Salah Abdeslam: does that name still ring a bell? He’s the Belgian citizen thought to be among the attackers in Paris last November 13 – and the only one to have escaped alive, aided considerably by what appears to be his decision to shed the regulation suicide-vest he wore at the time and just get out of there. It’s been more than a month and he is still at large. You really have to think that, by now, he is somewhere in Syria, safe under ISIL protection.

There’s a new piece up on the website of the Luxembourg-based newspaper L’Essentiel claiming that the Brussels police came very close to nabbing Abdeslam shortly after that deadly assault. We’re talking here again about Molenbeek, that notorious quarter of central Brussels from which so many radical jihadis have originated, and not just many of those involved in the Paris attack.

To be fair, L’Essentiel is just confirming a scoop first gained by the Flemish commercial television chain VTM, to the effect that Brussels police from Sunday, 15 November were fairly sure Abdeslam was sheltering inside a particular Molenbeek apartment known to be a jihadi safehouse. But they did not move in: they couldn’t, legally, because, according to this article, “House-searches are in fact forbidden by the Belgian penal code between 23.00 and 05.00 hours except in urgent cases such as fires or les flagrants délits,” that latter phrase I assume signifying cases when it is known that crimes are actually being committed there on-scene.

Neither was the case for Abdeslam hiding out there in Molenbeek, so the authorities had to wait until the next morning. By that time they went in, he had given them the slip. By the way, from the timing it is clear this report provides further insight into why Belgian authorities decided to raise the alert levels for Brussels to “Imminent Attack Expected” for that same Sunday and the following couple of days.

Very frustrating, obviously. But this is also very unfortunate from a civil liberties point-of-view. This sort of police-failure – an inability to use the powers they do have, which should be enough – inevitably will accelerate the erosion of citizens’ liberties towards the police that we have already seen too much of following those November attacks.

If you have been keeping track at all, then you know that tension has been high recently on the Korean peninsula. Things seemed to cool down a bit when the yearly main US – South Korean joint military exercises ended last April 30 (although an additional “river-crossing” drill was held just a few days ago – you can never get enough training!). But now there is this.

Le sort de neuf jeunes: the fate of nine young people. Understandably, inmates of North Korea are trying to escape from there all the time, and what this is about is nine young people aged 14 to 18 who succeeded in getting as far away as Laos – which then promptly arrested them for illegal entry into the country and deported them back to North Korea (while arresting two South Koreans found with them and charging them with human trafficking, before releasing them to their embassy). (more…)

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

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

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

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

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

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

The beginning of the year coming up, 2012, offers a rather bittersweet anniversary. Do you remember? It was from midnight on 1 January 2002, literally as fireworks still lit up urban skies, that euro banknotes first issued from ATM machines inside the 12 original Eurozone members, and that banks and merchants first returned eurocoins in change, all of those with a national emblem reflecting where they had been minted on one side.

No prize for guessing why any commemoration of this 10-year milestone is lacking so far in the press – everywhere I look, really. For 2012 promises to be a difficult year for European national finances, and therefore for the euro; to many, an exit from the Eurozone of one or several states is likely, and from that possibly even the common currency’s “collapse” (although I think that, no matter what, there will be a rump core of states – Germany, Netherlands, Finland, etc. – still using it for quite a while).

But enough of this depressing talk! We have all read and heard quite enough of it, at least before the onset of the holiday season (when the bureaucrats and bank officials in charge left their desks for a while).* Let’s rather follow the Luxembourg lead and consider the euro from a different perspective:

That perspective is “integration,” always a hot European topic: to what degree are the various European peoples mixing with each other and getting along while they do so? Except that here, in this essential piece from the French-language Luxembourg paper L’essentiel (no byline), the subject is rather the degree to which all the various eurocoins are mixing with each other in people’s pockets. The lede:

Ten years after the arrival of the euro, the coins which sport a national symbol on one face are not yet totally mixed in European wallets.

(more…)

One famous result of that climactic, all-nighter European summit of last 26/27 October was that Greece’s creditors would have to accept a 50% “haircut,” i.e. resign themselves to getting back only half (approximately) of the value – principal + interest – that they thought they were going to earn when they first loaned the money. But what does that mean exactly, in terms of specifics? Well, that’s going to depend on negotiations between Greece and those creditors – and from a certain little dog we get an early tweet about how those might look:

Yes, it’s fitting that this is a little Luxembourg dog! (Actually, the piece to which it links – with the second link, not the first – itself passes on the original scoop from the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, via Reuters. But unfortunately we don’t do Greek here at €S.)

Here are the alleged options on the menu:

• Per €100 of debt, creditors will get somewhere between a €10 and €20 cash-payment; for the rest, they get between €30 and €40 (again, per €100 of debt) in a brand-new debt security with a term of between 20 and 30 years and yearly interest of about 6%.
  
• OR else they could have just €37 per €100 debt wiped out entirely and for the rest get a 15-year bond with interest “somewhat higher” than 6%. That sounds a bit better, yes; that’s the proposal from the Institute of International Finance (IIF) which is negotiating for the private creditors.

Anyway, for what all that is worth: the Luxembourg Tageblatt article here is careful to point out that the original Kathimerini piece was “without indication of sources.” So do you trust Greek journalists?

Heard about that so-called “Arab Spring” that has been going on recently (Egypt, Yemen, etc.)? Maybe it deserves a bit more of your attention – a little dog just let me know it’s gonna be BIG!

OK, not really a “little dog” but rather the Luxembourg-based German-language newspaper Tageblatt, in an article (“Arab Spring” has consequences) lacking any by-line other than that of the (surprisingly-new) German press agency dapd.

Actually – apologies for pulling your chain here – this is really the contention of a very smart man, namely William Hague, currently the UK’s Foreign Secretary, a former Conservative Party leader, and McKinsey management consultant when he isn’t involved in politics. According to recent public remarks from him, the wave of revolutions and related unrest in the Arab World that we’re currently seeing is bigger than September 11, 2001, bigger even than the ongoing worldwide financial crisis. This Arab Spring – if fully successful – would be “the greatest advance for human rights and freedom since the end of the Cold War” and could very well carry on to wash over the rest of the globe.

Now check out where the piece goes from there:

At the same time Hague called for support for those seeking to escape authoritarian regimes in Arab states. He also advocated stronger economic incentives for countries to choose for democracy. That way Europe could include the region in a free-trade zone or even a customs-union, he declared.

Whoa! Does that “support for those seeking to escape” extend to opening Britain’s borders (never part of the Schengen area) to the very many cross-Mediterranean refugees with whom Italy and France are now struggling to cope? And what about Syria? There, Hague promises only to pressure strongman Bashir al-Assad to stop using violence, not to “choose for democracy.”