I’ve little more to say about the ongoing tidal wave tragedy around the eastern Indian Ocean basin. Is it poor taste to move on now to other subjects? Now, I certainly agree with the proposition that the fancy parties scheduled around the upcoming Bush II inauguration (specifically, the money budgeted for them) should yield to the Asian tragedy. But closer to home, tomorrow’s the start of a brand New Year, and some celebration of that fact should still be in order.

Prague is a good place to celebrate that fact. (So is, for that matter, Amsterdam, although it’s a bit more expensive.) And right on time, in its last-edition-of-the-year, the main Czech business newspaper Hospodárské noviny features a trio of articles on its homepage about the foreigners flocking to visit the Czech capital – whether for New Year’s celebrations or more generally – under the collective headline “Do Tourists Come to Us Mainly for the Cheap Beer?” (more…)

Oh, what might have been! . . . what might have happened on the coasts ringing the eastern Indian Ocean last Sunday, as the killer tidal waves launched by the undersea earthquake approached them, if there had been better warning! Yes, people would still have died, but it’s reasonable to think that far fewer would have than those enumerated in the ever-rising death-toll (now over 40,000, and still rising).

Many of you will have already seen today’s New York Times editorial on the subject, which quite reasonably points out that, while the Pacific Ocean has long had a tsunami early-warning system (based in Honolulu), the Indian Ocean has nothing like that. But Iver Houmark Andersen of the Danish commentary newspaper Information has a bit more to add in Vital Minutes Were Lost. (more…)

The day after Christmas, Boxing Day – and suddenly the Earth moves violently just off the coast of Sumatra, giant tidal waves spread in all directions, and death and destruction are wreaked on all coastlines bordering the eastern Indian Ocean, with the toll of dead now up above 40,000. What more is there to say about such a devastating disaster – besides belated speculation about extending the tsunami early-warning system in the Pacific to cover the Indian Ocean as well?

Oh, you can be sure that there is more to say out there among the world’s commentariat. The question is rather whether there are further insights worth reading, but I think Bart Sturtewagen does a good job along this line, writing in Belgium’s De Standaard, with his commentary piece Metaphor for Fleetingness. (more…)

With a recent commentary in Die Zeit (Germanic Character), Jürgen Krönig takes up the controversy in the UK over the introduction of a national ID card there. Germany has already had a national identity card for some time, but the subject can still be amusing to Zeit readers because, up to now, to many British – most vitally to Lady Thatcher when she was prime minister – the very idea smacked of something “Germanic,” i.e. something appropriate only for those ultra-obedient types over there on the other side of the North Sea who obediently wait for the green at every pedestrian crossing-light.

But times have changed: Parliament has given the go-ahead. (more…)

How are things these days in Fallujah? – you remember, that hotbed of Iraqi resistance activity that needed to be rooted out by the USMC to clear the way for Iraqi citizens peaceably to go to the polls on 30 January? Oh fine, just fine now, reports the US military, even as it denies access into the city to Red Cross officials, not to mention to returning city-residents. The discerning reader is likely to feel rather less-then-fully-informed about the state of affairs there if this is all he has to go on; where is the alternative press when you need it?

It turns out that Jørgen Steen Nielsen of the Danish commentary newspaper Information has managed to cultivate some good sources in Iraq, so that his recent article (No Election in Fallujah) helps to fill in some of the blanks about what is really going on there one month after the massive US Army-Marine assault. (more…)

Last weekend’s regularly-scheduled European Council summit (the half-yearly meeting of European Union heads of government) was dominated by the prospect of Turkey as an EU member-state, and its most news-worthy result was the approval by the assembled leaders of the commencement of negotiations with Turkey to that end beginning in October of next year.

For me, the question of Turkey’s accession to the European Union brings with it two epiphenomena, one minor and one major. There is the way the question has already become entangled in the historic Turkey-Greece enmity, although at second-remove. Relations are now good between Turkey and Greece themselves, so that any veto of Turkish membership by the latter is hard to imagine (at least in the present situation). But there also remains the problem of the divided Turkish-Greek island of Cyprus, which Turkish armed forces invaded in 1974, and which more importantly is also an EU member-state. It seems that a lot of sweat and toil was expended at this just-concluded EU summit to find some compromise between Cypriot (and, actually, also Greek) insistence that Turkey recognize the Greek half of the island, and Turkish reluctance to do so. The compromise was that Turkey would not make such a recognition now, but would certainly do so before those entry negotiations start next October.

But that is the minor epiphenomenon, and so not of much interest to me. (Although it is nonetheless conceivable that future problems along this line could be enough ultimately to torpedo Turkish entry, thus rendering the following “major” epiphenomenon moot.) In my view, that “major” epiphenonemon is the gulf that has opened up between the negative attitudes of EU national electorates (not all of them, to be sure, but quite a number) towards Turkish accession and the continued behavior of their political leaders in keeping that accession process on-track. By the very nature of the way the EU works in important membership questions such as this, that behavior has to be well-nigh unanimous, as serious objections from any member-state can substantially slow down the process or even stop it. (Ultimately, of course, ratification of any Turkish EU-entry will have to be unanimous among all current member-states.) Meanwhile, the level of actual political support for Turkish membership is nowhere near unanimous across the continent. When will one reality catch up with the other? Or is that alleged EU “democratic deficit” for real, even to the extent that the epochal decision of admitting Turkey could be made even in the face of its rejection by the voters who actually make up the EU’s population?

In this light, the French press is the most appropriate prism to use to examine last weekend’s summit – and not only because an eventual referendum to enable French public opinion on the subject to find its political expression has been promised. (more…)

Le Monde Diplomatique is the leading French opinion-journal on international affairs, but it is a monthly. The November issue was already on the newsstands at the time of the US election. So it’s only now, with the appearance of the December, 2004, issue on the streets and on-line, that we get to hear their reaction to the result.

Is there any doubt what that is? This is France we’re talking about here, after all, not to mention one of that country’s leading intellectual flagships. Anyway, no less than Editor-in-Chief Ignacio Ramonet takes up his keyboard to record the paper’s displeasure at the prospect of Bush II. (more…)

Is the ongoing post-9/11 slump in the worldwide tourist industry getting you and your country down? Those canny business-writers at the Czech Republic’s leading business newspaper, Hospodárské noviny, have an idea for you: cue a massive public protest against your government! That’s what has done the trick for the Ukraine, a land which prior to last month’s second-round presidential election ranked among desirable tourist destinations somewhere around Upper Volta, but which is now experiencing a tourist boom, as HN reports (Crisis in Ukraine As Advertising Trick). (more…)

Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded not in Stockholm but in Oslo, and so that is where this past Friday the 2004 winner, the Kenyan vice-minister for the environment Wangari Maathai, was the honored guest of the Norwegian royal family for her awards ceremony. Naturally, she was given the floor in Oslo’s City Hall, and made use of it to deliver various remarks, reported by among others Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Maathi [sic]: Africans Must Resolve Conflicts Themselves). The first African woman ever to win the prize, and at the same time the first environmentalist, whose organization is credited with planting more than 30 million trees on that continent, asserted in her remarks the tight relationship between conservation of the environment and conservation of peace. But ultimately, solutions for Africa’s many conflicts, and for its poverty, must come out of Africa itself. She also expressed her hope that her accomplishment inspire other African women and girls to fulfill their own potential.

The Berliner Morgenpost account (Nobel Prize for Peace to African Woman) added further interesting details. For the first time the awards ceremony there in Oslo featured African rhythms and dances. The 64-year-old Mrs. Maathai declared that “Industry and international institutions must understand that economic justice and ecological soundness are worth more than profit at any price,” and that “much still remains to leave a world full of beauty and wonder to our children.” (Oh, words of absolute music to the left-wing German audience to which the Berliner Morgenpost caters!)

I’m glad to see this coverage, as it offers me another chance that I missed back in October when all the Nobel prize-winners were announced – namely the chance to pronounce my own judgment on the Peace Prize search committee’s work, which is: “Not bad – but.” (more…)

One of the key international figures involved in brokering the deal between the Ukrainian government and the opposition that finally led to the agreement for the election repeat on December 26 was Spain’s Javier Solana. But it’s vital here to stay up-to-date on Solana’s career path: he was NATO Secretary-General, but that was in the period 1995-1999. In 2004 in Kiev he has rather represented the European Union, as its High Representative for the Common Foreign & Security Policy (together with the presidents of Poland and Lithuania, who were also actively present there). Thus, it was the EU that was there on the scene, wielding influence from being not only Ukraine’s neighbor but also the club most Ukrainians wants to join. NATO, on the other hand, was not there; and, as Ole Bang Nielsen of Denmark’s Berlingske Tidende reminds us (NATO Puts Ukraine on Ice), the Ukraine cannot expect to find itself on NATO’s short-list of new-member candidates anytime soon. (more…)

Nathalie Schuck has a treatment in the Nouvel Observateur of the new French TV channel for international news, the Chaîne Française d’Information Internationale or CII, (The “CNN à la française” On the Rails, But Poorly Endowed). As is obvious here, this is supposed to become an international competitor to such news organizations as CNN and the BBC, but presenting the French point-of-view. (But note: in English and Arabic, in addition to French). Premier Jean-Pierre Raffarin on Thursday announced that CII would take to the airwaves next year, as a joint project of the television networks TFI and France Télévisions, financed by the state to the tune of €30 million per year.

This would seem finally to meet the call first made in 2002 by French President Jacques Chirac for a “great international news network in French”, which he maintained then was “essential for the image of our country.” (more…)

Sorry, I’ve need to turn the comments off for a little bit on this weblog. Some new antipathy on my part for comments is only half the reason: comments of any kind from interested readers are always welcome, but the waves and waves of script-generated comment spam that I am currently suffering under are certainly not. I gamely do my best to go through and delete each one of these, but when I open my e-mail and the amount there to be deleted is in triple-figures, then I have to find another solution.

I want to keep this closed-comments duration to a minimum, so I’ll shortly be enabling them again – sticking my finger outside, in a manner of speaking, to see if things are relatively “safe” again. In the meantime, if you want to leave a comment and find that you can’t, go ahead and e-mail me and we can certainly arrange something.

If you keep tabs with the major American press outlets – in this case I’m talking specifically about the New York Times, although the usual line-up of blogs have thoroughly linked to it already – you will have already seen this article on the latest pessimistic assessments from in-country CIA personnel in Iraq. Ultimately though, as President Bush has already pointed out in this context, these folks are just guessing, and their guesses are pretty much as good or as bad as anyone else’s.

But another “guess” you likely haven’t seen, unless you regularly read the Dutch-language NRC Handelsblad, is that of UN special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, given in the course of a recent exclusive interview (UN Top Man: Elections in Iraq Not Doable Now) to that newspaper’s editor Robert van de Roer. (more…)

Last Wednesday evening (1 December) Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands died in hospital at Utrecht, at the age of 93. He had been the husband, or “prince-consort,” of Queen Juliana (mother of the present Queen Beatrix), who herself died earlier this year, on March 20. The highlight of the service to his adopted country that this German-born prince performed was no doubt his role during Holland’s occupation in World War II, when he commanded the Dutch resistance from his post in London. The day after his death, as you would expect the Dutch press was filled with remembrance and tribute articles, even the financial press (free registration required). These included, from the Algemeen Dagblad, A Fighter to the End (free registration required), which is perhaps a strange title since, shortly after being admitted to the hospital for the last time, the Prince instructed his doctors not to intervene anymore. Plus, he had reportedly communicated to friends the loss of his will to live after the death of his wife in the spring. Also from the AD: the tribute They Don’t Make Them Like That Anymore, by Marc Kruyswijk. Make them how? Namely “difficult, but full of character, headstrong, but colorful. Convinced that he is right – whether he was right or not.” Well, we’ll see how “right” Prince Bernhard was.

It only took one day later for the dirty laundry to start being laid out in public. And for all his wartime record, the Prince had quite a load of dirty laundry indeed that he had accumulated through his life. (more…)

A confession: Readers who have come to this site hoping to have their thirst for Hungarian happenings slaked have inevitably come away disappointed, as I have largely neglected the Magyar press for quite a while now.

I don’t really know when I’ll get back around to my usual sort of on-line fishing in these particular media-waters for interesting things to tell you about. In the meantime, though, I can recommend Pestiside, “The Daily Dish of Cosmopolitan Budapest,” in English of course, and a weblog-type publication which, however, hastens to make it clear that it is not in fact a weblog: it’s a “web-magazine.”

Whatever; it’s certainly entertaining and worth a regular cyber-visit from anyone even remotely interested in what is going on in Budapest and Hungary generally. Indeed, it’s easy enough to agree with the assertion made on that same “Welcome” page that more, many more European cities would be enhanced with a similar sort of on-line “web-magazine” devoted to them. And there aren’t even any ads on the site to contend with – yet, at least.

The EuroSavant site here was acting strangely for a while today: no archive links, for example, and what is more important, nothing showing up when you clicked any “More” link to get any given full weblog entry. Apologies for that. It had to do with the installation of a software update, and should happen again rarely, if indeed at all.

One thing that update did fix was my trackbacks. I only recently noticed that none of my beloved readers could trackback to any €S entry, because the pop-up window would not provide a trackback URL address. Sorry that I realized that so late, but of course I was never in the habit of trackbacking myself! That’s also fixed now.

Another change-of-pace here at EuroSavant today – but we love to keep you all off-balance, after all. Today’s subject is the “sex scandal” currently embroiling Britain. And today’s text, for once, is itself in English and from an American newspaper, namely a recent entry (Anatomy of a Political Sex Scandal) in the “World Opinion Roundup” series Jefferson Morley writes regularly for the Washington Post. That “sex scandal” involves David Blunkett, who is Britain’s Home Secretary (i.e. the cabinet minister in charge of law-and-order and internal security, the equivalent of the Attorney General in the US). Morley’s piece will give you all the links that you need to articles in the British press examining various facets of this case, from various points-of-view. And even now, a couple days after it first appeared, none of the links have yet gone dead. (more…)