIM was able to persuade Audi that this traffic was encrypted in such a way that even RIM itself could not break the code and read any messages – even if directed to do so by some government authority. Later, in response to a pronouncement by the German Office for Information Technology Security (in German, the BSI) that the Blackberry was too vulnerable for use by government officials who had to send secure communications, RIM managed to gain for its equipment a Common Criteria security certificate, basically meaning that a process of independent testing (presumably by the Standards Council of Canada) confirmed the Blackberry’s adherence to a very strict set of international security standards – strict enough, in fact, that Common Criteria certification was routinely recognized as good enough for any equipment to be allowed for German government use without further question. Late last year the prestigious German Fraunhofer [Research] Institute also was willing to certify the security of the Blackberry’s encryption, to a 24-million-year-before-cracking standard.

Alright, but what if the President loses his “Obamaberry”? (President Bush Jr. famously lost the watch off his wrist in an adoring crowd of Albanians, after all.) That’s also not really a problem; off-the-shelf commercial products are available today to mere-mortal users for powerfully encrypting the data on the machine, and no doubt US Government experts can take that at least one step further. (Plus, there is not supposed to be that much contact information on the machine in the first place, since it’s only supposed to be used for communication with engste Bekannte – “closest intimates.” Although I suppose Disney and various other youth-marketeers would love to get a direct line to Malia and Sasha.) The same considerations can be applied to the prospect of bugging, as well as spam and malware.

The German newsmagazine Focus has today another one of those “only in America” pieces, about how you just can’t keep a true wheeler-dealer down. The title is Best deals with an embezzler-of-billions and the lede: “He’s under house arrest and has to wear an electronic ankle-bracelet. And yet: On the Internet portal Ebay [sic] the alleged embezzler-of-billions Bernard Madoff is ringing the cash-register.”

When you think about it, who would want to pass up the opportunity to acquire some historic flotsam from what is shaping up to be the biggest act of financial fraud of all time? The article speaks of fleece (if you’ll pardon the expression) jackets, mousepads, umbrellas, binoculars, and other stuff that Madoff has made available for sale on-line, all of it emblazoned with the “Madoff Securities” logo. There was even a t-shirt on offer for a time with Madoff’s smiling face on it and a caption below: “Trust me.” Maybe it’s not too late to head over to the eBay website yourself to see what’s what – I’ll give you the link, but leave it to you to work the site’s search-engine to find out what’s left.

German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück is currently in Washington, attending that “G20” summit that is supposed to restructure the international financial system – i.e. to bring about a “Bretton Woods II” – to deal with the current world-wide economic troubles. But after this weekend he’ll not be back at his Berlin office long before he’ll face yet another economic summit, reports the German business newspaper Handelsblatt: Steinbrück calls Opel-Summit.

That’s “Opel” as in “Adam Opel GmbH,” the German-based daughter auto-making concern of General Motors. As you can imagine, it’s currently in financial trouble; this past week it directed its own appeal for help to the German government (actually governments, see below). And so, in more-or-less mirror-image to the issue the US government is now having to confront, Germany is also now taking up the same dilemma: should its auto-makers be bailed out to save the many thousands of jobs dependent on them? Or would that be throwing only the first installment of massive monies to an industry that is anyway doomed with no future? (more…)

At this point there are a little more than two weeks left to go before the start of the 2008 Peking Olympics. To prep those Germans planning to attend (although it now seems far fewer foreigners are planning to show up than had initially been estimated), the German newsmagazine Focus has put on-line an amusing set of mini-articles about the prejudices held in the West about the Chinese (Chinese Cannot Pronounce R), e.g. that they eat dogmeat, they all look the same, etc. (more…)

One of the leading German newsmagazines, Focus, has discovered the reality that apparently much of the US media is loth to acknowledge: that a triumph for Hillary Clinton in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination is virtually out of the question. As the magazine published on-line in Democrats lose patience with Clinton, Hillary’s continuing claim that she has the better prospects to defeat Republican John McCain for the presidency is still not gaining much traction among the Democratic “party elite.” And, in a section sub-headed “Incorruptible Mathematics,” the magazine puts forward the calculations that, if Obama can continue to win elected delegates at the 53% share he has achieved so far, by the end of the primary process he would only need 80 more to achieve the required 2,025 for nomination. Clinton, by contrast, has to win 65% of the delegates in the remaining ten primaries (including Guam and Puerto Rico) just to pull even with Obama at that point. (more…)

Wow! Did you know that Arianna Huffington has managed to get a syndicated gig for her Huffington Post collective weblog in the German press, specifically on Focus Online!

Naturally, upon making this discovery the next thing I wanted to do was check to see the quality of the translation, i.e. how close the correspondence was between what you’ll read in the original English version and what German readers see. (more…)

From Germany’s third newsmagazine, the relatively Johnny-(or is that Johan?)-come-lately Focus comes word now comes that the EU is close to instituting a Europe-wide ban on smoking at the workplace. (For those who don’t already know, the previous and still-existing entrants on that German newsmagazine scene were, in order, Der Spiegel and Stern. And the initial inspiration for Der Spiegel – founded right after the War in 1947 – was of course Henry Luce’s Time magazine.)

Such things are apparently under the remit of the European Parliament, which next Wednesday is expected to pass such a law. The only allowed exceptions will be independent workers (I guess those who work by themselves anyway) and construction workers on-the-job. Marc Sapir, named as the Director of the Europäischer Gewerkschaftbund (basically the European organization of labor unions), is cited signalling his approval for the measure. In particular, he says, “The current anti-smoking laws are not enough to protect serving [e.g. waiters] and kitchen personnel.”

Europe is being rude to the US again, it seems – but thankfully this time only a few of our English friends noticed.

Strangely enough, my regular forays through the American and European press had led me to believe that Chancellor Schröder’s government in Germany, above all, was eager to to mend relations with the US after the rather serious difference-of-opinion about Iraq. Nonetheless, we apparently have one Jürgen Chrobog, State Secretary of the German Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), instructing a regularly-scheduled meeting of all German ambassadors that the US is becoming a “police state,” as it is “restricting more and more its civic liberties at home.” (more…)