Kaliningrad Calling!
Now this is interesting – if also a little obscure. One of the current lesser crises going on (so that you barely hear about it) is the erosion of the EU's Schengen Treaty whereby a large subset of member-states allow travel among themselves with absolutely no border controls. Now this arrangement – formerly the pride of the EU, on par with the common currenchy – is on the back foot, mainly due to the flood of refugees coming from North Africa (a by-product of the "Arab Spring") and the general loss of member-state confidence that the Italian authorities at the first line of defence can keep them out before they do get into Italy and thereby into the Schengen zone, from where they have many options for further uncontrolled inter-EU travel. France was loudly talking about re-imposing controls on its Italian border a while back, while Denmark has actually done so on its border with Germany – to the sputtering protests (with no attendant action) of EU authorities.
In the middle of this, as the leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza now reports, the EU Commission is likely to open up visa-free travel from Russia. Well, not really all of Russia – but rather that strange Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, stuck there between Poland and Lithuania, outside of Russia proper. Oh, and they won't actually be able to go to Lithuania – just to Poland. And, to make it clear, there still will be border controls in place, these Kaliningradians (?) will just be able to go through them (presumably flashing their Russian passports) without having to go through the trouble of getting a visa beforehand.
Then again, Poland itself has been within the Schengen zone for a while now; who knows where some of them will want to go on to from there? But the Commission is seemingly willing to take that chance and announce such visa-free entry tomorrow; according to the article (no by-line), it's motivation is essentially that it feels sorry for the Kaliningradians, they must be so lonely: "to avoid the isolation of Kaliningrad from its immediate neighbors, it is necessary to ease the travel of its citizens." Because that sort of isolation can't be very healthy for any body politic.
Don't laugh: since Kaliningrad was first isolated this way by the independence of Lithuania in 1990, it's been mainly known (when noticed at all) for the shady activities of all sorts going on there: weapon-smuggling, alcohol/cigarette-smuggling, the dispatch of freighters with suspicious cargoes, and the like. This is quite simply a gesture to persuade people there to start behaving themselves.
Enough Breivik Already!
Michael Schlieben, of the esteemed German commentary-newspaper Die Zeit, can't take it anymore: Stop the Breivik Soap Opera!
Mass-murderer as Superstar: Many in the German media are exploiting the private life of the Oslo-gunman – and thereby making him an icon.
To tell the truth, I'm also getting rather tired of hearing about this guy as well – speaking of course in the context of my own media circles, which include the German only to the extent of my daily trawl through all European media.
I actually wasn't aware of the lengths to which some outlets there have gone in pursuit of this story. Yes, there's been some questionable stuff from the Bild Zeitung – oooh, if you click there today you get to see the actual explosion-site of his Oslo car-bomb, with hole-in-concrete and debris all around! And Schlieben says that from the Bild readers have also been able to learn of Breivik's acne when younger, his continual troubles finding a girlfriend, and even the herpes of his step-father(!). A surfeit of information there, we can all agree – but then that's the Bild, which for decades has carried on News of the World-type reporting for the German reading public.
No, more disturbing is other papers getting into the act which one would think would know better. This blog and Twitter-feed often invokes Berlin's Der Tagesspiegel, but that publication has seen fit to reproduce all the photos off of Breivik's Facebook profile. And we all know Der Spiegel, which has displayed on its pages photographs of the mass-murderer in an array of uniforms. Other publications (unnamed) have gone into his tax returns, or plumbed his musical tastes, perhaps from his on-line playlists.
Now, it's not like this guy should be ignored, and over in the US an interesting debate has touched off about the alleged affinity between his "manifesto" and the extreme views of some evangelicals. Still, the sort of mass-voyeurism that Schlieben describes is all that a mass-killer with an ideological agenda could ever want. Yes: "the terrorist has won."
Chewed Up & Spit Out?
Der Druck der Musikindustrie: Durchgekaut und ausgespuckt?: Wer ist schuldig am tragischen Tod von Amy Winehouse?… http://bit.ly/nJiEQE
July 26, 2011 9:15 pm via stern.deReplyRetweetFavorite
@sternde
Amy Winehouse is gone; she was put in the earth yesterday. Who is to blame?
Sophie Albers of Germany's #2 newsmagazine Stern puts the music industry itself on trial. Her treatment is brief, necessarily, and therefore hardly dispositive, and it's also rather quirky. Standing for the prosecution: Siouxsie Sioux, of Banshees fame, who is quoted right at the beginning saying "I love music, but I hate the business." Albers also reports her prophetically remarking a full four years ago about Winehouse that "[t]here are many talented people for whom you know that they will be sucked in and then after one or two albums spit out again."
In the other corner, appearing for the defense, Albers brings forward a pair of music industry insiders, who mostly try to deflect any blame. Says one: "Amy Winehouse hasn't made a record in five years. So pressure from the industry cannot have been so insanely high." Rather, he maintains the pressure goes the other way: rock stars expect to play to packed houses, to have their tours, press appearances, and the rest all arranged and that is all the job of the record company.
Still, these industry executives do concede that the grind of going on tour, making all these appearances, and of simply being continually creative enough to come up with new material to keep the entire parade going is hard on the stars, and is hardly as glamorous a life as it may seem from the outside. But if they want help for the alcohol and drug problems that often result, they first have to realize that they are in trouble and start accepting it, something that Winehouse never did.
This all strikes me as very inconclusive – and likely out-of-date as well, since new recording and distribution technologies are starting to take record companies out of the equation in any event. But there's been a celebrity death – so there has to be an inquest, the fans demand it.
Czech Police Dum-Dums
Pssssssst – looking to wreak some mayhem? Maybe a stag-party the likes of which has ever been seen? Well, turns out the police in the Czech Republic are running seriously short of ammunition for the 9mm handguns. This bit of helpful information has just recently been revealed . . . by Mladá fronta dnes (on-line idnes.cz), merely the top-circulation mainstream newspaper in the whole country!
Police having a hard time loading pistols, are sharing out last supplies
The police are struggling with a shortage of 9mm ammunition, which is fired by the service-pistols of practically every officer of the law. Police commanders assert that a disturbance in the procurement procedure is at fault and that they're already preparing a new one. Meanwhile well-supplied police agents are sharing with those having trouble with their supplies.
So go ahead, head on over there, find some outlet ready to sell/rent you some firearms (harder than in the US, but by no means impossible), and go to town: you'll surely out-gun the local authorities. Especially after you realize, along with me, that that picture of a well-filled box of ammo at the top of the on-line article indicates no relief: those are military rifle-grade rounds, not pistol ammunition.
Denmark Looks On In Horror
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011
Some reactions from the Danish press to the Oslo bombing/Utøya massacre:
Here's your connection between the two episodes: As Jyllands-Posten reports, the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who barely escaped injury in the capital, was scheduled today to be on Utøya to address the young people there at what was after all a summer camp run by the Labor Party, of which Stoltenberg is the head. (That article also has at the top a brief video giving a helicopter-view of the island itself – and of some swimmers desperately trying to get away from it.)
Another Danish mainstream paper, Berlingske, wields the obvious parallel: A Norwegian Timothy McVeigh. It quotes a few experts who maintain that the likelihood for violent incidents of this kind should have been apparent from extreme-right literature, imagining future race-wars and the like, that has been circulating in Scandinavia for a while. And it examines the alleged shooter's social media trail and unearths his self-description as a conservative Christian fed up with the Norwegian Church's hyper-modernism, wanting it to get "back to basics." Right, back to Jesus and his disciples, presumably – a notorious gang of killers . . .
As for a Christian Danish paper, namely the Kristeligt Dagblad . . . well, they get it wrong. Very wrong. Their on-line article Here is why Norway became a target for terror, datelined today (Saturday, 23 June 2011), goes on and on about why Norway is logically a target for Muslim extremists, even as the caption to the picture up top mentions the arrest of "a 32-year-old strongly nationalistic man." It's hardly the only media outlet to fall into this trap – frankly, I was hearing a lot about "Muslim terror" on the BBC World Service during its initial coverage – but that's no excuse. Don't be surprised if the article is gone, or at least heavily modified, should you decide to click through to see it.
Finally, back on a somewhat lighter note, Prince was actually supposed to play Oslo today and tomorrow, in concerts that had long been sold out, reports Berlingske. Obviously, those can't go ahead just now, but these performances are merely postponed, not canceled, and also not by much: just two weeks to 2 & 3 August. The Purple One might well be advised to avoid Controversy and bring along no Chaos & Disorder.
Dysfunctional Power Couple
Friday, July 22nd, 2011
De ongemakkelijke kussen van Merkel en Sarkozy http://bit.ly/oL54CI #merkozy
July 22, 2011 9:34 am via bitlyReplyRetweetFavorite
@volkskrant
One little-known roadblock to the EU's ability to come up with a collective solutions to Greece and any number of other problems is the sheer antipathy said to prevail between the heads of the two most-powerful member-states, i.e. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. Indeed, the dominating primacy of this "Franco-German axis" long ago reached cliché status among analysts of the European Union (though it's no longer quite so true, naturally), meaning that the personal chemistry between the inhabitants of L'Élysée and the Reich Chancellery assumed a outsized importance to the two nations' fortunes.
Unfortunately so, because Merkel and Sarkozy have apparently not been on speaking terms – at the personal level; their offices communicate just fine, thank you – for quite some time. Or maybe you don't believe me and would like to see for yourself – well, the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant now enables you to do that by presenting this fantastically-awesome photo-series compilation of thirty-six (yes! count 'em!) kisses, embraces and similar close encounters – all fully-clothed: s'il vous plaît, je vous en prie! – between the two, entitled "The uneasy kisses of Merkel and Sarkozy" (and soon to be a major motion picture!). (more…)
Notional National Day
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
Today is once again Belgian National Day! A day off work! Military parades in Brussels! General joy and jubilation!
Or not. At least not that last part, for it's hard to get very enthusiastic about a country which a while ago broke the world record for operating without a proper, approved government after its last elections (which happened at the beginning of June, 2010). Instead we have newspaper editorials marking the day like the one impishly offered by Liesbeth van Impe in the Nieuwsblad, entitled Fear and Cynicism. And as the latest in a long line of formateurs (politicians appointed by the king to cobble together a workable governing coalition), a bow-tie-wearing dude called Elio di Rupo, finds himself having to deal with squabbling political parties and scheduled negotiation-meetings that fail to convene, the prospect continues to hang over the country that a split-up might be the only solution left.
Hmm . . . a National Day for a nation on the verge of separating roughly down the middle. Don't know about you, but that reminds me of 150 years ago and July 4, 1861, when all of the states that were to make up the Confederacy had seceded, and blue and grey armies were headed towards each other on respective sides of the new internal border. Especially since that day was described recently in an excellent New York Times piece, one in its "Disunion" series marking that 150th anniversary. (more…)
Posted in Belgium - Flanders (Dutch-speaking) | No Comments »
Time-Out for the German Worker
Let's now get away from Dominique Strauss-Kahn – hopefully for quite a while! – and turn our attention to serious matters, like, say, saving the euro. One big roadblock to doing that is the increasing refusal by the electorates of solid, solvent, predominantly Northern European EU member-states to pledge more money to bail out Greece. "Why should we do that," Germans ask for example, "when those lazy Greeks all get to retire at age 55?"
Now Patrick Saint-Paul of the French newspaper Le Figaro, possibly acting out of some sense of Mediterranean solidarity, offers a riposte that the Greeks can use: Germans go to sleep on the job! Or at least they soon might do so: the article discusses a recent proposal by a high official of the DGB (Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund, one of the country's biggest unions) that all German workers should have the right to a "siesta" on the job, i.e. a period in the early afternoon to just go take a nap.
Of course, the suggestion is being offered not as a concession to labor but rather as a clever way to enable them to be even more productive. "A siesta reduces the risk of heart-attack and allows one to resume work full of energy," states Annelie Buntenbach of the DGB's governing board. Then there's this from the inevitable expert-professor, this time one specializing in "psychological biology": "A rest at noon permits one to make up for a period of weak productivity and occurs just at the point where chances of an accident are at their highest."
Anyway, Saint-Paul goes on to mention that, although everyone thinks Germans work harder than Greeks, that isn't necessarily true: OECD statistics purport to show that the former work only 1,390 hours per year and the latter 2,119. But that might just be a difference without any true distinction.
American Women Are Easy
It's just salacious, I know, but I just can't leave the DSK story alone! (Part of that may be my complete lack of interest in that other current News International scandal.) I hope my readers will continue to indulge me when I bring to their attention this new piece from Jonas Legge at Belgium's La Libre Belgique: "Three women in one weekend for DSK."*
Which weekend was that? The one back in May that ended with his arrest in New York City for allegedly sexually assaulting the Sofitel maid. (But I don't think that she counts as one of the three – that incident is still "alleged.") This information comes from a friend of Anne Sinclair, DSK's current wife, to whom he is said to confessed it.
I now yield to M. Legge's account:
It would seem that DSK had the idea of "profiting" from one last moment of pleasure before announcing his participation in the Socialist primaries [for next year's presidential election, which he was getting ready to fly back to France to do]. Two women were convened in the rented suite at the Sofitel. From surveillance-camera images, this information is confirmed. That same night the hotel's receptionist supposedly refused the advances of the former IMF boss.
Wait, I'm keeping score here. If the receptionist was not concubine #3, nor the maid who went to the police, then who was? Well, at this rate that detail should turn up in public soon.
*Strangely, La Libre cites the French newsmagazine Le Point for all this information. I do prefer citing such an ultimate source above all, but in this case I could not find any mention on Le Point's site. Maybe they're reserving it for the (paying) print customers?
Posted in Belgium - Wallonia (French-speaking) | No Comments »
Shocking New DSK Revelations
Entranced by the Dallas-like soap-opera that the whole Rupert Murdoch/News Corp. affair is becoming? Well, don't forget we still have the adventures of that old monetary rogue, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), to follow. But surely the New York City charges are about to be dropped? True, but on the other hand it looks like French authorities are now taking rather seriously the accusation by the journalist Tristane Banon that DSK tried to rape her back in February, 2003, on the occasion of an interview.
Now this affair's soap-opera credentials have been considerably boosted by surprise testimony arising out of the six hours of interrogation Ms. Banon's mother, Anne Mansouret, underwent last week. (This is now all over the French press, but all articles point to L'Express, which had the scoop: Affair Banon-DSK: The secrets of Anne Mansouret). Get this: Mme. Mansouret actually had had intimate relations with DSK herself, namely at the Paris offices of the OECD in 2000, when DSK was special counselor to the Secretary General.
She claims it only happened once – it was "consensual but clearly violent/beastly [brutale]" and she had no desire for any repeat – but it is relevant to the case because it is likely to have affected the advice she gave her daughter as to how to proceed when Tristane unexpectedly found herself alone with DSK three years later in a room whose door he had just locked from the inside.
Here's what happened afterwards, after the fold, as L'Express extracted from Mme. Mansouret's testimony: (more…)
Merkel Disowned?
As turmoil continues to grip European financial markets at the prospect of a sovereign default by Spain or even Italy, the emergency Euro-summit scheduled for Thursday this week is looming large in importance. This is all the more true in view of the fact that European Council President had tried to get everyone together for a summit last Friday – but no one was interested then, even as market rates on Italian debt skyrocketed.
The key figure at the summit, as always, will be German Chancellor Angela Merkel, fresh and possibly even slightly sun-tanned off an official visit to various African countries. Just as she is preparing for Thursday's meeting, however, scattered press speculation has arisen to the effect that Helmut Kohl – the German Reunification Chancellor, and probably the mentor who did most to make Merkel what she is today – now cannot hold himself back from criticizing her Eurodebt policy. Die macht mir mein Europa kaputt! is the catchy quote from Kohl – "She's destroying my Europe!" – and it comes from a fairly reputable source, namely the German news-magazine Der Spiegel. Ed Harrison over at Credit Writedowns identifies this Spiegel article and provides his own translation. (more…)
For the Bankster Who Has Everything
A new drugstore recently opened up in New York City, and the Financial Times Deutschland's correspondent there, Thorsten Schröder, was there to cover it. Sound strange? Well, this is no ordinary drugstore – this is truly a Wall Street drugstore in the "Too Big to Fail" tradition. Titling his piece (in English) Bankster's Paradise – Schröder has evidently been in the States long enough to be down with his Coolio references – he leads:
The lunch-break is saved: A pretentious drugstore opens on Wall Street, where they know what brokers need and love – sushi, money and stock-quotes.
Opening day there featured the autograph-signing presence of no less than Darryl Strawberry (trust me: a gigantic NYC baseball celebrity), but it's the unique amenities that are sure to keep the Financial District worker-bees devoting their lunch-hours here.
In fact, the traders and bankers can find in this Wall Street drugstore almost everything they need in their lives. He who has spent the morning pulling his hair out over falling prices can get it repaired at noon under chandeliers at the hairdresser's there. Or he can sit on a wooden throne to get his leather shoes shined. There's an internal manicure-salon, a skin-analysis center and an apothecary's.
That's not to mention the sushi bar, with NYSE stock-quotes displayed on an electronic ticker-screen behind it, nor the vaulted ceilings, marble floors, and even golden escalators (yes: güldene Rolltreppen) that mark the place's layout.
Appropriately enough, this latest affiliate of the Duane Reade drugstore chain is housed in the Trump building and occupies the space formerly taken up by a branch of the Bank of Manhattan. The firm's management is explicitly experimenting with this new wrinkle of a retail concept as a way to try to make up for the losses it suffered from its prior "Superstore" – not that that was a mistaken business approach, that store just happened to be located in one of the World Trade Center buildings in September, 2011.
A Midsummer Night's Toke?
Or maybe At the Toke of Midnight, anyone? As reported initially in the Flemish newspaper De Morgen, some South African researchers think they might have found a clue to one source of William Shakespeare's inspiration, and it ain't the evening sun descending on the Avon river: Scientists want to demonstrate that Shakespeare smoked grass.
That's wiet in Dutch: grass, man, that Mary-Jane stuff. Oh, and cocaine as well. The evidence so far is a number of pipes found buried in 2001 in the garden of Shakespeare's Stratford-on-Avon residence, which even after around four centuries still showed traces of both narcotics, and even a couple others. ("The results were in keeping with that of a modern crack-pipe," was the rather cruel remark of one of the investigators.)
Now this research team from the underside of the Dark Continent has petitioned the Anglican Church for permission to get into the Bard's grave, despite his clear instructions that that should never happen. ("[C]ursed be he who moves my bones" is part of his self-chosen gravestone epitaph.) But wait, they say, we don't have to move anything! We just want to check a tooth – just one! – to look for any grooves that would indicate that he actually stuck those pipes in his mouth.
Besides, it's right there in his Sonnet 76, line 6: "And keep invention in a noted weed." So is that the smoking gun (so to speak)? Doubtful; other Shakespearean scholars think that a reference to clothes instead, e.g. "in a noted garb." Click through to the article itself if you'd like a reminder (in English) of what that Sonnet is about, and a chance to judge for yourself.
Ardeur for Libya Now Cool
What's up now with the French and Libya? Nicolas Sarkozy's government was the first to recognize the rebels' National Transitional Council as the country's valid government, and also led the way both in urging NATO military intervention last March and in actually conducting the very first bombing raids. But now Prime Minister François Fillon is saying "[a] political solution in Libya is more indispensable than ever" while Foreign Minister Alain Juppé claims to have word that Qaddafi is ready to head into exile.
Le Monde provides a perspective, in an unsigned article (Libya, a political objective now uncertain for L'Elysée). Put simply, it's something akin to buyer's remorse. France was looking forward to a glorious "big brother" role with the assistance it provided the rebels, one that would go far towards erasing – so officials hoped – her rather ugly colonial history in the area. Most of all, though, this was supposed to be short and sweet, something – in the words of Juppé back in March – that was to "be calculated in days or weeks – certainly not in months."
Well, now it is months later, and the fighting is still going on. The rebels do seem to be making some sort of progress, yet it still seems doubtful that they can take full control before the onset of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan on 1 August complicates their efforts considerably.
According to the article, Sarkozy had a somewhat earlier date in mind for a rebel victory: 14 July, or Bastille Day, just two days away, when the usual parade of military hardware down the Champs Elysées could be spiffed up considerably on the wave of a cut-and-dried successful military campaign. But that certainly will not happen, and meanwhile Le Monde reports how the French president recently changed his mind from a trip across the Mediterranean to go visit the rebels' self-styled Libyan Republic and opted to visit actual French troops in Afghanistan instead.
At least Sarkozy has just confronted the issue of submitting his military operations to approval of the legislature rather better than Barack Obama has done, and indeed has gained renewed votes of support for Libya actions from the Assemblée and the Senate, when there were fears that this was not certain. But the fighting goes on, and perhaps it should not be so surprising that the French should start lowering their standards for how they think it should end, as long as it does so quickly.
Salve, Salva of South Sudan!
Saturday, July 9th, 2011
As Saturday 9 July 2011 dawns around the world, a new entity takes its place within the family of nations: South Sudan. But is this really any cause for celebration? Or is the feeling on hearing the news more like the one evoked when a welfare mother gives birth to another child: "OK, it exists now, bless its soul – but who is supposed to support it?"
In any event, the new government needs to get to work and come up with a better name than "South Sudan"! How about just stealing "Sudan" for themselves and letting their former northern compatriots come up with a new one instead? There would be plenty of justification: the reason that such a split was necessary in the first place is the significant cultural differences between the Arab North and Black South of the country – and "Sudan" is derived from the Arabic for "black"!
Any state has got to have its head-of-government, and an article by Thomas Scheen in the FAZ introduces us to the first president of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, complete with a thumbs-up picture of him up top, resplendent in black suit, black tie, black beard, and black stetson hat – from which he apparently is rarely parted. Little is known about him personally, and he's loathe to grant interviews; he's said to be around 60 years old, and his family lives in Nairobi, Kenya for safety reasons. That's logical, for Kiir has been fighting all his life for South Sudanese independence, starting with the so-called Anyanya Revolt of the late 1960s/early 1970s through a second Sudanese civil war that started in 1983 and is really only ending now – if it is ending – with independence.
Indeed, that's why Kiir is now president: nobody ever elected him, rather, he co-founded the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) along with the more-charismatic John Garang (later killed in a helicopter crash) and remains its top general. As Scheen points out, "Kiir is ultimately a soldier in the first place, and so far the South Sudan cabinet has shown more similarity to a military council than a democratic government." Will democracy ever take root in that part of East Africa? For now, at least, South Sudan has many other things to worry about instead.
Contrepoints, Contre-Krugman
Threat identified! Threat identified! Prof. Krugman, please call your office!
Paul Krugman continue de divaguer: Il est maintenant très évident que les recettes keynésiennes n'ont pas réussi… http://bit.ly/p7mR9Z
July 7, 2011 7:58 am via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite
@Contrepoints
And coming out of France, of all places! I thought liberals like Krugman were always in league with those cheese-eating surrender-monkeys!
But seriously, folks . . . I follow daily, and for that matter closely, Paul Krugman's highly-influential New York Times blog The Conscience of a Liberal. I mean, who does not? – if you're interested in economics generally and in the general economic mess the West has gotten itself into specifically. It's just amusing suddenly to stumble upon a hotbed of anti-Krugman argument and invective from what you would think to be an unlikely source, and indeed one that has supplied this site's Twitter-feed with the occasional news-bit – very occasional. (And yes, I know, Prof. Krugman is unlikely to care much – not about EuroSavant, certainly, and neither about Contretemps.) (more…)
Don Quixote & the 2020 Games
Sorry – it's the Olympics again! I swear that I'll go find some other hobby-horse right after this post, but I just happened to come across an article in El País – and you know I don't ordinarily discuss the Spanish press – with the irresistible title Olympic Dream Maybe, But "Low Cost", by Bruno García Gallo (the "rooster").
You'll be glad to know that this is not about the Winter Games again (although with the tropically-situated Sochi, Russia having won them for 2014, why not?), but rather the 2020 Summer Games. And yes, Madrid is still interested in those even after having lost in the last two Summer Game bids – somewhat. Polls showed a full 91% of madrileños were behind the city's bid for the 2012 Games, as compared to only 68% of Londoners. But the latter won anyway. It was a similar situation for the 2016 Games, which Madrid nonetheless lost to Rio de Janeiro. Still, as of last year at least 54% are ready to have a go again, as are all the city's leading politicians. (more…)
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Champion Korean Horse-Traders
Pyeongchang! Congratulations!
Er – Gesundheit! What's that you say? Why that's Pyeongchang, not a city at all strictly-speaking, but a county, located in the east part of South Korea, and the locale which was chosen yesterday to be the host of the 2018 Winter Olympics. Maybe/probably you don't know it now; you'll know the name enough by, say, March of 2018.
With their victory, the South Koreans left behind in their dust their other two main competitors for this designation, namely Munich/Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany, of course) and Annecy (in the French Alps, right by the Swiss border). But don't labor under any mistaken impression that Pyeongchang ran away with the competition based on any super-spectacular presentation they made earlier this week before the International Olympic Committee's conclave in Durban, South Africa. No no no – as a quite informative article by Friedhard Teuffel in Der Tagesspiegel points out (Fiddling your way to Olympic victory, reprinted in Die Zeit as Race of the string-pullers), every one of those 110 IOC members charged with voting on the matter had certainly made up his/her mind before the presentations even started. (more…)
Seeing Red at the Traffic Light
The New York Times recently featured a piece particularly interesting to those of us obsessed with cataloguing US-Europe cultural differences, one by Elisabeth Rosenthal headlined Across Europe, Irking Drivers is Urban Policy. "The methods vary," Ms. Rosenthal writes, "but the mission is clear – to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally-friendly modes of transportation." Why, how dare they?
The article is datelined Zurich (sic; the place properly spells its name "Zürich"), and most details about this supposed pan-European conspiracy against the automobile do come from out of that city. But now Zürich has caught notice and offers a reply, in the form of this editorial by Martin Meyer in its flagship newspaper, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, for which the headline writer – probably not Meyer himself – latches onto the available racy double-meaning to craft the snappy title "Zürich, Red-Light District."
Goodness sakes – to paraphrase the way Meyer starts out his piece – Zürich is front-page news on the International Herald Tribune*! How come? Why, it's because of the "torture" (Folter) we impose on our drivers! Making them stop repeatedly at deliberately-unsynchronized red lights! Slowing them down to a snails' pace – when they're allowed at all – near main city squares! He remarks on the behutsam empörte Verblüffung ("circumspectly indignant bewilderment") of Ms. Rosenthal's writing-tone, saying that "like Gulliver in the Land of the Giants, she gradually submits to a morality that, in the name of a philosophical superiority, knows what is right and what is wrong."
Then again – is Zürich truly in the avant-garde when it comes to "transforming cold asphalt on-the-move into blooming zones of [pedestrian] comfort"? as Meyer asks elsewhere. His civic modesty here is touching, but he also has a real point: other European cities would have made better case studies. (You have to pay just to drive into Oslo, for example, or into London for that matter!) In other words, there was really no need for Zürich to gain this minor, but still probably undesired international notoriety in the eyes of the IHT's/NYT's affluent, influential readers.
* Yes, it's strange that Meyer mentions the IHT when in reality Ms. Rosenthal's article originated with the New York Times, which provides most of the IHT's content! Was it just a mistake, or can it really be that the IHT name still carries more prestige in European circles?
Posted in Switzerland | No Comments »