Being Indexed. The NY Times reports plans of the US government to take fingerprints of every person entering the country with a Visum – \”Foreign visitors arriving with visas at U.S. airports or seaports next year will have their travel documents scanned, their fingerprints and photos taken and their identification checked against terrorist watch lists.\”
Did I miss something?
My sister is doing a masters degree in journalism these days. You know, masters programmes are the hype at German universities these days. It doesn’t matter that there have never been any other degrees offered by German universities, except for the name, of course. The programme she’s doing has been taught since 1993 and was previously described as an “journalistic add-on” programme. Surely, it sound a lot better to bet teaching and studying a “masters” programme, especially as pretty much no human resources department in Germany is able to tell the difference between one kind of masters or the other. Yup, it’s all about bullshitting these days, long gone the days when people strove to follow the idea of “mehr sein als schein” – to be more than one appears to be.
Well, her programme is not that bad, to be fair. It might be a tad bit boring for people with some media experience, as far as I can tell, but for others it compiles an interesting range of common sense knowledge about publishing that would nonetheless take quite a while to acquire left on one’s one devices.
So I had dinner with my sister tonight and she told me about this online publishing project she’s doing and asked for a hand with the coding bit.
While I have continuously followed the internet’s development since I saw the first hypertext pages in a gopher-browser, and then Mosaic 1.0, back in 1994 and even do have some knowledge of web coding, I would never dare to call myself an “expert” in any meaningful sense of that word – knowing that a lot of people are not as cautious when it comes to slef-ascribing said status.
And one of the latter group of people might well be the person teaching online publishing for my sister’s class. On the assignment paper the person unmistakably wrote that she would, until the next class, “check if the server [on which the project is going to be published] supports Cascading Style Sheets”.
Did I miss something?
Great Advertising…
Great Advertising… There are brands which seem to understand the true nature of their clients. It looks like the Canadian beer Molson is one of them. Funny ad via Metafilter.
Political Correctness, ad 1920.
In light of the spiral of violence that has once again engulfed the peoples living in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, Spiegel Online has published a feature containing articles covering the main stages of the conflict in the course of the last fifty-five years.
Of course, for well known reasons, they could not go further back to cover the – non religious – roots of the conflict. So I checked the online archives of “The Atlantic” and found some interesting articles dating from a time when the Osman rule of the area ended, and Britain and France divided the area among themselves (with a league of nations cover…), a few years after the famous “Balfour declaration” calling for a Jewish homeland in the British mandate area, when there was no Palestinian nationalism to speak of and when the clans previously ruling the area were only too happy to sell largely uninhabitable land to Jewish settlers with the dream of living in Zion.
The dynamics of the eternal conflict to be were quite different at the time. So was political correctness – I suppose – as the following quote from a 1920 article from “The Atlantic” demonstrates –
“Any practical experiment toward the attainment of a contented Jewish people would be welcome. At present, large communities of Jews never live in perfect amity with Gentile neighbors; and it would be instructive to see whether, in a self-contained Jewish state, they could live in amity with one another. It would also give them a chance to show whether they possess the attributes of a ruling people — a question to which the answer is, at present, largely uncertain.”
Inabilty? Or Willful Wreckage?
So Colin Powell and the German chancellor tried to look forward, not to explain, and not to complain. And what does Geroge W. do? He behaves like a spoilt kid trying to get even by chatting for fifteen minutes with Roland Koch, the premier of the German state of Hessen, a leading figure of Germany’s main opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
No one would have believed the White House affirmations that the meeting happened “accidentally”, that Bush “just walked in” after a scheduled talk between Dick Cheney and Koch anyway, but in an interview with ZDF television’s afternoon programme “Mittagsmagazin”, Koch was pretty much unable not to smirk when the interviewer suggested that a German state premier hardly gets fifteen “accidental” minutes with the US president. GWB’s childish behavior is good news only for those in the US administration who want to strain transatlantic relations even further, and for Koch, who is said to have ambitions to become the next chancellor-candidate for the CDU instead of the current leader Angela Merkel. It is bad news for everyone else.
Was it inability, or willful wreckage? While some people might be tempted to give Bush the credit of inability, the Involvement of Cheney makes it a lot harder to come to this conclusion. So the chancellor is probably quite right to take this as a serious personal attack that he is unlikely to forgive soon. And he, as the German population, will certainly remember that the CDU has chosen to become a pawn in a game originating in the White House.
But Schröder is not the only who has been embarrassed by the latest Bushism. For Colin Powell and the US state department the Bush-Koch meeting conveys an even more serious message – it confirms again and very visibly to everyone abroad who is actually in control of US foreign policy – that Foggy Bottom doesn’t matter and that Powell’s role has apparently been reduced to that of chief messenger. I wonder how long he will go along.
The Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow wrote in October last year with respect to the transatlantic rift that
“… the [US] administration wants doormats, not allies.”
Today, Bush powerfully confirmed this. And while Schröder has repeatedly stated in the last few weeks that Germany does not wish to be forced to have to choose between its most important allies, the US and France, it looks like the American President is indeed waiting for an answer.
I highly doubt he will like it.
Another Perspective.
Just stumbled on the US Census website and found this genealogical break-up of the US population. Not that their ancestors’ cultural origins would matter in current affairs – US immigrants of German descent always assimilated quickly and – given the German history in the 20th century understandably – were never too keen to showcase their heritage like the Irish or Italians.
You can easily count German bars and restaurants in New York using your two hands. Try that for Irish pubs… But the fact that I could find my grand-dads grave inscript on an American genealogy website tells me these roots are still some sort of mood setter when it comes to looking at European nations.
I think the numbers are quite telling (indicating self-declared descent):
While I roughly knew about the above numbers – this I found rather surprising.
Doesn’t comprise the Scottish and Irish immigrants. But even if you add the numbers for those three nationalities available at the US Bureau of Census they only roughly match the German number.
Assuming the German immigrants’ decision to renounce to speaking German was a market driven one – motivated by the fact that the English was the elite-language spoken by the founding fathers (when French was the elite language at European courts), I find it striking that today’s hispanic immigrants seem to stick to their ancestors’ language a lot more despite a cultural hegemony of English that cannot be assumed for the days of the westward expansion.
If, back then, Germans believed they could become part of the elite by speaking English and Hispanics do not, if even the US president is broadcasting speeches in Spanish, is that telling us something about the real options of immigrants in the US today? Or about the German immigrants relationship to their country and/or their language? Or is it just too early to tell?
Intruiging questions to which I do not have an answer (yet).
Powell in Berlin. About an
Powell in Berlin. About an hour ago, Colin Powell arrived in Berlin for talks with German foreign minister Joschka Fischer and, noted as a gesture of raprochement, chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Schroeder even cut his trip to Asia short to meet Powell in Berlin tomorrow morning. Spiegel Online just published a meeting-forecast.
Ladies & Gentlemen, have
Ladies & Gentlemen, have you ever wondered about how much of a German is really in you? To those in doubt (and also to all others) I recommend this neat little Flash application . Go – go forth, and take the instant Germanizer test.
Vive La France It’s official
Vive La France It’s official – most Germans love France and the French. And while they respect America and the Americans, they are wondering just what exactly is going on on the other side of the pond. Germany as a whole doesn’t want to choose between its two most important allies, France, and the US, just as chancellor Schroeder explained last week at the anniversary of the German-American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin. But it was always clear that France would be the one, should that choice become necessary. A poll published by the FAZ today shows the public supports this stance. Maybe Colin Powell’s visit in Berlin this week is indicative of a regocnition of this fact in Washington. Then the attempts of reconciliation will work. If they are trying to play divide et impera, they won’t. Believe it – the FAZ is the most Atlanticist paper over here. This is a summary of the article by Deutsche Welle.
Veto Players On The Move.
Democracy is a tricky thing. That is true not only for the Middle East, where the current US government claims to be implementing it. That is apparently also true for the current US president’s home state of Texas, where the Parliamentary opposition, more than 50 Democratic politicians, has turned into extra-Parliamentarian opposition by fleeing the state before a crucial vote this week, thereby have bringing the state’s political system to a halt but also creating the profound impression that something is seriously rotten in the state of Texas.
What happened – and what is not going to happen. According to the BBC online –
“The lawmakers left the city of Austin just before a scheduled debate on a controversial rezoning plan for voting districts, which Democrats say will unfairly tip the balance in the state in the Republicans favour. They arrived in Oklahoma, but when Texas sent state troopers to ask them to return, they refused to come back. The Democratic boycott means that the Texas House of Representatives does not have the minimum of 100 members needed for a vote to be held.”
Ah, good old gerrymandering.
As old as the American Democracy, and probably a neglected factor in the last, problematic, presidential election in the US. But it’s tough to say something about the electoral consequences of current or redefined state-constituencies without detailed knowledge of the demographic composition and clear evidence whether these group characteristics actually are a proxy for electoral results. In cases where demographic composition is a politically correct term for ethnic or class voting, gerrymandering can have severe consequences, as, say, the creation of Northern Ireland amply demonstrates. But as cross-voting increases, the consequences vary a lot more, and politicians suffer from an illusion of control when trying to design their constituencies. Again, it’s hard to speculate about the consequences without a detailed analysis.
However, if, as the BBC explains,
[t]he Republicans had gained control of the Texas House in November for the first time since just after the US Civil War in the 1860s.”
It seems quite understandable to me that they are trying to change that long-time history of losing by rezoning electoral districts to their benefit. Likewise, taking job-security from Democratic deputies is not likely to make them happy.
While their trip to Oklahoma increases the impression of the US being a Banana Republic in terms of democratic procedures, it is actually a smart move to do so – and just another proof of the unintended consequences of designing institutions. I am pretty sure that collective absence from the state by the minority faction was not something those drafting the Texas House Rules were ever even contemplating. But by taking advantage of that omission, the minority faction has indeed become a veto player, something their presence in the Parliament would not have allowed.
So when the Republican leader in the US House of Representatives, Tom DeLay, states that
“Representatives are elected and paid for by the people with the expectation that they show up to work do the people’s business and have the courage to cast tough votes, I have never turned tail and run and shirked my responsibility”
His anger seems to have blurred his political instincts, for by taking that leave, the Representatives are actually living up to their responsibility. If the Parliamentary rules de facto accord the minority faction a veto right, they would be negligent not to exercise it if necessary.
Whatever the eventual outcome in this redistricting battle, redrafting the Parliamentary rules will likely be up next. So, who knows, maybe this procedural quarrel turns out to become a travel industry stimulus package…