The time has come around again to address the issue of German radicalism. This has nothing to do with the national elections coming up there at the end of September. Nor does it have anything to do with the recent film The Baader Meinhof Complex, for that matter.

Rather, it’s about a guy – a fully-functioning adult, mind you, in this ninth year into the 21st century – who owns no mobile telephone whatsoever, and never has. Furthermore, he’s confident he never will. Can you beat that? His name is Selim Özdogan (Turkish, obviously; sounds like some sort of Middle Eastern radical to me), he writes for Die Zeit, and he tells us all about it in an article entitled Handy-Free Zone. (For those not in the know: Handy has been the literal German word for “mobile/cell phone” ever since they first appeared there on a widespread basis in the late 1980s.) (more…)

For too many people – for far, far too many, in fact, but not for any of you readers of this weblog, I would wager – the only fact filed in their brains under “Netherlands” or “Holland” is “it’s that place where you can go smoke weed and it’s legal, man!” And that’s true: you can smoke weed here, and it’s legal, as long as you follow some trifling rules regarding time and place.

But Dutch culture also stems from a rather Calvinist historical background (think “Thou Shalt Not!”), which cannot but give rise to various paradoxes – if you’d rather not call them “hypocrisies” – such as that, while it’s legal to buy hash and marijuana in small amounts, it’s strictly-speaking illegal to supply the stuff in any commercially-meaningful amounts. And the public authorities take a particularly dim view of marijuana “farms” or “plantations.”

Combine all that with Dutch technical ingenuity, and what you can come up with as a result is what (fittingly) the Dutch religious newspaper Nederlands Dagblad is now reporting: Unmanned helicopter tracks down marijuana-cultivation. (more…)

I hate to be a “downer” here at EuroSavant, but nonetheless feel an obligation (as explained below) to bring up recent alarming pronouncements about Germany’s immediate future made by a prominent economics professor there, Dr. Max Otte (full last name: “Otte van Ullstein”) of the University of Worms. The main coverage I found in Die Welt (Crash-guru demands vacation-ban for Germans, no by-line), although that article references and orients itself around a brief interview Prof. Otte recently gave to Berliner Kurier (The crash-professor prophesies: the crisis will hit us this hard), a Berlin-based tabloid. (more…)

Even as the remaining Somali pirate involved in last week’s dramatic hostage stand-off with the US Navy has arrived in New York to be put on trial there, further developments in the Indian Ocean have put the differences between the US and European approaches to the problem in stark relief. For last weekend the Dutch military and then the Canadians each captured a number of Somali pirates and then concluded that there was nothing they could do with them but let them go. As the leading Dutch daily the NRC Handelsblad reported in its coverage of the Dutch foreign minister’s visit to Washington at about the same point in time, these episodes contributed to some awkwardness in that encounter with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who noted that such actions were “not a good signal.”

Now according to a further NRC article, it looks like NATO has actually taken notice of Clinton’s remarks and realized that it needs to come up with something to fix this situation. (more…)

Heard about the new Star Trek film (title: “Star Trek”) coming out next month? For real: this one is apparently going to reveal the pre-history of that great space epic, i.e. the story of those times before the USS Enterprise embarked upon all those space-adventures depicted in the original late-1960s TV series, the period back when James Kirk, Mr. Spock and all the rest of the crew were still just . . . well, “space cadets” might be the best term. There must still be a healthy Trekkie community in Germany, for no less than the prestigious weekly Die Zeit has an article up about this (From Lad to Captain) by Bernd Musa. (more…)

“Make no mistake,” as Grégoire Biseau writes for the French left-leaning newspaper Libération, “the crisis continues to wreak devastation.” He cites only figures for France, but they still do not make for very reassuring reading: bankruptcies, for example, are up 21.3% in the first quarter of 2009 (presumably year-on-year), and profitability for non-financial firms is at its lowest level since 1985.

The question naturally arises: Surely there must be companies, somewhere, which are still doing well for themselves despite the tough times. Who are they? Perhaps more importantly – because of the clues that may be extractable for the rest of us – how are they managing to pull that off? As chief editor and team leader, Biseau enlists his colleagues at Libération to put together an article-collection addressing these questions, under the master-title of Seven aspects of getting around the crisis. (more…)

Various American papers (such as the Washington Post) covered the recent 2009 Monopoly US National Championship, which was actually staged last week inside of Washington, DC’s Union Station. But people play Monopoly other places, too, as we are reminded by Matthias Wyssuwa of Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung with his coverage of the eleventh annual German national Monopoly champion competition (Go to jail).

Granted, America was the original source, in the 1930s, of this ultimate free-market, real estate buying-and-selling competition (looked at it that way, where else could it have come from?), and Wyssuwa informs us that all of this world-wide Monopoly tournament activity is in preparation for the World Championship to take place later this year in Las Vegas. That’s also a fitting choice, except that Atlantic City – whose street-names are the ones you find used in the classic American edition of the game, you’ll recall – would have been even better. Of course, it’s German street-names that are used in the German edition; for example, Hans-Georg Schellinger, the ultimate winner of this 2009 German championship, is said by Wyssuwa in the final round to build up a real estate empire “from the Badstraße to the Opernplatz.” (more…)

A little while ago I covered here the alarming prospect for EU officials that, because of the fall of the current Czech government under prime minster Mirek Topolánek, that notorious Eurosceptic Václav Klaus, the Czech president, would in effect be in charge of much of the European Union’s important business for the remainder of the Czech Republic’s EU presidency (lasting until the end of June). Yesterday we got word from the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita (Klaus will not extend hand to Lukashenko) that Klaus is already putting his stamp upon the EU “Eastern Partnership” summit scheduled to take place in Prague the first week of May, where he is to host the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, the Ukraine, and Belarus. The president of that last country, Alexander Lukashenko, may very well come to Prague for the occasion (or, indeed, he may decide not to), but if he does, President Klaus will not shake his hand nor include him in the official reception to be held at Prague Castle.

Keep in mind that this “Eastern Partnership” summit actual takes place just before Mirek Topolánek’s government heads out the door and is replaced by a government of technocrats headed by current chief of the Czech Statistical Agency, Jan Fischer. Yet even if Topolánek had any objection to this treatment of the guest from Belarus – there’s no indication either way whether he does – his extreme “lame duck” status would provide him little standing to do anything about it. Besides, no matter who is in charge of the agenda of a summit occurring in Prague, it’s at least always up to the Czech president who he invites to come dine at the Castle.

Plus, it just so happens that this is the right thing to do. Lukashenko has long been known as “Europe’s last remaining dictator” for the ruthless way he manipulates the sham elections he is called upon to stage every so often and persecutes the native political opposition. One complaint against the EU from many who are not privileged to walk the governing halls in Brussels is the way, when some international actor does something nasty which should make him persona non grata, it seems that all that it takes is a certain period of lying low and avoiding any more nasty headlines to get back into the EU’s good graces again. Here Václav Klaus is demonstrating that, despite his somewhat advanced age, there is nothing wrong with his memory or political sense on this issue.

This year of 2009 marks a couple of anniversaries calling for celebration, like NATO’s 60th birthday that President Obama traveled to Europe earlier this month in part to commemorate, or likewise the 60th birthday of the Federal Republic of Germany coming up next month. There will be the 220th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, which set off the French Revolution, on July 14th – and then of course, a bit more fresh in the mind, the twentieth anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and the liberation of Eastern Europe from Soviet domination that that symbolized, coming up in November.

As we approach that latter celebration, a tiny but interesting detail has emerged concerning the exact sequence of events behind that “Fall of the Wall” on the evening (Central European Time) of 9 November, 1989. What that was basically all about was a massive swarm of citizens of East Berlin flooding to the Wall crossing-points – and then, indeed, over the border into West Berlin as they desired – motivated by the widespread belief that, in a drastic break from previous policy, the East German authorities would henceforth actually allow them to cross rather than shooting or at least arresting them, as would have previously been the case ever since the Wall’s erection starting on 13 August 1961. That understanding stemmed from a statement at a news conference just earlier that evening by Günter Schabowski, a member of the East German Politburo, to the effect that the full Politburo had decided to introduce a new travel policy allowing free movement by East German citizens to the West – whose coming-into-effect was said to be “immediate.” (more…)

Today we continue our impromptu series on “animals back in Europe that you wouldn’t expect” with an article by Helmut Luther from the German paper Die Zeit about the wolves that now roam in Italy, specifically in the northern reaches of the Apennine Mountains. Actually, Luther’s article (with the nearly-incomprehensible title “In a song with Isegrim” – it seems Isegrim/Isegrin is the name of a wolf-character out of German medieval fables) is located within Die Zeit’s Travel section, as it is oriented towards potential tourists interested in heading down to Northern Italy to try out the very limited wolf-searching commercial tours on offer there, and includes at its end practical information about the tours themselves, how to get there, and available hotel accommodation in the area.

But yes, wolves are back in Northern Italy, after all but completely dying out decades ago. They were officially made a protected species under Italian law back in the 1970s, but Luther writes that a more-helpful development was the economic development since then that prompted country-dwellers in that part of Italy to head away to the city for more lucrative jobs, and so opened the way for wild boars and deer – the wolves’ favorite snacks! – to spread and multiply, with the canines at the top of the local food-chain soon following. (more…)

Today, news from Koen Lauwereyns of the Flemish newspaper Het Nieuwsblad: there are dolphins in the North Sea! His lede: “Sunken treasure-hunters get a free performance off the coast from Nieuwpoort.”

Nieuwpoort is a seaside-resort town in Belgium, maybe ten miles away from the French border, across which lies also on the coast the slightly-more-famous Dunkerque (Dunkirk). We just enjoyed an unseasonably-warm Easter weekend in this corner of Europe, and on Sunday Gert Vanluchene, Didier Balencourt, and Pieter Jonckers (all out of Brussels) were taking advantage of the weather to grab their scuba-gear, head for the seaside, and indulge in their hobby of going diving in search of interesting sea-wrecks off of this very historical coastline. As things turned out, they didn’t have much luck when it came to finding something interesting underwater. It was only afterwards, as they were all relaxing under the springtime sun in their rubber-boat “drinking a pint,” that they hit a sort of jackpot. As Vanluchene recounts for the article:

Suddenly there appeared above our heads swarms of sea-gulls and we saw to the left and right of our boat silver flashes. Immediately afterwards two porpoises shot out of the water. That was the beginning of a spectacular exhibition. Evidently we had arrived right in the middle of lunch for some tens of dolphins. There were two-meter-long specimens, but also little ones. For definitely an hour they showed us their stuff all around our boat.

That passage is very heartening to read, but ultimately is of course but an anecdote. For the bigger picture about dolphins in such cold waters we could use some sort of scientific authority, and Lauwereyns duly segues to Wim Wauters of the Sea Life Center in Blankenberge, BE (for what it’s worth, a for-profit aquarium), who lets him know that dolphins are hardly unknown in the North Sea, it’s just that pollution over the last decades had tended to drive them away. That they are now back in greater numbers – along with seals too, by the way – is a hopeful endorsement of state efforts to clean up the North Sea, as well as adjustments fishing-boats have been required by law to make to avoid getting them caught up in their nets.

The leading French daily Le Monde has a weblog on its website that I’ve just discovered, called V Pour Vidéo. The tagline it uses to describe itself translates as “Video-essentials in a blog with real pieces of video inside” – language I imagine that you’d rather expect to see on a cereal-box! In any case, it does seem to be a weblog based around video, in a loose sense at least, with at least one video embedded in each blogpost.

Also, the blog-author’s name is Karim El Hadj – that’s something that should cause a double-take, when you realize that this is an affiliated product of the renowned Le Monde! I’m not saying that it’s surprising that someone who is clearly originally of Arab origin can come up with high-quality weblog content; I’m saying I’m surprised that such a person is, in effect, sponsored by such a pillar of the French media establishment as Le Monde.

For his blogpost for today it seems that El Hadj has been inspecting various Disney animation-films rather closely and has come up with something rather interesting. I’ll pass the word directly on to him here:

Like many animation-lovers, while watching Disney animated cartoons you have also felt a certain déjà vu. Here’s the explanation of this phenomenon. For many years the Disney enterprise has continued to duplicate animation segments from one cartoon to another. Creativity and industry don’t necessarily always go together.

Here’s the video that proves his point, from DailyMotion.com:

In the comments following the post you have contributions from various readers offering their own judgments as to whether this is really such a bad thing. Comment #3, from “Matthieu,” does cut Disney some slack, reminding us that back when these films were made there were no computers to assist so that everything had to be drawn by hand, and maybe in view of this the duplication made some sense in order to “gain time” and not have to re-do everything all the time. But El Hadj remains hard-core, sticking in his own blog-author’s comment-to-the-commend (Message du blogueur) saying, in effect, yeah they gain time, and so they gain more money, and where’s the innovation?

I know you might be busy with your Easter holiday weekend – but any chance you have been keeping up with the latest pirate-saga going on just off the coast of Somalia? The news from there could get very exciting, very soon, since not only the US Navy but also the pirates are reported to be dispatching ships to the spot on the high seas where a lifeboat from the ship Maersk Alabama containing pirates and their hostage, that ship’s captain, Richard Phillips, currently is in a face-off with the US destroyer U.S.S. Bainbridge. Meanwhile, around last midnight Phillips tried to jump out of that lifeboat and swim to the Bainbridge, but was recaptured by the pirates. There’s plenty of coverage about all of this in the various European national presses, but the latest article from the New York Times provides a pretty complete account of what is going on there as well.

The second-order discussion here, of course, is over what can be done to eradicate these dangerous maritime nuisances, who since the latter part of last year have become particularly audacious. If you have any ideas and are looking to get into a discussion, then you can of course e-mail me at this weblog, and/or you can resort to fora from the New York Times or the BBC. In the meantime, though, the Danish legislature (the Folketing) has an official solution that it would like brought up before the United Nations, as reported in Berlingske Tidende (Danish proposal should go to UN).

It should be no surprise that the Danes already have a solution to propose, for at least two reasons: 1) The Danes come out of an activist, Protestant, we-can-change-the-world-if-we-try culture that finds it impossible to encounter a problem like this and just shrug its shoulders and move on, and 2) They are heavily involved in international shipping. Indeed, that container ship at the center of the current stand-off, the Maersk Alabama, is owned by a Danish conglomerate, the A.P. Møller-Mærsk Group. The Folketing’s plan was drawn up by the Danish Institute for Military Studies, and it’s a fairly simple one, that starts with the establishment of a regional coast guard for the Somali coast, with start-up costs paid for by the UN, that can serve to warn passing shipping about the specific presence of pirates. But the second essential element is the establishment of some sort of court, with a firm basis in international law to be able to try pirates for their crimes. For one glaring problem is that, too often, Western naval personnel who have actually captured pirates have basically had to throw them right back, like fish that local gaming regulations won’t allow you to keep. We’ve covered this particular problem before here, and this does raise the question about – even if some sort of international court is established to try the pirates – who will be responsible for ensuring that whatever punishment that court prescribes is actually carried out? That point still seems to be a hole in the Danish proposal.

Anyway, though, a parliamentary majority is in place in the Folketing to send it on its way to the UN, although some doubts were expressed by the defense spokesman for the Danish People’s Party, who worried that sending such a proposal to the UN was the quickest way to make sure it got stuck in bureaucracy and went nowhere.

That’s at least according to “Devil’s Advocate” (Advocaat van de Duivel), a television program on the Dutch state network Nederland 2, on which every week “lawyer Gerard Spong defends a prominent personality about whom public opinion has an outspoken position,” according to its description on Nederland 2. We’re informed of this vital and earth-shaking development, not from a Dutch newspaper, but from journalists across the border writing for the German daily Die Welt (TV court declares Osaba bin Laden innocent; I tried but could not find any report on this in the on-line Dutch press).

Yes, this program is a sort of “people’s court” in which Spong – in his day-job a prominent Amsterdam defense attorney who charges up to €450 an hour – defends the notorious before a “citizen’s jury” and a larger studio audience, who are each then polled to see what effect his arguments have had on them. (Check it out: you can watch the entire latest program from this webpage, just click on the bekijk uitzending link, but of course it’s in Dutch with no sub-titles.) And in this particular episode that “citizen’s jury” ruled as “unproven” both the propositions that Bin Laden was the planner/director of the September 11 attacks and even that he was the founder/leader of al-Qaeda. Instead, both the jury and the studio audience ruled that those attacks on New York and Washington were most likely “a fiction propounded by Western politicians.” Still, Spong did try to push things a bit too far – maybe that’s just the professional instinct of any good defense lawyer – by also advancing the proposition that Bin Laden was a mere “freedom-fighter at war against the West”; the jury concluded instead that he is indeed “a terrorist who misuses Islam for personal ambitions to power.”

That Die Welt article holds tightly to the prescribed journalistic objectivity, simply passing on to readers the fact that this TV program occurred and the details as to what the “citizen’s jury” decided, without any additional editorial comment. In that same vox populi, vox dei spirit, it also displays in a prominent spot at its head a simple Yes/No on-line poll question: “Is al-Qaeda still a danger for the West?”

After Barack Obama finished up his speech on Sunday to the tens of thousands present on Prague’s Castle (Hradčanské) Square, he decided to wade into the crowd a bit. In the process, one enthusiastic Czech got so close as to pat the head of the Most Powerful Man on Earth.

An article in the largest-circulation quality Czech daily, Mladá fronta dnes (I patted Obama on the head. He hugged me.), has the details about this character, as well as a couple of pictures of the incident in question so you can decide just how outraged you’d care to be. That guy’s name is Jaroslav Suchý (a fairly common Czech last-name; it means “dry”), and he’s no stranger to the Czech security service. But hold on, it’s not what you think: as the head of that organization, Lubomír Kvíčala, told MFD:

That person who lightly touched the president on his hair I know. We already encountered him a couple of times at previous visits of the American president Bush and at a visit by Mrs. [Condoleezzaa] Rice. He is just enthusiastic about such visits and loves them. He’s definitely not dangerous.

According to Suchý himself, he was waiting at the checkpoint offering access to Castle Square from midnight Saturday, i.e. seven hours before the gates were opened for the public, and other on-the-scene MFD reporters confirm that he was among the first to be admitted by police, which enabled him to rush up to grab a prime position up front (into what generally would be termed the “mosh pit” in a rock-concert context – here, it turned into the “press-the-flesh zone”). As one such reporter states, “[f]or a whole three hours he loudly let people in his vicinity know how he was looking forward to the speech.” And Suchý himself also told MFD that “although I don’t really speak English, I clapped at every one of Obama’s sentences. Despite the fact that I was mainly looking at the president rather than the [translated] sub-titles.”

The article goes on to note that, when Jaroslav Suchý is not tracking down and applauding high-ranking American officials, he is pursuing a case in the Czech courts seeking compensation for being forced to attend “special schools” (i.e. schools for the handicapped), which he claims he was forced into solely because of the color of his skin. Perhaps some of you, examining the article’s photos again, may think this is some sort of joke, but it likely is not: the Czech Republic does still have an ethnic-discrimination problem, although it is not directed against black people (who are exceedinly rare) but against the Romany, or “gypsies.” So apparently the authorities where Suchý grew up kept classifying him as a gypsy.

That nightmare is having Václav Klaus, noted euroskeptic, functioning as president of the EU. His country, the Czech Republic, does indeed hold the six-month rotating EU presidency until the end of June, and with the fall of the Czech government of prime minister Mirek Topolánek in the last week of March through the passage of a no-confidence motion in the lower house of the Czech parliament the props were kicked out from under the Czech politician who most people assumed was actually responsible for conducting that EU presidency. Now that Obama has left Prague so that inter-government discord need no longer be swept under the carpet, Klaus has announced a plan to do away entirely with Topolánek as head of the government by stating that he is in favor instead of having a caretaker government of non-political experts installed to run the country until early elections can be held next October. That is perfectly within his right – in fact, in these circumstances it is his very function – as Czech president, and the new prime minister he prefers is Jan Fischer, who currently is chairman of the Czech Statistical Agency. Tereza Nosálková and Petra Pospĕchová of Hospoářské noviny have an excellent analysis of what all this means, especially to the EU in their article Fear of Klaus transforms Europe’s timetable. (more…)

You likely missed it in the thick series of happenings and photo-ops that have flooded the world’s front pages since Barack Obama first took flight last Tuesday for London, but there was a bit of a mini-crisis brewing at the NATO summit (his next stop after the G20 meeting in London) even as he addressed all those German and French students in Strasbourg at that “town hall” meeting on Friday. It wasn’t very complicated: the current Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was lined up to succeed Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as NATO Secretary-General at the summit, but there was a serious monkey-wrench in the works: the top Turkish leaders did not want Rasmussen in that post, and they were ready to insist that he not get it and so exercise the effective veto they and every other one of NATO’s 28 members have on such a top position. (The Turkish complaints against him related to the late 2005/early 2006 Danish cartoons affair, plus a Kurdish-language TV station – “Roj TV” – that broadcasts in Denmark.) Things even reached the point that – horrors! – the news conference scheduled for 1:00 PM on Saturday afternoon did not happen until a good two-and-a-half hours later, which is when De Hoop Scheffer could finally appear on the stage shaking hands with his Danish successor.

As befitting its status as one of Denmark’s best-regarded daily newspapers, Berlingske Tidende has some good coverage of this affair (NATO’s declaration-of-confidence in Denmark), written by Ole Bang Nielsen. First off, Nielsen makes it clear just what this appointment means to the Danes themselves, namely a recognition that Denmark is no longer just a “footnote-nation and hesitant member of NATO,” as well as a personal vote of support to Rasmussen himself. To get there past the Turkish opposition, though, truly took a tremendous diplomatic full-court press – “the large European NATO lands finally threw in all their political ballast against Turkey,” as Nielsen writes. Breaking up that NATO meeting without having Rasmussen in place as the Secretary-General would have been a humiliation – especially for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who basically had announced the day before that Rasmussen would be named – so those European countries did indeed throw in everything, including Turkey’s prospective EU membership. Yes, EU matters generally do not belong being linked to NATO issues (the memberships of the two organizations don’t match very exactly, anyway), but Nielsen writes that certain threats were made nonetheless against Turkey’s EU membership process should it continue to hold out against the Dane. It seems even that the EU enlargement commissioner (Olli Rehn, a Finn) was on-hand personally to utter authoritative remarks toward the Turks such as “This does not look good from a European perspective, if Turkey does not give way.” There you have it: ordinarily Rehn did not even belong there at the NATO meeting at all, since he is an EU official, and because Finland is not a member of NATO anyway. (more…)

One distinct Amsterdam “happening” that we’ve been glad to cover previously in these pages is the “Gay Pride” festival, occurring each year the first weekend of August and with a crowded, often rather bawdy boat-parade along the outermost of the city’s famous set of concentric canals, the Prinsengracht, as its centerpiece. It’s always a blast for those who can hitch a ride along with one of the boats, or even get the funds together for one’s organization to sponsor its own such boat – as long as your organization does not mind the affiliation with the homosexual cause. These days, though, when it comes to Amsterdam it’s hard to think of many organizations that would mind, other than the Muslim ones.

Then again, up to now the Dutch military has also not been too happy with any sign of its presence at the Gay Pride parade – like soldiers floating along on the boats while in uniform, something that happened last year and led to some sort of uproar (presumably including sanctions against those military personnel). But now that has changed; the Volkskrant reports today (but in a story credited to the Dutch news agency ANP) that permanent Defense Ministry undersecretary (Staatssecretaris) Jack de Vries has announced, through a spokesman, that participating in Gay Pride in your uniform is OK – but that that should still in no way be interpreted as official Defense Ministry participation in, or endorsement of, the festival.

Perhaps the really interesting thing here is that this is not just some spontaneous decision from the Ministry, but rather is in reaction to encouragement from the Dutch lower house of Parliament (the Tweede Kamer) to make such a policy change. That, it seems, was ultimately among the more significant follow-on effects of last year’s controversy.

If this is Saturday, and you’re the American president, then that countryside you see down below, outside of the windows of Air Force One, must be the Czech Republic. Yes, today Obama and entourage flies on to Prague, and Dan Bilefsky in the New York Times already has the details about how he has the tricky task before him of visiting a country’s capital while taking care to have very little to do with top leaders of the government there – and pulling all this off without seeming impolite or ungrateful for the hospitality. The first trick involves invoking a presidential desire for a night off in scenic Prague, to grab the chance for an intimate dinner with Michelle at a “secret location,” in order to avoid any extended encounter-over-a-meal with either Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek (who publicly labeled Obama’s domestic budget plans a “road to hell”* only a few days ago; is a rather stolid, apparatchik-type guy anyway; speaks little English – and, most vitally, is now but a “caretaker” prime minister after his government fell this past week) or President Václav Klaus (speaks excellent English, now is in whip-hand position to determine composition of the next Czech government – but who could also bring on an attack of extreme presidential indigestion, no matter how excellent the food served, with his outspoken and negative opinions about the EU and climate change; for more about this in English, from the Economist, see here). (more…)

For what it’s worth, Taliban leadership in Pakistan has claimed credit for yesterday’s gunman rampage at an immigration services center in Binghamton, NY, that killed 13. Denmark’s Berlingske Tidende is carrying a report to this effect, sourced both to Reuters and the Danish news-agency Ritzau. As Baitullah Mehsud (labeled “the militant Taliban leader in Pakistan”) claimed in a telephone call to Reuters, “I take responsibility. These were my men. I gave them orders to react to American attacks with unmanned drones.”

Of course, as the Berlingske article goes on to note briefly, the attack in Binghamton was perpetrated by only a single gunman, who was of Vietnamese background. Maybe Baitullah Mehsud has his retaliations mixed up; maybe this was some sort of repayment for attacking American manned aircraft from about forty years ago, say, around Quang Tri?

It’s Friday, 3 April – do you know where your American president is? I’ll give you a clue: today he is generally in the area of the French/German border where it is demarcated by the Rhine: in Germany at Baden-Baden and a village called Kehl, but mainly at French Strasbourg for a combined NATO summit and celebration of that alliance’s 60th anniversary. That organization may even get a new secretary-general as a result of this gathering; current Danish premier Anders Fogh Rasmussen is the favorite to the Dutch Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who has held that position for five years now.

Amid all the honor-guard reviews, meetings, and celebrations one prominent voice calls out forlornly from the sideline, like a jilted past lover of the bridegroom at a wedding. It belongs to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, winner of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, and a man highly “involved” (at least in terms of the measures he did not take) in the wave of revolutions in 1989-90 that took Eastern Europe out of the Soviet bloc. Both the Financial Times Deutschland (Gorbachev criticizes NATO expansion; no by-line) and the Czech daily Lidové noviny (NATO decieved the Russians, Gorbachev maintains, article by Petra Procházková) are now carrying reports of recent remarks he made to German media outlets accusing the West of breaking certain promises that were made to his government back at the time of German reunification in 1990. (more…)

So today is the day: the G20 summit in London. I’m pleased to report delightfully sunny, warm, no-need-for-overcoats spring weather here in NW Europe to aid the assembled world leaders in their deliberations, even though we all realize that as a practical matter that will do little but boost the ranks of protestors out on London’s streets – for today, especially, the lives of a world leader and his/her staff are bounded by conference rooms and the climate-controlled cocoons of limousines.

Belgium’s La Libre Belgique has a good run-down (Re-start more, regulate better) of the task these leaders face. The lede:

The stakes of the “Twenty,” industrialized and developing countries, are at minimum double. Consolidate the chances of economic recovery and avoid new skidding from the financial markets. The G20 will have to convince in both registers.

As La Libre reporter Pierre-François Lovens notes, Barack Obama himself has gone on record as refusing to be satisfied with leaving London having achieved only “half measures.” Yet as Lovens also writes, “Four hours, maybe five . . . That’s the time – a priori derisory enough in view of the stakes – that the heads of state and of government of the G20 will devote on Thursday, in London, to the multiple dossiers” before them at the summit. Furthermore, the basic outlines of disagreement have not changed: the US wants greater spending on stimulus packages from other governments, especially those in Europe, while for their part the Europeans reject this idea while making it clear that they are after an expanded system of international financial regulation in which “no place, no financial product and no institution can exist anymore without supervision or transparency.” (more…)

It has been a particular challenge going through the Danish press today: they seem especially gripped by (to coin a new term) “April-Fool-itis,” that is, celebrating this April 1 by planting remarkable “news” stories that turn out just to be a joke. Even if one is inclined to look favorably on the practice (e.g. as an amusing change-of-pace from the pedestrian nature of most news during the other 364 days of the year), Danish newspaper practice unfortunately waters it down substantially through the practice of frequently running the same articles from the Danish news-agency Ritzau in several of the papers at the same time. This naturally reduces substantially the amount of truly-original (as opposed to “echoed from Ritzau”) material. (Dutch papers also have this problem, i.e. of too many papers too often publishing the same article, by the way.)

Still, there are a handful of original joke-articles out there. But then the next problem arises, i.e. that the humor is too tied-in to the Danish cultural and/or political context to raise any laughs outside of the country. Anyway, let’s go looking for these jokes-articles and you can decide this for yourself. This exercise will also be valuable as a means to “innoculate” you against these tongue-in-cheek news-tales in case you later run across them within a context elsewhere that presents them to you as real. (more…)