We Guard The Canadian Border, we guard the American dream… that’s at least what we were taught in “Wag The Dog“. Now Salon comes up with a plethora of reasons why this is not just true – but why preemptive military action against America’s northern neighbour could indeed be inevitable for the United States.
Strange Happenings…
Now at least the universe loves us ;-). From sixsixfive via Le Sofa Blogger…
Entirely unrelated – the desk-cleaning action did take longer than expected, so I won’t be able to comment in lenght on this weekend’s exciting developments in German politics. The proposed accelrated tax break is quite remarkable in itself, as is the CDU’s refusal to do some serious subsidy removal business. Sure, the government will primarily target the oppposition’s target groups when proposing cuts – but why wouldn’t the CDU use this as a starting point to talk about cutting SPD-treasured subsidies as well, so that a substancial cut in subsidies would be the all-party compromise, instead of blocking change at all? This is clearly not going to help them electorally, but they may need some more time to figure this out.
As for the IG Metall’s ending the Summer Of Discontent, aka the most pointless metalworker strike ever, Papascott and Eamonn Fitzgerald have some coverage. To add something they can’t tell you…
When I was in Prague two weeks ago, I had un coup de rouge in a rather hidden little garden restaurant close to the Charles bridge where – at the table behind me – a group of German trade unionists was having a ball – drinking Moravian red and smoking cigars while discussing how to handle the strike and the press. At some point, one of the men at the table laughingly told the group that BMW had allegedly complained to the chancellor about the economic sideeffects of IG Metall’s strike…
When I shyly turned my head to look at the table behind me, I am almost certain I saw the profile of Juegen Peters, chairman to be of IG Metall, and now held responsible for the disaster by most commentators, laughing and zipping on his cigar – a scene slightlyreminiscent of those caricatures of cigar smoking capitalists.
Pulling off an unreasonable strike in the worst possible economic climate was probably intended to boost his – already agreed on – election as chairman in November this year. I suppose he wanted to demonstrate that the union does still have the power to go all the way.
Well, it looks like he might have smoked that cigar a little too early, like he was a little too cocky. But let’s face it – his mistake does have positive side effects – now everybody has understood that this time, change is for real – that is, maybe apart from the CDU. But they will get there eventually.
Is Google God?
Thomas Friedman must have had too much sun lately. In today’s NY Times column he wonders if Google is like God citing citing Alan Cohen, a V.P. of Airespace, a new Wi-Fi provider, who clearly had too much sun lately –
“If I can operate Google, I can find anything. And with wireless, it means I will be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime. Which is why I say that Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God. God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything. Throughout history, people connected to God without wires. Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too.”
How he twists that story to say something about American national security is rather impressive. But how he does that and nonetheless misses the real point that ITC is not only challenging “national security” but the very notion of “national” is even more impressive.
My Good Old Desk.
I don’t know if you have heard about the commercial that won this year’s Cannes advertising festival’s grand price. In this spot, developed for Ikea by the Miami based advertising agency Crispin Porter we are encouraged to take pity on an old lamp that’s being tossed on the street as garbage. Then, from the perspective of the old lamp out in the pouring rain, through the window, we see the former owner sitting in an armchair, reading a book – in the light of the lamps’s replacement. Suddenly, a man appears to confront our brains with our emotions – “Many of you feel bad for this lamp. That is because you are crazy – It has no feelings. And the new one is much better.”
It is a spot most people will instantly be able to connect to, for it is telling us a fundamental truth about ourselves. It may strike us as strange when rationalising about it, but furniture does become emotionally charged over time, just like the famous old leather jacket.
It may no longer be beautiful, or even no longer fulfilling the function we initially bought it for. But it’s been with us in good times and in bad. Just like the scientists, say cultural anthrolpologists, who conduct garbage research to find out about other cultures’ lifestyle, we know that the things we own(ed), are telling. But while the things we own can tell others something about us, for ourselves they are containers of our idiosyncracies, only for us they retell the stories of our life.
They can connect us to ourself – something no new, beautiful, functional jacket, lamp, or desk can achieve. So is it really surprising that replacing something this close creates cognitive dissonances? Should I really? Who actually knows the new stuff will be better…
Yes, my gentle readers, I am telling you this because right now, I am emptying my old main desk to replace it with a new, bigger, hopefully even more functional, and clearly more beautful model. It’s something I somehow really want to do – my credit card bill is sufficient proof thereof. But then again, just as the clever ad agency realised, it’s not easy to part when emptying a drawer is somewhat like going through your childhood boxes in your parents’ attic.
So I thought the least I could do was write this little hommage to my old desk. And to promise I won’t put it out in the rain.
Actually, it has a new and hopefully exciting professional challenge in the basement :). But it will not be the first to read my comment’s on this weekend’s government proposals, which I will write later.
Ministery of Silly Deaths
Now this story makes me happy I sang “New York, New York” at my friend Frank’s wedding last year…
Unintended Consequences.
The investigation against a Ukrainian criminal women trafficing organisation that has also led to cocaine possession charges against the tv talk show host and vice chaiman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany is having a positive side effects. Just as Mr Friedman’s home was raided and searched for cocaine because he had talked to call-girl-ring pimps whose phones were monitored by police, some German Parlamentarians seem to have become involved in this investigation.
Prostitution (but not pimpimp) is entirely legal in Germany so they could not be charged for indulging in sexual favours of East European women, but, well – for all our old European decadent open-mindedness – paying for sexual services is still something at least most public figures will certainly never talk about freely (But then again, there are public figures who used their party-paid-for airline miles for personal trips to Bangkok…)
So now German MPs are seriously annoyed about the simplicity with which “third parties” to an investigation can become dragged into a criminal prosecution and possibly have to bear the negative consequences of publicity, an argument made for ages by just about every privacy advocate with a public voice, including Green MP Christian Stroebele.
While I usually don’t agree with his loony-left arguments, I hope he is right when he says that (according to Spiegel Online) personal vulnerability could help MPs from all parties to rebalance privacy and security arguments.
The Next Tirpitz?
Ha – I knew it. My gentle readers, I am going to tell you a little secret.
On last new years eve I bet a young German Navy officer for six bottles of Champagne that, in ten years, Germany would have at least ordered a brand new Aircraft carrier… and today – according to Spiegel Online – Roland Koch, the premier of the German state of Hessen and friend of George W. and eternal conservative hopeful in the CDU took advantage of a day trip to the coast to explain that, well, the changed requirements of military interventions might very well include ordering an Aircraft Carrier…
Don’t worry, Roland Koch is not quite the next Tirpitz. This is, above all, funny – for the time being. But yes, the Navy brass will vote CDU next time… ;).
And for the real deal, Harvard’s Andrew Moravcsik shares his thoughts about “Striking a New Transatlantic Bargain” (full text requires subscription) in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, entitled “After Saddam”.
Here’s Moravcsik’s brief sketch of the current transatlantic reality –
“The Iraq crisis offers two basic lessons. The first, for Europeans, is that American hawks were right. Unilateral intervention to coerce regime change can be a cost-effective way to deal with rogue states. In military matters, there is only one superpower — the United States — and it can go it alone if it has to. It is time to accept this fact and move on.
The second lesson, for Americans, is that moderate skeptics on both sides of the Atlantic were also right. Winning a peace is much harder than winning a war. Intervention is cheap in the short run but expensive in the long run. And when it comes to the essential instruments for avoiding chaos or quagmire once the fighting stops — trade, aid, peacekeeping, international monitoring, and multilateral legitimacy — Europe remains indispensable. In this respect, the unipolar world turns out to be bipolar after all.
Given these truths, it is now time to work out a new transatlantic bargain, one that redirects complementary military and civilian instruments toward common ends and new security threats. Without such a deal, danger exists that Europeans — who were rolled over in the run-up to the war, frozen out by unilateral U.S. nation building, disparaged by triumphalist American pundits and politicians, and who lack sufficiently unified regional institutions — will keep their distance and leave the United States to its own devices. Although understandable, this reaction would be a recipe for disaster, since the United States lacks both the will and the institutional capacity to follow up its military triumphs properly — as the initial haphazard efforts at Iraqi reconstruction demonstrate.
To get things back on track, both in Iraq and elsewhere, Washington must shift course and accept multilateral conditions for intervention. The Europeans, meanwhile, must shed their resentment of American power and be prepared to pick up much of the burden of conflict prevention and postconflict engagement. Complementarity, not conflict, should be the transatlantic watchword.
The Next Tirpitz?
Ha – I knew it. My gentle readers, I am going to tell you a little secret.
On last new years eve I bet a young German Navy officer for six bottles of Champagne that, in ten years, Germany would have at least ordered a brand new Aircraft carrier… and today – according to Spiegel Online – Roland Koch, the premier of the German state of Hessen and friend of George W. and eternal conservative hopeful in the CDU took advantage of a day trip to the coast to explain that, well, the changed requirements of military interventions might very well include ordering an Aircraft Carrier…
Don’t worry, Roland Koch is not quite the next Tirpitz. This is, above all, funny – for the time being. But yes, the Navy brass will vote CDU next time… ;).
And for the real deal, Harvard’s Andrew Moravcsik shares his thoughts about “Striking a New Transatlantic Bargain” (full text requires subscription) in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, entitled “After Saddam”.
Here’s Moravcsik’s brief sketch of the current transatlantic reality –
“The Iraq crisis offers two basic lessons. The first, for Europeans, is that American hawks were right. Unilateral intervention to coerce regime change can be a cost-effective way to deal with rogue states. In military matters, there is only one superpower — the United States — and it can go it alone if it has to. It is time to accept this fact and move on.
The second lesson, for Americans, is that moderate skeptics on both sides of the Atlantic were also right. Winning a peace is much harder than winning a war. Intervention is cheap in the short run but expensive in the long run. And when it comes to the essential instruments for avoiding chaos or quagmire once the fighting stops — trade, aid, peacekeeping, international monitoring, and multilateral legitimacy — Europe remains indispensable. In this respect, the unipolar world turns out to be bipolar after all.
Given these truths, it is now time to work out a new transatlantic bargain, one that redirects complementary military and civilian instruments toward common ends and new security threats. Without such a deal, danger exists that Europeans — who were rolled over in the run-up to the war, frozen out by unilateral U.S. nation building, disparaged by triumphalist American pundits and politicians, and who lack sufficiently unified regional institutions — will keep their distance and leave the United States to its own devices. Although understandable, this reaction would be a recipe for disaster, since the United States lacks both the will and the institutional capacity to follow up its military triumphs properly — as the initial haphazard efforts at Iraqi reconstruction demonstrate.
To get things back on track, both in Iraq and elsewhere, Washington must shift course and accept multilateral conditions for intervention. The Europeans, meanwhile, must shed their resentment of American power and be prepared to pick up much of the burden of conflict prevention and postconflict engagement. Complementarity, not conflict, should be the transatlantic watchword.
God’s Own Agenda?
Haaretz reports that, according to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas President Bush allegedly explained at the recent Akaba summit that
“God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.”
Mr Abbas words are, according to the newspaper, taken from selected minutes acquired by Haaretz from a negotiation between Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian faction leaders last week.
So God instructed Bush to strike at Saddam… [and probably allowed the use of some “white lies”]
But apparently God hasn’t spoken to Bush about the Middle East conflict, as the President is only “determined” to solve the problem.
Reading this I can’t help but wonder – assume for a moment that God would indeed speak to President Bush about the Middle East a little too close to the 2004 US elections? Would Bush tell God that, right now, he can’t really concentrate on a divine mission because of the election?
The statement is interesting in another way as well – given the substantial support Bush has among the American people and apparently record breaking donation levels for his next campaign, why would he need to concentrate on the election. Wouldn’t “solving” the Middle East suffice to win?
Maybe his camp is paranoid. But maybe, they really think they need a full-scale campaign because they stand a real chance to lose…
What’s the real deal?
Apple’s new G5 64-bit PowerPC is the new hot babe in town since, as Wired explains, –
“For the past couple of years, Mac users have been burdened with a shameful secret few would admit, even to themselves. Their machines were slower than Windows PCs.”
While pure computing power was never what made people admire Apple’s products, it seems Apple’s pricing policy and stagnant market-share somehow compelled the company to get back into the Megaflop comparison business. But computing speed comparisons are a rather tricky business, so its no wonder, Apple’s claims to have the “fastet ever” personal computer have been severely scrutinzed today. Here’s what the register says about the benchmarks. And this is a report by Eugenia Loli-Queru from OSnews that is entitled “Innovation or Catch Up?“