Psychopompous

This too shall pass

2012-01-18T09:16:00.004+10:00

As may or may not be obvious from the previous post, I remain extremely pessimistic about the future of the euro and the future of the "European project" in general. It looks like the EU will probably end up becoming little more than a customs union in future. Which is incidentally what the British seem to have wanted it to be all along, so they'll be happy, presumably.

I say this because the responses to the euro crisis on all sides have been marked by selfishness; by petty-minded, short-sighted nationalism which consistently places the short-term national interest ahead of shared, long-term gains. Germany's "reform" plan for the euro is running into trouble because, despite the desperate situation, the poorer countries are refusing to submit to such strict control of their budgets and borrowing rights. Germany, on the other hand, continues to refuse any measure which would systematically redistribute some of the financial gains from the euro from the more prosperous countries to the less prosperous ones. And this is not simply due to the attitude of Angela Merkel or her team. Reading the German press, you'll find criticism of the Merkel government's handling of the crisis, but very few voices calling for a redistribution of euro profits to poorer countries like Greece, Portugal and Italy. The process of European unification was based on the principle of give and take, but increasingly it seems that everyone wants to take and no one wants to give.

None of this should be surprising. Petty-minded nationalism ruled Europe for hundreds of years before the disastrous wars of the early twentieth century shocked people into taking a different approach. Unfortunately, that old mentality has been gradually reasserting itself for at least the past fifty years now. I don't think the current crisis is going to be enough to force a reversal of that trend. And if it doesn't, there is simply no way the euro, or the European project, can survive in the long term. The result will be a weaker Europe, divided upon itself as before, with its relative wealth and power in the world declining even faster than America's. And every nation blaming every other one for what is happening to them.

Timeline of a disaster

2012-01-07T11:55:00.010+10:00

1999-2009: The euro is introduced. It brings benefits to the stronger economies of the eurozone (Germany, Holland, Finland etc.) because sharing a currency with weaker economies means their currency is weaker than otherwise would have been the case, thus making their exports more competitively priced. Germany becomes the world's biggest exporter nation in monetary terms.
The weaker economies benefit mainly from cheaper borrowing costs, with lower interest rates for both private and public borrowing.

End of 2009 - Stage 1 of the crisis: Markets push up the Greek government's borrowing costs as doubts arise about Greece's ability to repay debt. It becomes increasingly clear that Greece will not be able to remain solvent without external assistance. Calls for a rescue take on increasing urgency due to fears the problem might spread to other vulnerable economies such as Portugal, Ireland and Spain.
→ The German government, strongly backed by German public opinion, refuses any assistance to Greece. The euro weakens, making German exports even more competitive. Germany experiences a minor boom in exports, assisting the country's recovery from the Global Financial Crisis. Greece introduces the first of a series of increasingly severe austerity packages. Despite the austerity packages (or indeed in part because of them) the situation in Greece worsens.

Stage 2: As Greece heads towards inevitable default, Germany finally consents to a bailout package. This consists of loans to Greece at interests rates which are high but not as high as the unsustainable rates now demanded by the markets. However, the markets have already begun to demand higher rates for Portuguese, Irish and Spanish debt, prompting calls for more far-reaching action, such as the establishment of a common eurozone treasury which could issue shared "eurobonds".
→ Germany staunchly resists the eurobonds idea, as it would lead to a minor rise in the cost of German borrowing (public and private). Germany also resists expansion of the bailout measures. The euro weakens further, thereby sustaining the prosperity of the German export industry. Greece undertakes further austerity measures, which eventually cripple its economy and cause widespread hardship. Ireland, Portugal and Spain also cut government spending. Unemployment remains above 20% in Spain.

Stage 3: Germany agrees to bailout loans for Ireland and Portugal but not before default becomes an inevitable prospect there too. The ratings agencies state that they would give shared eurobonds the same rating as the weakest country in the group, effectively ruling them out as a solution to the immediate crisis. The best solution now seems to be to have the European Central Bank to act as "lender of last resort", effectively "printing money" to fund loan repayments by the vulnerable countries. Inflation in the eurozone would rise as a result, especially in the countries with healthier economies (such as Germany) but not to damaging levels.
→ Germany staunchly opposes the ECB becoming lender of last resort. The situation worsens, with serious fears arising about Italy, Belgium and even France. Italy's borrowing costs start to rise sharply. The euro continues to weaken. Consequently Germany's exports continue to sell reasonably well despite the loss of demand from the crisis-hit countries, which are steadily becoming poorer. Large numbers of young people begin to emigrate from Ireland and Spain due to the lack of jobs at home. Suicide rates in Greece go from being among the lowest in Europe to the highest in Europe.

Stage 4 (the last few months): Italy's borrowing costs remain at unsustainable levels despite a change of government. Germany introduces a plan for reshaping the eurozone to suit itself, to which the other countries acquiesce with barely a murmur due to the desperate situation they are now in due to Germany's stonewalling, but which unfortunately offers little to solve the immediate crisis. France's borrowing costs begin to rise as well and a downgrade in France's credit rating seems imminent. The euro hits new lows against all major currencies and a recession seems highly likely in 2012 for the eurozone as a whole, although Germany may escape with nothing worse than low, near-zero growth, buoyed as ever by its export sector.

What's next?

At every stage so far, Germany has resisted the most obvious and cheapest remedies unless and until those remedies became the only possible course of action. Extrapolating this into the future, if Italy or France seemed in danger of imminent default, presumably Germany would finally agree to let the ECB act as lender of last resort. But will that even be possible now on such a large scale without the danger of double-digit or even triple-digit inflation? Unfortunately no one actually seems to have a clue what is going to happen.

Update 10.01.2012: Oops, missed something rather important: the ECB has in fact started "printing money" and acting as lender of last resort, albeit in a rather limited, indirect and not terribly effective way. Its loans of 489bn euros to eurozone banks in late December were ostensibly done to reinforce those banks, but the banks probably will in turn invest anything up to half of that money in eurozone government bonds. So it's a backdoor way of the ECB buying government debt. Of course, the banks might not do entirely what is expected of them, and in any case it is not a very efficient or even permanent fix. Ultimately it's a continuation of exactly the course of action we've seen all along so far: it prolongs the crisis, prolongs the weakness of the euro and the suffering of the weaker eurozone countries, while doing just enough to stave off the complete collapse of the currency. We can probably expect this to continue until Germany's euro reform plan comes into force.

The future of the eurozone is Belgium

2011-07-21T19:47:00.006+10:00

... one way or the other.

A couple of well written articles by the BBC's business editor, Stephanie Flanders, have got me once again thinking about the future of Europe's common currency, and the more I do the more I come to the conclusion that Belgium pretty much holds all the answers.

When this crisis first began, way back at the end of 2009 when it first became clear that Greece would need a bailout, I became rapidly convinced that the euro would not survive this challenge. I'm still convinced of that, and my conclusions are being reinforced ever more by the comments of people like Ms Flanders.

Yesterday, commenting on a report by the IMF condemning the indecision of Europe's leaders, she wrote the following:

At the end of last year, Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy said emphatically that they would hold it together. But in practice they have continued the previous strategy of attempting to muddle through.
What has happened in the past week or so is that it has become clear - to the IMF, to the Obama administration, and to many other interested parties - that the muddle-through option is not viable. Worse that that, it is counterproductive.
Why? Because in the process of muddling through you create so much uncertainty you actively cause the contagion you're trying to prevent.

The IMF has now stated clearly what has long been clear to many: there are only two ways out of this, either much greater integration (fiscal and political), or the breakup of the eurozone.

Flanders (the person, not the region, more about which in a moment) still holds out the optimistic possibility that the path of integration could be chosen:

The leaders who will meet in Brussels on Thursday still have the power to decide whether this crisis is going to end with much greater integration and burden-sharing between the governments of the eurozone - or a dramatic break-up. But they are increasingly losing control of the timing.

I would love to believe that the positive option is possible. But that would require joint European bonds, administered by a joint European treasury, which would necessitate tight integration of fiscal policy, which would in turn also require something like a loose federal government for the entire eurozone. And what would that ultimately look like? Well, it would look pretty much like modern-day Belgium: regions governing themselves with as much autonomy as you can have without actually being completely separate countries, with the thinnest possible layer of federal government over the top.

And anyone looking at modern-day Belgium can see instantly why this is not going to happen. The people of Flanders (the region) are currently agitating with increasing impatience for full independence and the demise of the Belgian federation because they are sick of having to subsidise the poorer other half of the country. And their attitude, characterised as it is by petty-minded nationalism, selfishness, short memories into the past and short-sightedness into the future, is depressingly close to the attitude displayed by the Germans, the Austrians, the Dutch and the Finns when it comes to these bailouts of struggling eurozone countries. It seems that anyone who is a little bit richer than the average is dead against the idea of even a cent of their money going to those who are poorer than the average, for whatever reason and under whatever circumstances, regardless of the consequences for all in the long term.

So yes, it would be ideal if the eurozone could end up with a structure like Belgium's. But what's actually happening to Belgium these days pretty much rules out the chance of it becoming a reality in this Europe.

Doom and gloom Part II; or, why it's a pity we aren't all Chinese

2011-05-06T19:24:00.004+10:00

(Continued from previous post)

One of the biggest problems is the basic core dynamic of our civilisation. Some people are inclined to blame democracy, but the problem goes much deeper than that. Even if every country in the world today were a dictatorship, they would still be struggling against one another for the biggest possible piece of the pie. Because the core dynamic of this civilisation is competition: competition between individuals, between groups, between nations, all striving continuously for as much prosperity and/or power as possible; all intent on bolstering and protecting their own position, at the expense of others if necessary. This dynamic has powered our civilisation ever since it first emerged in the cut-throat world of the dying Roman Empire, and it is what has taken it to the height and breadth we see today. It is also what makes our civilisation quite unable to deal with the challenges it now faces.

Contrast this with Chinese civilisation, in which one central authority commanded near-total obedience across more or less the entire civilisation. If it had been China's civilisation and not Europe's which had spread to encompass the entire world, the challenges of global warming and an unsustainable economic system would surely be easier to deal with: a competent emperor, advised by even more competent mandarins, would issue a series of decrees to remedy the situation, and those decrees would be by and large obeyed, even if the result was increased hardship for most. Even today, China preserves much of this culture; the people of China still demonstrate a willing obedience to and faith in their government which must surely be the envy of rulers everywhere else. If the Chinese government seriously wanted to reduce its country's greenhouse emissions, I dare say it could do so very effectively and with relatively little difficulty. Unfortunately, China is now well and truly part of our global civilisation and is consequently just another part of the problem, not the solution. China is not likely to try to reduce its emissions with anything like the speed or effectiveness of which it is capable, because that would put it at a disastrous disadvantage against the rest of the world.

Of course, if Chinese civilisation had been the one to swallow up the rest of the world, we wouldn't be in this situation anyway, because we would probably never have reached the stage of industrialisation... but that's another story.

You know, the end really does seem to be somewhat nigh

2011-05-04T12:49:00.004+10:00

An American religious wacko has recently predicted that the world will end on 21 May at about 6 pm. He's wrong, of course. It will not be nearly so sudden. In fact, there's every sign that the ending of "our world" began some time ago and will continue for at least several decades to come.

The problem with humans is that we aren't very good at focusing our attention on events that take more than about a week to happen. Hell, we've even stopped thinking about Fukushima, even though nothing much there has changed from the time when our media was full of daily updates on it. And this is one reason why our world is ending, and why we aren't going to be capable of stopping it: we just aren't very good at being alarmed by disasters that take decades to unfold. We find it far too easy to delude ourselves that it isn't really happening. And that's even easier when the disaster in question is highly amorphous and its causes manifold and complex. It becomes impossible to generate any sense of urgency, at least not on the level of society as a whole.

Back in 1993, I was watching some documentary on TV about ancient civilisations and what happened to them, and I started wondering why we should bother studying such civilisations in such detail. Why is this useful to us? And I decided that the most useful aspect of it is learning about why such civilisations collapsed, because that might help us avoid the collapse of our own. Excepting those that were conquered by others, ancient civilisations seem to have collapsed because of what one might call a fatal flaw: some essential aspect of their structure which became incompatible with the civilisation's survival. In other words, the civilisation in question could not have survived without removing some element of itself without which it could not exist anyway, or which it was otherwise simply incapable of removing. Therefore collapse was inevitable.

So I got to wondering: what is our civilisation's fatal flaw? Greenhouse gas emissions seemed the most obvious one, but I was also thinking about land degradation, pollution, and the exhaustion of non-renewable resources. Nearly eighteen years later, it seems even more likely that these (interrelated) factors are indeed precisely those that will bring about the decline and fall of our civilisation.

Not only that, it's increasingly clear that this decline and fall is already underway. We're already experiencing more natural disasters than we used to, apparently because of global warming. And we've already reached "peak oil". The response of our civilisation to the latter has been primarily to turn to alternative fossil fuel sources, such as shale oil. This is typical: as one resource dries up, we exploit another, equally unsustainable resource until that too is gone, and so on. This even extends to nominally renewable resources like plants and animals: we are already driving some fish species extinct through overfishing, for example. When things get really bad, there's every likelihood that we will eventually cut down every last tree.

One of the key problems is that as things get worse, people become more selfish, more "grabby", less concerned about conserving what little resources there are left, and thereby accelerating the decline. It may just be the crankiness of old age, but I'm inclined to think people are already showing signs of increased selfishness today. People want their governments to fix the climate change problem, but they refuse to contemplate tax increases to do it; they also refuse to accept nuclear power stations in their neighbourhoods, high-voltage power lines near their houses, and protest vigorously against wind farms ruining their landscapes.

Be that as it may, it's certainly true that when our economy is in recession, governments go slow on anti-climate-change measures. As George Monbiot argued in a recent column, it seems that we need to feel fairly prosperous and secure before we can voluntarily act to reduce our consumption or accept even quite small restrictions in our personal budgets. And even if stable, long-term prosperity were to return to the world, the sort of action necessary to combat climate change and make our civilisation sustainable would ultimately impair that prosperity; it would inevitably mean giving up our current standard of living. Which is why I am convinced that this is indeed our fatal flaw: we need stable, comfortable prosperity to take any significant action at all, but the action we need to take involves the removal of that very prosperity and comfort.

This is why our governments have so far failed to do what is necessary, and it is why they will continue to fail in the future as well. Indeed, as the problems get worse, it's quite likely that we will take even less action to redress the fundamental causes than we doing at the moment, because we will be too busy trying to preserve our standard of living and desperately secure as big a share as possible of the planet's dwindling resources.

So, when pondering the possible collapse of our civilisation, the only question that really remains is how much longer it's going to take. It's certainly not going to be over in an instant on the evening of 21 May. But one day we may well wish that it was.

But it could be worse

2011-03-06T13:30:00.005+10:00

There is at least one country that needs the "alternative vote" system even more urgently than the UK: its near neighbour, recent ally and ancient enemy France.

Back in 2002, Jacques Chirac was re-elected as president there despite getting just 19.88% of the vote in the first round of the election. In other words, more than 80% of voters wanted someone other than their incompetent incumbent. Just under 46% voted for a left-wing candidate – ahead of 43% for the right and just under 11% for centrist parties - but the left-wing vote was splintered between 10 different candidates. Under the two-round voting system used in France, only the top two candidates from the first round advance to the second, and because there were only four right-wing candidates, two of them managed to take those spots. Since the other one was the appalling far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Chirac romped home with a massive 82% of the votes – even though most of those were from people who loathed him.

The French two-round system is like many French innovations: a novel but actually quite impractical version of some idea that someone has developed (or will develop) much better somewhere else. In this case, it's like the "alternative vote" because it too eliminates the low-scoring candidates and gets voters to choose between the highest-scoring ones; but incredibly it does so in such a way as to lose the key benefit of the alternative vote system, namely to get a winner who is the candidate most favoured by the electorate. The French system continues to allow situations where someone can end up winning despite being very nearly the last preference of the vast majority of voters – exactly the same problem as the first-past-the-post system.

And in a way, the French situation is even worse than that in the UK, because here we're not just talking about a few individual members of a parliament containing more than six hundred seats, we're talking about an extremely powerful elected monarch, the president of France. You'd really think they would have learned their lesson after 2002 and would have introduced the alternative vote quick smart. But no, they stuck with their own benighted process. Now it looks like yet another miscarriage of democracy could be looming, with a recent opinion poll indicating that the current frontrunners for the presidential election in one year's time are Le Pen's daughter and successor on 23%, the unpopular incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy on 21%, and the leader of the main left-wing party also on 21%. And sadly, there seems virtually no likelihood of the French using the remaining year to change their godawful system while they still have the chance. You really wonder how many times this is going to have to happen before they draw the blindingly obvious conclusion.

The alternatives are clear

2011-02-28T21:28:00.008+10:00

Looking at the debate brewing in Britain right now over the "Alternative Vote", I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It's utterly astonishing how much confusion they are generating over what seems an incredibly simple issue. Okay, I have the benefit of having lived most of my life in a country that uses this system and am therefore not beset by any of that fear of the unknown that evidently plagues so many Brits when faced with it, but it still seems to be causing them far more trouble than it warrants.

Basically the proposed reform is to replace their current, dreadfully undemocratic first-past-the-post voting system with one allowing people to vote for the candidates in order of preference, voting "1" for the candidate they like most, "2" for their next favourite, and so forth. Candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated and their voters' next preferences are counted until one candidate gets 50% of the total votes cast. All fairly straightforward, surely.

The pro and contra sides of the debate, however, have managed to befuddle things magnificently, partly through deliberate misinformation and distortion of the truth, but perhaps partly through a sheer inability to communicate clearly.

Essentially, it all boils down to this:

Currently, British voters mostly vote for either the Conservative Party, which gets about 30-40% of all votes across the country, the Labour Party, which also gets about 30-40% of all votes, or the Liberal Democrats, who usually get about 15-20% of all votes. Under the first-past-the-post system, it is entirely possible for either the Conservatives or Labour to win a comfortable majority of seats in the House of Commons on these figures, while the Liberal Democrats struggle to win a handful. The winner of each seat is elected by a geographically defined "constituency" of voters, with these three major parties all fielding candidates in most of the them.

The other important fact to know when assessing the potential impact of the "Alternative Vote" is that opinion polls have fairly consistently indicated that people who vote Liberal Democrat prefer the Labour Party to the Conservatives by a ratio of at least 2 to 1.

What that means is that when the Conservative candidate and the Labour candidate come first and second in the race for a constituency, causing the Liberal Democrat candidate to be eliminated, the next preferences of the Liberal Democrat voters would favour the Labour candidate heavily. Labour should end up with at least two thirds of the Lib Dems's 15-20% of the vote. Labour should also pick up preferences from Green voters and voters for various other small left-wing parties, totalling a further 2% or so of the vote. As for the Conservatives, all they can really rely on, apart from the remaining third from the Lib Dems, is the preferences of UKIP and BNP voters - about 5% nationwide. This will give Labour a major advantage in many seats and should cut heavily into the Conservative representation in parliament.

In constituencies where Liberal Democrat candidates currently comes first or second, they will probably be the greatest beneficiary, as they will presumably pick up preferences from both Labour and Conservative voters. So the Lib Dems will win seats from both the other major parties. At this point it's important to remember that there are not in fact very many seats (relatively speaking) where the Liberal Democrats come first or second, which will seriously limit their potential gain from the Alternative Vote system.

Result: number of Conservative seats falls a lot (as they will lose them to both Labour and the Lib Dems); number of Lib Dems seats rises but by a much smaller amount, and the Labour Party probably stays at about the same level it is at now. And that means, in turn, that Labour could still find itself with an outright majority in the House of Commons, but the Conservatives will quite possibly never enjoy that position again - unless and until they shift their politics towards the centre, i.e. towards the left.

This is the simple, sufficient and only reason why nearly all of the Conservative Party is against the proposed reform, while most of the Labour politicians, and all of the Liberal Democrats, are in favour.

A lot of the distortion of the truth coming from both sides in the debate is, I am certain, the result of their attempts to avoid saying how the reform will affect them personally. Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats nor even Labour can admit that their main concern is what it will do to their numbers in parliament, so they come out with whatever other spurious arguments they can dream up. I really wish they could just come clean and tell people straight up: "If you like the Conservatives, vote against it. If you hate them and/or like Labour or the Liberal Democrats, vote for it. That's all there is to it, folks."

Hillary Clinton courageously defends WikiLeaks

2010-12-09T08:34:00.002+10:00

Via The Guardian; full original here:

On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress. But the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world's information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it.

This challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help ensure the free exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic. The words of the First Amendment to the Constitution are carved in 50 tons of Tennessee marble on the front of this building. And every generation of Americans has worked to protect the values etched in that stone.

Uh oh.

2010-12-04T10:48:00.002+10:00

An uncomfortable suspicion is beginning to form in my mind. Angela Merkel, it is said, is crucial to the survival of the euro, because Germany must be central to any plan to save it. So Germany's leader must take a leading role in the rescue process.

Trouble is, she doesn't seem to be very good at it.

Merkel once seemed so competent, capable of dealing wisely and well with nearly any issue that crosses her path. But she's so far made two massive blunders in dealing with the euro crisis, which have made things vastly worse, not better. First, she refused for eight months or more to help Greece, until Greece was pushed to the wall and confidence in the euro was shattered. Then in October, her extremely ill-timed declaration that bond-holders should have to cop some of the damage from the bailout (and not just taxpayers) seems to have helped to topple the next domino as well, Ireland.

Hence the uncomfortable conclusion: the person who is most important in the struggle to save the euro is sorely ill-equipped for the role. Merkel seems to have an uncharacteristic blind spot when it comes to this issue.

And that means the euro is in a great deal of trouble indeed.

A melting pot-pourri

2010-10-18T10:47:00.004+10:00

A few random observations on Germany's never-ending "immigration debate", which has flared up again in recent weeks:

- It would help the Germans immensely if at least their leaders, i.e. the people in the best position to know and to educate others, would realise that there is an important distinction to be made between:
(a) unskilled/poorly skilled immigrant workers who are not what the country needs to fill its desperate labour shortages and who are always the first to be sacked when the economy goes into a downturn, and who therefore are very likely to be unemployed or poor and who therefore are inevitably going to have a very hard time fitting into German society and feeling comfortable in Germany, and
(b) highly skilled immigrant workers who walk into highly paid jobs as soon as they arrive and who therefore have absolutely no trouble integrating and feeling comfortable in Germany because anyone with huge amounts of cash always tends to be fairly welcome anywhere.
Unfortunately, just about all German politicians, whether pro- or anti-immigration, fail to make this distinction and spend all their time talking about "Christian-Jewish values" instead, as if religion and not money were the most important thing in determining someone's success as a member of society.

- Things like Merkel's little speech on the weekend, which received an extraordinary amount of attention around the world (topping the "most emailed story" lists on Yahoo.com, BBC.co.uk and LeMonde.fr for example*), will have done tremendous damage to Germany's ability to attract the kind of highly skilled immigrant workers that it needs. Why go to a country that clearly doesn't want you when you can go to one that does instead, like Britain, the USA, or Australia?

- The presence of the "Jewish" in "Christian-Jewish" – such as in the words of Horst Seehofer, leader of the most right-wing party in the governing coalition, talking about "unsere deutsche Leitkultur, die von den christlich-jüdischen Wurzeln [...] geprägt ist" (our German core-culture, which is based on its Christian-Jewish roots [...]) – is amusing. There were people in Germany like Horst Seehofer saying not dissimilar things about a hundred years ago, but they left out the Jewish bit. Mainly because they had the same view of Jews that Horst Seehofer now has of Muslims.

- Ill-defined terms like "deutsche Leitkultur", "Integrationsfähigkeit" (capacity for integration) and "Integrationsverweigerung" (refusal to integrate) scare the living bejesus out of me.

* - not at The Times of India, however, where the readers, who are presumably mainly Hindu and seem to be even more Islamophobic than most Europeans, not only completely failed to notice that the German animosity to people from "alien cultures" (as it is reported there) extends equally to them as well, but also were fully supportive of Germany's perceived desire to be rid of its Muslim population, blithely observing that the Muslims should behave themselves or they'll go the same way as the Jews who also "could also not fully get integrated into the societies in foreign lands, resulting in a holocaust in Germany". "What is the need to allow Muslims when Germans hate them so much. I ask these Muslims dont they remember how Jews were treated by Germany,do they want to have the same fate?.Afterall muslims are also semetic people" (number of other readers clicking "Agree": 47, "Disagree": 6, "Recommend": 21, "Offensive": 0). Horst Seehofer would be delighted.

Don't ask don't tell...

2010-10-01T20:54:00.008+10:00

... about the other 300:

Gorgidas, according to some, first formed the Sacred Band of three hundred chosen men, to whom, as being a guard for the citadel, the State allowed provision, and all things necessary for exercise: and hence they were called the city band, as citadels of old were usually called cities. Others say that it was composed of young men attached to each other by personal affection, and a pleasant saying of Pammenes is current, that Homer's Nestor was not well skilled in ordering an army, when he advised the Greeks to rank tribe and tribe, and family and family together, that-
"So tribe might tribe, and kinsmen kinsmen aid."
but that he should have joined lovers and their beloved. For men of the same tribe or family little value one another when dangers press; but a band cemented by friendship grounded upon love is never to be broken, and invincible; since the lovers, ashamed to be base in sight of their beloved, and the beloved before their lovers, willingly rush into danger for the relief of one another. Nor can that be wondered at since they have more regard for their absent lovers than for others present; as in the instance of the man who, when his enemy was going to kill him, earnestly requested him to run him through the breast, that his lover might not blush to see him wounded in the back. It is a tradition likewise that Iolaus, who assisted Hercules in his labours and fought at his side, was beloved of him; and Aristotle observes that, even in his time, lovers plighted their faith at Iolaus's tomb. It is likely, therefore, that this band was called sacred on this account; as Plato calls a lover a divine friend. It is stated that it was never beaten till the battle at Chaeronea: and when Philip, after the fight, took a view of the slain, and came to the place where the three hundred that fought his phalanx lay dead together, he wondered, and understanding that it was the band of lovers, he shed tears and said, "Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything that was base."

(From Plutarch, Pelopidas, in John Dryden's translation. Minor correction: archeologists excavating the tomb of the Sacred Band at Chaeronea found only 254 skeletons, so we can conclude some survived. The great marble lion placed over the tomb by the battle's survivors still stands.)

Inside Australia's KZs

2010-09-22T10:13:00.002+10:00

It's something I'd never thought much about before, but it's obvious really: Australia's "detention centres", which is where we put any sad person desperate enough to try to seek asylum in this country, really are worse than our prisons. In other words, we treat refugees worse than we treat convicted criminals.

The comparison with the way the Vietnamese refugees were handled in the 1970s is interesting: we didn't throw them in prisons indefinitely, we processed their claims quickly, and managed to do so even though five times as many were arriving each year. What caused the change? How much of it can be blamed on the consistent and deliberate demonisation of asylum seekers by John Howard's government, with the willing co-operation of most of the Australian media? How much is due to a general rise in xenophobia, perhaps common to other Western countries? Or is it just an increase in selfishness - as we become wealthier relative to others, we become more afraid of them wanting what we have??

So close, and yet so very far

2010-08-16T11:01:00.004+10:00

I must admit, when I read yesterday that Barack Obama had spoken out in defence of the "Ground Zero mosque" on the basis that freedom of religion was a fundamental right which could not be compromised, I was pleasantly surprised. He was finally taking a forthright, courageous and thoroughly admirable stance on an issue which goes right to the heart of America's values. And, regrettably, it was somewhat out of character for him to do so.

So when I read a few minutes ago that he's "clarified" his position, I was not surprised, but very disappointed. It looks rather as though he hadn't realised quite how courageous his remarks were, was shocked to see the amount of protest they provoked, and backtracked in fright. He's now claiming that he meant people should have the freedom to build mosques in principle, but not necessarily in practice. He had the opportunity to take the moral high ground, to take a firm stand on the fundamental issue of religious freedom, and oppose the ugly and unhealthy opposing current which, it seems, is going to culminate in a mass burning of Korans on September 11 - which unhappily this year will probably coincide with the Eid ul-Fitr celebrations at the end of Ramadan.

There is a dangerous maelstrom of religious conflict building in the USA right now, and instead of holding to an inspiring position of strong leadership to guide the country out of it, Obama is now responding in his typically spineless way of following the path of least resistance, trying to do whatever the polls seem to suggest will be least offensive. This behaviour is bad for America, it's bad for the world, and ultimately it will be bad for him too: it shows him to be a weak, ineffectual leader. It will not help him in November this year, and it will destroy him in 2012.

Suggestion to those guys in Norway

2010-07-27T12:32:00.003+10:00

Salon.com contributor Glenn Greenwald via twitter:

If Julian Assange won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010, it'd be more deserved than the one awarded last year.

And it would also be the perfect rebuke to the recipient of the one awarded last year, for rather spectacularly yet wholly predictably failing to live up to the challenge that that award purported to represent. Just the sort of thing the Nobel Peace Prize committee usually goes in for, in fact. Let's hope they'll find the temptation irresistible.

"Ihr seid nicht die Mehrheit"

2010-06-22T12:56:00.013+10:00

Jan Salloch, director of the Berlin gay pride festival ("Berliner CSD"), does not seem to be a bad man as such, but he did demonstrate extremely poor choice of words after Judith Butler refused a "Civil Courage" award at the Berlin pride festival last Saturday. His not-so-bon mots start at 5:35 in the clip below (apologies for the poor subtitles, nothing to do with me; there is a much better English version of Judith Butler's part by 10toes10fingers in the comments on the youtube page, which you can access by double-clicking the video):

My translation of Salloch's bit:

Without question, we must say that as the Berliner CSD we vehemently reject - and I personally find it very hurtful - the accusation of racism. It is simply not true. And you can scream as loud as you like, that's simply how it is – because, to be honest, you are not the majority here. You - are - not - the - majority. [much booing from protesters] To be quite honest - quite honest - we have - as we will always continue to do in the future - reached out our hands to you and will work together with you; the problem is [waves hand towards group of protesters] that is clearly not desired. However that may be, we are going to simply go on with our programme.
[in German even more clearly than in English, "programme" ("Programm") means not only the line-up or schedule of a show/presentation, but also the political agenda of a political party or movement.]

Could he hear himself?? "You are not the majority" – so we're going to ignore you and your concerns and what you are fighting for, and we're going to go right on doing what we've always done, and you can fuck off.

Not so many years ago, there was another minority which was ignored by the majority, and they had to make a lot of noise and fight a hell of a lot before anyone cared about their needs at all.

Can it be that this guy has forgotten all that already??

Update: Thanks to Anonymous in the comments for the word "gekränkt", which I've translated above with "find hurtful"; I myself couldn't make out what he was saying there. The subtitler heard it as "bedrängt", which would mean "under pressure" or "hassled" (translated bizarrely in the subtitles as "whipsawed") but that didn't seem quite right.

Viel Lärm um Nichts

2010-06-12T15:02:00.006+10:00

Much of the German press - or at least that part of it visible on the internet - is in uproar today about the TERRIBLE harm the vuvuzela is doing to the atmosphere of this year's World Cup. The top story at Der Spiegel right now is "Viel Lärm um Nichts" (i.e. "much noise about nothing"); there's an almost identical but even sharper-tongued polemic-masquerading-as-journalism heading the page of Berlin's Tagesspiegel; and of course Bild is not going to be outdone:

Distraction for the players, unfair advantage to the African teams [one word: earplugs], the death of the stadium atmosphere, horrible irritation for viewers around the world, oh oh oh end of the world as we know it should have been banned but everyone's too afraid of being called "racist" yet how absurd to claim it's their "culture" because only just imported from America grumble grr hissy.

And in all these articles none of them seem to suspect for a moment that it might just be them - or at least that they might possibly be a tad more sensitive to it than a lot of other nations. I've just gone through quite a number of British, French and even Australian news sites. Result: nothing. Not a single murmur of protest to be found. Not even among the usual suspects like the UK's Sun or Daily Mail.

It doesn't really surprise me because a couple of weeks ago I read - and translated - a rather more sympathetic German take on the African stadium sound:

- And did the fans in the stadium have their vuvuzela trumpets with them, which have become so famous since the Confederations Cup?
- Of course! Even at games with maybe just 20,000 spectators in a stadium for 50,000, it generated an unbelievable atmosphere, as if 100,000 fans were there. It was a constant droning and roaring in the stands, just brilliant. It might seem a bit more annoying on television, but in the stadium it's really amazing. The Bundesliga in Germany is a total contrast. Shortly before our departure I was able to go to a Hamburger SV match. If there's not so much happening on the pitch at a particular point in time, then the spectators are simply quiet. Only when the ball gets close to the penalty area does it get a bit louder. In Africa it's ninety minutes of non-stop noise.

Aha, alles klar. Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh, in allen Wipfeln spürest du
kaum einen Hauch; die Vögelein schweigen im Walde... or at least until a squirrel kicks the acorn into the corner of the hollow trunk, presumably.

(To their credit, some of the German newspeople seem to have kept their cultural sensitivities in check, so far at least: I can't find any objections being raised at www.taz.de, www.sueddeutsche.de, or even at www.faz.de. Except in the reader comments sections, but let's just not go there...)

PS: The sound the vuvuzelas make on the tv broadcasts is EXACTLY the same as a bunch of blowflies flying around. People watching in outback Australia probably haven't even noticed it. Either that or they keep getting up to find out who left the screen door open.

"Like (in the newly anachronistic sense of the word)"

2010-05-14T17:01:00.004+10:00

From one Caelevin commenting on Language Log (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/) to a post about a new "Community Page" for Language Log which has been automatically generated by Facebook:

I have not previously liked Language Log on Facebook, I do not have it liked now, I do not intend to like it in the future.

I like (in the newly anachronistic sense of the word) unportaled access to the upenn.edu site. In this my like is implicit, as well as antisocial.

Life was so much simpler when I got out of bed this morning, but being possessed of a porch, a cane and the Will to Scold, I am intent on keeping the Interwebz off my lawn, at least for one more day.

Technical love madrigal

2010-05-05T17:44:00.004+10:00

Caution

Caution

Caution

To prevent electric shock

Do not

Do not

Do not

Remove cover

No user-serviceable parts inside

Refer servicing to qualified

Service personnel.

(from Epitaph For My Heart, by The Magnetic Fields)

The sensible Greeks

2010-04-28T13:53:00.008+10:00

How ironic that during the course of this whole financial meltdown in Europe recently, it is the Greek leaders who have consistently sounded sensible and realistic, and the German leaders who have been making disingenuous, misleading and downright foolish statements. Such as "there is no need to help Greece because they haven't asked for any help". Whereas the Greek finance minister Papaconstantinou recently had this to say:

One wishes that Europe had acted a little differently. Three and four months ago we were saying that the mechanism must be ready and it must be detailed, that the markets must know what exactly is going. Unfortunately, for a series of political reasons, we are down to the wire.

The awful truth. And by "a series of political reasons" he of course means Angela Merkel gambling on blocking aid in order to pander to the Bild demographic ahead of the big election in NRW next week. It's probably the single worst thing she's ever done. And the stupidest. It's hard to imagine Greece or Portugal having their membership in the euro suspended - even a suspicion of that would surely result in a run on their banks, for one thing - so if the current situation becomes unworkable, the only option will probably be to end the whole euro experiment completely.

Here's hoping the Union gets its arse kicked on May 9. Merkel certainly deserves it.

Update: It's good to finally see more and more pieces appearing in the German press highlighting Merkel's share of the blame. This one in Spiegel today is a typical example: "ausgerechnet Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel hat den einzig erfolgversprechenden Weg, die Milliardenhilfen zu vermeiden, blockiert."

Damn, I just stepped in something nasty

2010-04-18T15:25:00.005+10:00

What the hell is it with German translations of popular film and book titles?? Why on earth are these editors (or whoever the guilty parties are) unable to come up with titles which don't sound utterly moronic? And why, especially, do they feel the need to add stupid tag lines to the existing title which insult both the original work and their customers??

I'm definitely no fan of the Twilight saga - anything that encourages Americans in their misguided belief that unwanted sexual desires can be happily suppressed forever should be abhorred - but I still don't think anything can justify this particularly egregious Missgeburt:

"New Moon - Bis(s) zur Mittagsstunde"

Honestly, coming across that halfway down a website is just like treading in fresh dog shit. Wouldn't you agree?

Oh dear god

2009-11-15T21:28:00.004+10:00

When I scrolled down the picture below, I was thinking to myself "that's gotta be somewhere in Germany" before I even got to the shopping bag.

see more Epic Fails

Of course, that may be because I haven't spent much time in Eastern Europe.

(I also overlooked the word "Juwelier". Both times it appears. And right up until I previewed this post, in fact. Look, I haven't been getting much sleep lately, okay?)

Oh, I'm the bitch of the piece, am I?

2009-11-03T14:26:00.005+10:00

Some brilliant person has enriched YouTube with a whole bunch of the classic Lynne and Carmel skits from the eighties and nineties, by Magda Szubanski and Jane Turner - of Kath & Kim fame for those who weren't watching Australian television twenty years ago. I always thought Magda's talents were terribly underused on Kath & Kim. The woman is an utter genius.

There's a few clips there too of another hilarious character of hers from that era, Chenille, on "Janelle's Beauty Spot" with Marg Downey. Alas, not nearly as much of Chenille as there is of Lynne, but still classic stuff.

Oh, now that's a good one

2009-10-23T18:49:00.004+10:00

From what looks like the laugh-out-loud story of the month comes what may be the euphemism of the year:

A statement released by the National Transportation Safety Board said: "The crew stated they were in a heated discussion over airline policy and lost situational awareness."

Remember, next time you're totally out of it and have no idea where you are or what you are doing, you've merely "lost situational awareness". I can't wait to use that.

Update: I currently have before me a text to translate in which the word "Situationsbewusstsein" appears, multiple times, including once in the title... it's even in the right context (piloting aircraft). Which was another laugh-out-loud moment (yes, I'm easily amused). There I was longing for an excuse to use this term, and this comes along. It's almost enough to make you believe in divine intervention. The word, evidently a fairly common term in the industry, is explained to mean "die Fähigkeit, seine eigene Situation in Abhängigkeit des jeweiligen Umfeldes zutreffend beurteilen zu können" - "the ability to correctly assess one's own situation in relation to one's specific environment". Hmm, yes, that pretty much fits perfectly with the pilot story...

It's hip to be square

2009-10-13T15:20:00.007+10:00

I think I know now what it is about Melbourne that makes me slightly uncomfortable here. The place - or specifically its hip, "alternative", arty scene - is just a little too damn hip. Not just content to be fashionable and cutting-edge, they're all terribly conscious of just how cutting-edge they are; they're far too focused on it the whole time. The great thing about Berlin (by comparison) is that although it's got a flourishing, cutting-edge cultural scene, it manages at the same time to be largely relaxed and unpretentious - which I believe has a lot to do with the deep-seated provinciality of the place. (Might also have something to do with the lack of money; Melbourne certainly doesn't have that problem.) Berlin manages to be extremely cool and deeply uncool at the same time, and I love that.

Whereas I saw a young hipster dude in the gym today wearing a white T-shirt, bright green trousers and a green baseball cap in exactly the same colour. The hipsters here are the kind of people who colour-coordinate their gym outfits. I'm sorry, but that's just so Barcelona.

Which is why I'm outta here. Heading back to Brisbane, which still has enough of its old provincial, uncool character for me to feel completely comfortable there, just like Berlin (or, I might add, Madrid). Being in places like that is like curling up in a favourite old armchair, or wearing a pair of ancient but unbelievably comfy old slippers. Might not get you into the right clubs, but hey, you're not going to care.

Solstice

2009-06-22T10:32:00.003+10:00

Last night I was reading a bit of the book I'm reading at the moment, Cosmo Cosmolino by Helen Garner. It's set in Melbourne. Halfway through the scene I was reading, one of the characters says to another, "By the way – do you realise that this is the longest night of the year?"

And she was right.

Oops.

2009-06-21T10:19:00.007+10:00

They did it again.

Yesterday should have been a good one for the Iranian government - brutal and effective suppression of small, disorganised protests, near-silence from Mousavi, opposition in disarray.

Unfortunately the day was marred by yet another own goal. They faked a suicide bombing. They faked a suicide bombing. They justified all those American accusations of being a terrorist state by actually attempting to terrorise their own people into staying away from the protests. And once again, they did it in a really stupid, blatant way. First there was again the all-too-obvious foreshadowing in ominous remarks from on high - this time in Khamenei's address the previous day: "Street demonstrations are a target for terrorist plots. Who would be responsible if something happened?". Then the suspicious choice of location - the tomb of Khomeini, a long way from the protests (perhaps so that the fraud would escape scrutiny, perhaps so the state media could avoid showing images of the demonstrators) and all-too-obviously symbolic: Khomeini represents the Islamic Republic, the established order. Thereby associating the protesters with suicide-bombing terrorists. And then they gave it coverage on the state media all day and night. Just to make sure everyone heard about it.

Honestly people. You're under attack for faking an election. You're not going to fix that by faking a suicide bombing!!

They might still get away with it - something like this could be a button-pusher for the government's conservative supporters, and the regime will certainly try to use it to justify greater brutality in future. Much depends on how many people are prepared to believe that it was for real. If they see through it - as I think they will - well, even if the Assembly of Experts doesn't care about the protests, they might still have to remove Khamenei for gross incompetence. The man can't even do a reign of terror properly.

The point of no return?

2009-06-19T20:28:00.007+10:00

I'm beginning to think that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, may have been personally responsible for the various silly decisions mentioned in my previous post. His address to the nation today - his first since the election - also demonstrates some pretty questionable thinking. He tells the opposition that they must pursue their complaints within the established legal channels, but also effectively tells them that doing so will be completely pointless, by stating that Ahmadinejad's victory is beyond question. As if that wasn't stupid enough, he reiterated his own personal support of Ahmadinejad. In other words, "the candidate I wanted to win has won. Because the margin of victory was too large for any cheating. Any complaints must be made to the official bodies, who will ignore them." Well that'll certainly restore everyone's faith in Iranian democracy.

With that speech, it looks like the Supreme Leader has effectively brought an end to the constitutional status quo in Iran. Up until now, the Iranian constitution contained an essential contradiction: an unelected head of state with a huge amount of power, but an elected head of government. They'd more or less kept it together pretty well before now, but conflict - between the elected and the unelected, the democratic and the non-democratic - was perhaps ultimately inevitable. It's certainly reached crisis point now. Regardless of the actual election result, it's clear that a very large number of Iranians have lost confidence in the Supreme Leader's willingness to accept their democratic decisions. Unless Khamenei can go back on what he's just said, Iran must now become either less democratic or more democratic: the former if the opposition backs down and the Supreme Leader gets the President he wants; the latter if the Supreme Leader is forced to accept new elections or is forced from office, either directly by a popular uprising or by the Assembly of Experts acting in response to the protests. It'll probably all come down to the resolve of the Iranians who support Mousavi. How far are they willing to go?

If I were an evil overlord

2009-06-14T22:04:00.005+10:00

The really surprising thing about the Iranian presidential election is not that the result was manipulated, but that it was manipulated so ineptly.

The past few presidential elections in Iran were generally regarded to have been more or less fair, and this time it seems that the regime was (mistakenly, as it turned out) relying on the weakness of the other candidates (selected as always by the regime itself) to get Ahmadinejad over the line. So perhaps we can put the regime's ham-fisted effort down to inexperience and lack of planning. But you would think that it would be fairly obvious that you should make the announcement of the results follow the pattern established by previous elections. It should at least look and feel as much as possible like it did on previous occasions, yes?

Well, the Iranian Interior Ministry apparently didn't feel the need. In previous elections, the results would begin trickling through slowly hours after voting finished; this time the authorities were able to announce that more than a third of the votes had been counted within just one hour of polls closing, showing a commanding lead for Ahmadinejad. They allowed that lead to shrink a little in subsequent announcements (as the rest of the votes were "counted") but they still ended up giving him 62.63%, compared with 33.75% for Mousavi. With voter turnout acknowledged even by the Interior Ministry to have been at a record high, nearly all observers had expected that those figures would be approximately the other way around. Instead, the figures announced give Ahmadinejad a much greater margin of victory than he received in 2005, when he was still relatively popular.

Surely a smaller margin of victory would have been more plausible?? Such as, say, 52.7% for Ahmadinejad? Sure, it would still have looked fraudulent, but not blatantly, contemptuously and unbelievably so. Many would have been willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. But 62.63? That really leaves no room for doubt at all. Incredibly, they didn't even allow Mousavi to get a majority in his own home town - the announced result seems to have been a more or less even 60+% for the incumbent right across the country.

Why would the Interior Ministry do something so daft? Their misguided idea seems to have been to give Ahmadinejad such a huge margin that accusations of "irregularities" would seem pointless. The Ministry made a statement to that effect in their announcement of the official results, and it was echoed by Ahmadinejad himself the following day: "The margin between my votes and the others is too much and no one can question it." Um, no. The margin is so large that EVERYONE is going to question it. Sigh. These people have so much to learn.

I could also mention all the ominous and all-too-obvious comments made by authority figures in the leadup to voting about how any attempts at "revolution" would be "firmly dealt with"; even the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, when casting his vote, pointedly warned that "nobody should think about trying to harm the state" (or something to that effect). But perhaps the single silliest thing the regime did was their apparent failure to announce any figure for spoiled ballots - it's as if they simply forgot about them completely.

The result of all this, of course, is that the legitimacy of the whole regime in Iran has been called into question as never before. Even the authority of the Supreme Leader has been shaken - the rioting crowds are chanting slogans criticising him, which seems to be just about as radical as it ever gets in Iran. The regime will probably survive this storm - the security forces appear to remain largely loyal - but this own goal is going to make things a lot tougher for them from now on.

Disclosure

2009-04-10T17:34:00.006+10:00

The internet has done such wonderful things to our perception of concepts like "private" and "personal"...

3:44pm Psychopompous

you won't believe what i am doing now

actually you will but you won't approve

christ, i don't approve

3:45pm John

what?

3:46pm Psychopompous

you know that guy last night i said i was slightly obsessed with?

3:47pm John

yeeessssss

3:48pm Psychopompous

well I'm working on removing the "slightly"

this is so unhealthy

I'm internet stalking him. It's turned out to be incredibly easy

I was introduced to him exremely fleetingly at the queer film festival by a guy whose blog i read

i found a comment by him on that blog

it links to his own blog profile

he ran his blog for two years (2006 and 2007) but it's still all up there and he used it to basically tell the story of his entire life up to that point...

I am excercising a tiny bit of self-discipline by not actually reading all of it

especially the stuff about his early life

he's even got a link on it to a flickr feed for crissakes

3:51pm John

I think you may have a problem... hehehe

3:51pm Psychopompous

honestly, when people are going to make it this easy...

the good news: I seem to be an amazingly good judge of people

this guy is SOOOO my kind of guy.

the bad news: i am seriously fucked up

3:53pm John

LOL I kinda always guessed that to be so

3:53pm Psychopompous

you know i even found a photo on his flickr site which features an american guy i knew in berlin. [Ed.: probably incorrect - pretty sure it's just an uncanny resemblance.] i'm thinking if i keep looking through i'll see my own fucking self on there...

the dude spent a couple of years in europe

3:54pm John

mmmmm cultured

3:57pm Psychopompous

he has similar interests to me, similar life history (long-term girlfriend check, spanish boyfriend check, time spent in europe check - and it goes on [Ed.: but still doesn't get much less superficial than this]), and he's even been hanging out in the same places and with the same people!

3:58pm John

It must be destiny then...

heehehe

3:58pm Psychopompous

only problem is i'll find out so much about him that i'll get bored and move on without ever actually talking to him :)

Newsflash: word borrowed from German into English!!

2009-04-03T18:10:00.006+10:00

The G20 summit in London has highlighted a recent borrowing of a German word into English, an occurrence sufficiently rare these days to warrant trumpeting it. Plenty of words get borrowed from English into other languages, but borrowings in the other direction don't seem to happen a lot anymore.

This one is not just a borrowing, but that subtle breed of borrowing known to linguists as a calque, or loan translation. This is a rather nifty pair of terms for it, since "calque" is itself a loanword from French, whereas "loan translation" is even more apt, being itself a loan translation from the German word Lehnübersetzung.

The marvellous term in question is "to kettle", with its derived noun "kettle". The Word Spy website (devoted to English neologisms) defines the verb as "to maneuver protesters into a small area using a cordon of police personnel and vehicles." The idea is for police to contain groups of protesters - usually those thought to be most likely to "cause trouble" - by effectively sealing them off into a small space, and holding them in that space for several hours, up to a whole day in some cases. The noun refers to the tight circle of frustrated protesters thus created. In German the verb is "einkesseln"; the related noun is usually "Einkesselung". It's a term I'm personally very well acquainted with in German from street protests in Berlin about five or six years ago.

There are two things that tell us the term was borrowed from German into English and not the other way around: in German its meaning is broader, and is used to refer not only to police operations but also and originally to military manoeuvres, where in English one would say "encircle" or "surround". It's very commonly the case when a word is borrowed that its meaning in the original language will be broader than its meaning in the adoptive language.

Also, the word is very well-established in German, going back decades if not centuries in its military sense, whereas the first instance in English that Word Spy could find is from 2006. The form in which it then appeared, namely "kettling in", is further confirmation of its German origin; the "in" seems to have dropped off since. When I first read the term a few weeks ago, I thought it might have made the leap during the protests in Heiligendamm against the G8 in 2007, but evidently international solidarity among European protesters has deeper foundations than that.

Dreams

2009-03-18T23:07:00.002+10:00

So nice to know it's not just me.

(Then again, my last stint at university finished less than two years ago...)

The Great Man theory

2009-03-04T21:53:00.013+10:00

In the past couple of years I've often pondered the effect that just one individual can have on the course of world events. That one individual usually being George W. Bush, of course. I used to view history as primarily the result of complex, slow-moving forces all coming together, a kaleidoscope of factors continually changing to create events, and was very sceptical of the "Great Man" theory of history.

Then Dubya came along. It's simply inescapable that the situation the world is in right now could have been radically different if the Bush regime had not taken power following the US predential election in 2000. An election which ultimately ceased to be Bush versus Gore at the ballot box and became Bush v. Gore, a case before the Supreme Court to decide whether Florida's recount of votes could proceed, a recount widely expected to give Gore the presidency. The case was decided by just one vote. So one decision, by one person, on one day in December 2000, had a massive, far-reaching effect on the course of world history for the next eight years and beyond.

That one person is generally considered to have been Sandra Day O'Connor, the politically centrist judge who usually decided cases in which her colleagues were split along predictable ideological lines: four conservative, four liberal. That day she voted with the conservatives. I've just watched the interview she did yesterday with John Stewart, where he asks her to recall that decision; it's one of the things that motivated this post.

Obviously the word "Man" in my title there is meant in the old-fashioned, gender-neutral sense.

Now, thanks to that 5-4 decision, we are left with an almost impossible challenge to prevent further climate change, the worst economic mess since the Great Depression, and a vastly greater threat from Islamist terrorism than that which existed on 11 September, 2001. To quote an analysis in The Guardian today:

Eight years of neocon foreign policies have been a spectacular disaster for American interests in the Islamic world, leading to the advance of Hamas and Hezbollah, the wreckage of Iraq, with more than two million external refugees and the ethnic cleansing of its Christian population, the rise of Iran as a major regional power, and now the implosion of Afghanistan and Pakistan, probably the most dangerous development of all.

When it comes to the terrorist threat and especially the mess in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I'm increasingly thinking that Obama just may not have time to undo the massive damage wrought by the previous regime. He needs to reduce the American presence in Iraq, force Israel to finally get serious about peace, and radically revise the entire Western approach to Pakistan and Afghanistan, all before Pakistan implodes to the point where the risks get nuclear. While of course simultaneously pushing through tough moves on climate change and warding off the worst recession in seventy years.

Time will tell, but can anyone be that Great?

If you're in a horrible car accident whatever you do don't rub your eyes

2009-02-24T14:35:00.003+10:00

Just came across this line in something I was translating:

Nach dem Berühren von gezündeten Airbags sind die Hände zu waschen
[Hands must be washed after touching inflated airbags]

Huh? Why?? I mean, airbags are meant to cushion your face and the upper parts of your body - arms, hands etc. - in an impact. Why would there be something on them that would be harmful to the skin??

But it turns out that there is, or at least was until very recently. After being "deployed", airbags are covered in a kind of dust, which also flies up into the air in the vehicle. The dust is mostly stuff like talcum powder, but on the older airbags it will also contain "a small amount of a potential skin irritant, sodium hydroxide." The website I'm quoting there is a guideline for emergency rescue personnel, which goes on to say:

Hands should be washed with mild soap and water after handeling [sic] a deployed bag. Also avoid rubbing your eyes, eating, or smoking after handeling the bag until you have removed the gloves and washed your hands. Rescuers also should take care to avoid introducing the residue into the eyes or any wounds of the patient.

Is this widely known?? Wikipedia knew, but wikipedia knows everything. It was obviously news to me but then I spend virtually no time in cars and don't get out much.

I find it all slightly distressing. You'd think people in car accidents would have enough to worry about already.

Nothing can be translated. Fortunately, so can everything

2009-02-13T09:49:00.005+10:00

Not even a single word in any given language can ever be translated perfectly into any other language. Every word occupies a unique position in the vast, incredibly complex interwoven web of words and meanings that is a language, and no two of those complex interwoven webs will ever be the same.

On the other hand, there is not a single concept or idea familiar to the speakers of any language which cannot be explained to the speakers of any other human language. There is not a single human sentiment expressable in one language which cannot be expressed in every other language. Ultimately, given enough time and patience, anything which can be said in one language can be said in another.

In conclusion, therefore, do NOT ask me to translate an Excel list of random words and phrases plucked from somewhere in your latest catalogue, because you offend against the fundamental principles of translation. And you piss me off.
To say nothing of what you're doing to your customers.

John Howard ruined my sister's wedding

2009-02-10T18:30:00.009+10:00

I went to my sister's wedding on Saturday. Haven't been to a wedding in years. So I was unpleasantly surprised at the beginning of the ceremony to hear the celebrant come out with this: "Marriage, in Australia, is the union of a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others".

It's not that I'd never heard that before, of course; it's the definition of marriage notoriously enshrined in the Marriage Legislation Amendment Act passed by John Howard's government back in 2004, in order to explicitly ban gay marriage in Australia. The sentence was all too familiar to me. I just didn't expect to hear it proclaimed at my sister's wedding. It was as if Howard himself had stuck his head up out of the ground to spew forth his homophobic bile. It made me quite angry and I couldn't get it out of my head for the rest of the ceremony.

Of course it turns out that all civil celebrants are now required by law (by said Amendment Act, to be precise) to utter those words during the course of the ceremony. Which is quite literally adding insult to injury. It's not as though the ban is any less effective if celebrants do not declare it at every wedding. Hearing those words is like receiving a small slap in the face, which is no doubt exactly what Howard and his cronies had in mind.

That evil little bastard isn't in power any more, but there's no likelihood of this little bit of ugliness being removed from wedding ceremonies any time soon, since Kevin Rudd and his Labor Party not only supported Howard's gay marriage ban back in 2004 but continue to support it today, despite their claim to be opposed to discrimination against same-sex couples. If Labor had drafted the law I very much doubt they would have included this offensive ceremonial extra, but they can't very well repeal that bit and not the rest without looking even more hypocritical than they already do. The only solution is to have a religious ceremony, since the wording of those is not bound by the law. I'd recommend your local Unitarians, for preference.

The whole business has actually turned me into a fervent supporter of gay marriage. I think I feel more strongly about this ceremonial proclamation than I do about gay marriage itself; I'd always sympathized with those who want to achieve marriage equality by banning heterosexual marriage as well... but that's probably never going to happen, so I'm now prepared to do just about anything to further the gay marriage cause. Because I never want to have to hear those words again.

With that in mind, I'll end with one of the best presentations I've ever seen in favour of same-sex marriage - from the folks in California, who are facing a slightly uglier situation than the one in Australia:

Take my helmet off when you speak to me, you horrible little debtor

2009-01-24T20:11:00.010+10:00

Just came across the following assessment by an American pundit of Obama's actions regarding China thus far:

In his inaugural address Tuesday, President Barack Obama spoke of how earlier generations of Americans had "faced down fascism and communism." China's state broadcaster quickly faded out the audio of its live broadcast, the camera cutting back to a flustered studio anchor.

Then, on Thursday, Obama's choice to lead the Treasury Department, Timothy Geithner, wrote that Obama believes China is "manipulating" its currency, which American manufacturers say Beijing does to make its goods cheaper for U.S. consumers and American products more expensive in China.
[..]

Selig Harrison, director of the Asia program at the U.S.-based Center for International Policy, said it was "very ill-advised for the new administration to confront China as if this were 10 years ago and we were in a strong financial position internationally."

"We are dependent on Chinese goodwill for our economic survival and viability, and, therefore, it seems to me that this type of posture is very risky," he said.

Seems that rather often these days when reading news stories about US-China relations I find myself thinking of Terry Pratchett and his Discworld. An odd association, you might think. But Pratchett is a pretty astute if rather cynical observer of the way the world works and in a novel published in 1996, he summarized the foreign policy of the Discworld's venal, wealthy and highly enterprising city-state of Ankh-Morpork thusly:

Thousands of years ago the old empire had enforced the Pax Morporkia, which had said to the world: 'Do not fight, or we will kill you'. The Pax had risen again, but this time it said: 'If you fight, we'll call in your mortgages. And incidentally that's my pike you're pointing at me. I paid for that shield you're holding. And take my helmet off when you speak to me, you horrible little debtor.'

The Ankh-Morpork national anthem is now apparently something entitled "We Can Rule You Wholesale" ("Touch us and you'll pay / Credit where it's due"). Perhaps China will want to rewrite theirs along similar lines?

Uses of bad translation #17: sensationalist reporting

2008-10-24T16:13:00.012+10:00

The English-language press is all abuzz right now with scandalous headlines out of Austria:

Far-right Austrian leader Joerg Haider was my gay lover, reveals his successor

Haider's deputy reveals gay affair

Leader says Haider was his lover

Ooh, how very exciting and shocking. Apparently Haider's deputy and designated successor Stefan Petzner told an Austrian radio interviewer that Jörg Haider (the most charismatic of Europe's extreme right politicians, who accidentally killed himself in a car crash a week ago) was "the man of my life".

Naturally I turned immediately to the German-language press, expecting it to be absolutely overflowing with feverish coverage of such a salacious tale. Strangely enough however I could hardly find anything. The German press, if they mentioned it at all, treated it as a very minor aspect of the larger Haider-death-and-aftermath story - a typical example is this article in Der Tagesspiegel, which mentions Petzner's remarks in a couple of paragraphs right at the end, calling them "supposedly homoerotic statements" (angeblich homoerotische Äußerungen).

Huh?? Saying that Haider was "the man of my life" is a bit more than "supposedly homoerotic", I would have thought. What gives?

Bad translation, that's what.

Turns out that what Petzner actually said was that Haider was his "Lebensmensch". Lots of high-ranking figures in Haider's party have been using this term to refer to their dearly departed leader, and while there is speculation about the homoerotic bonds between Haider and his circle of young male adjutants, they were not likely to have all been his lover. Petzner probably was, but it's not the words he used which revealed it so much as his tearful and emotional behaviour in general. He was in fact at pains to avoid saying anything unequivocal about the precise nature of his relationship with Haider, and the Austrian media is still too constrained by notions of decency to have hounded him about it. (The fact that Haider had a male lover was in itself not shocking because rumours about his sexuality have apparently been quietly circulating in Austria for a decade - exciting little interest because the homosexual minority was one of the few Haider did not attack, and no one else was very concerned about it, apparently not even his wife.)

So what does Lebensmensch really mean? Interestingly, many Germans themselves seem to be unclear on this point, as the word is quite obscure. In the way it was used in Haider's circle, it has at least two dimensions: it can mean someone who plays a vital role in your life, and it can refer to a life partner, i.e. a person with whom you share your life, either as a very close friend or as a lover. So quite a lot of room for ambiguity there, and the words Petzner used were certainly not tantamount to declaring that you've been shagging the guy for years.

This is even clearer when you listen to the interview that the reports all refer to. The relevant bit comes about 8 mins in (just after 25:40 on the site's countdown clock). The interviewer says that Petzner said at a press conference that Haider was "so important for you, a Lebensmensch, and - in your words - 'I loved him'. How would you describe this relationship between you? Everyone has the feeling that this was quite a special relationship". You can see where she's going with that, but she's not so rude as to be completely direct about it, and he isn't going to be either. Note also the use of the indefinite article with Lebensmensch: she allows the interpretation that Haider was potentially just one of many important people in Petzner's life. He then says that he got "Lebensmensch" from Haider, that Haider had often said to him "you are my Lebensmensch" and that "he and I know what is meant by that and that should remain just between the two of us" ("er und ich wissen, was damit gemeint ist und das soll auch zwischen uns bleiben").

That's as explicit as it gets. Barely enough to raise an eyebrow. But it's nothing bad translation can't fix.

"An encounter with a guy who's a plumber"

2008-10-19T12:03:00.004+10:00

Possibly the finest moment of Jon Stewart's Daily Show in the US presidential campaign thus far: their take on the media blitz on "Joe the Plumber" following the third presidential debate. An example in miniature of what happens to anyone whose head pops up above the political parapet these days.
(The relevant bit starts at the 5 min mark of the first clip; the media-related stuff begins at the 7 min mark and continues into the second clip)

"Why are we vetting THIS guy?? He's already done more interviews than Sarah Palin!"

The troubling mind of Sarah Palin

2008-10-10T20:38:00.005+10:00

A fascinating article in the Guardian yesterday casts an intriguing new light on the Republicans' vice-presidential candidate in the coming US election. Admittedly it's just one article and the author is almost certainly writing from a position of left-wing bias, but it nonetheless rings true with everything I've so far seen from Sarah Palin, especially in the interviews, the convention speech, and the debate. It all seems to fall into place now. And the result is an even more disturbing picture than the one we already thought we were seeing. A montage of quotes from the piece to illustrate:

Lyda Green, Republican president of the state senate, speaks for many in the party in Alaska when she says Palin has been "disappointingly liberal" since she was elected governor.

Larry Persily, a senior civil servant who has worked for three Alaskan governors and is a former associate director of Palin's office in Washington, says: "She was just not interested. She had no interest in public policy beyond the populist drive to raise oil taxes and push through ethics reforms that the Democrats had already drafted."

Rebecca Braun, editor of Alaska Budget Report, a non-aligned political newsletter, adds: "If she hasn't pushed the teaching of creationism in schools, it's because she hasn't pushed the teaching of anything in schools. She hasn't promoted her rightwing views because she hasn't promoted any views at all. She really hasn't done very much."

Laura Chase, who managed Palin's campaign, recalls her not as doctrinaire but as seriously ambitious. "We were sitting at my kitchen table at about 11 o'clock one night, talking about term times, and she said: 'If I haven't moved on to higher things after two terms, I don't deserve to be in politics.' I said: 'Sarah, you'll be governor in 10 years.' And she said: 'I don't want to be governor, I want to be president.' I glanced up and she was looking down at a piece of paper, she was on to the next thing we were doing. I just chalked it up to the adrenaline of the campaign."

"She's really pretty insecure.

"She likes being in the limelight, being the centre of attention. What she really craves is popularity, she wants the warmth and love of the public." Laura Chase says Palin has an uncanny ability to be all things to all people. "She can walk up to people and quickly have a perception of what they want her to be, and she will instantly be that person."

"She draws on something inside herself to make them like her. She's a natural actress. And then she wants to do it again, with even more people. She's a brilliant politician, but it's all about getting more and more people to love her."

Now, I can sympathise to some degree with Palin's desire to be liked and her chameleon-like attempts to be everything to everyone. I'm prey to similar insecurities and I tend to do the same sort of thing (albeit with less success). But Sarah, well, she takes it a good few steps further.

It would seem, in fact, that this woman is doing nothing less than trying to seize control of the most powerful country on earth for ultimately no purpose other than her own personal need for approval.

Breathtaking though that is, it does seem to make sense. And that, viewed together with her relentless ambition and her undeniable charisma, rather freaks the hell out of me. Sure, she probably won't get into the White House this time. But she's still relatively young, and the Republicans have a recent history of favouring populist charismatic candidates with highly dubious qualifications.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if she comes back in a few years, older and wiser and even scarier.

Now I know what "generation gap" means

2008-10-10T16:56:00.005+10:00

Overheard in the locker room of the local pool - three seven-year-old boys talking while towelling themselves dry:

"Hey, we all have team towels"
[exchange of observations on which teams they have]

Oh how cute, they all have team towels. Of course they do, they're Melbournians, every man, woman and child here seems to have a full wardrobe of items in the colours of their favourite football team.

"I like mine because it has my favourite font on it. Comic Sans MS."

O-kay.

Well Ma, I'll be danged, the boy has a favourite font. Why, gosh be darned, when I was his age, I don't think I knew what a font even dang well was. 'Course, back in them days, we was still scratching our wordifyin's on bits of slate, wasn't we.

I am feeling so very twentieth century right now.

Metaphysical typo

2008-10-02T09:35:00.005+10:00

It's unusual for a typographical error to make you take a moment, sit back and ponder life's mysteries. Well to be honest it's never happened to me at all. Until today, that is. And I have the online version of Melbourne's The Age to thank. They just ran a story reporting the sudden and unexpected death by stroke of Rob Guest, a cast member in the Australian production of the musical Wicked. The crucial sentence:

Guest talked to a friend early on Tuesday night and seemed fine before collapsing at his computer and being, according to radio station 3AW.

Fascinating, isn't it. Initially I thought they meant "dying", but he died later in hospital, not at his computer. So I am left pondering their meaning – and ultimately other things besides.

I actually saw that show just two weeks ago, by the way. I remember thinking how amazingly agile he was, marvelling at the way he could leap around the stage like a ballet dancer, and hoping I would be in such good form at his age...

Pity your American friends

2008-08-15T19:48:00.007+10:00

... because they are citizens of the world's most embarrassingly nationalistic country. Oh sure, there are countries out there which engage in more horrible displays of nationalism or are more belligerent; there may even be countries where there is more mindless flag-waving. But when it comes to sheer infantile behaviour designed to massively shame any thinking citizen, it's surely got to be USA! USA! USA! all the way.

The latest evidence? Something that's been right in front of my face for a few days now, every time I log out from my (American) Yahoo! email account, but it wasn't until I read this little article in The Guardian that I found out. All the mainstream American news outlets have, through some unspoken yet universal agreement, moved the Olympic goalposts. Faced with the appalling prospect of another country winning more gold medals than them for the first time in decades, they've rearranged the medal tally so that it's now ranked by total medals - because that way the USA has a better chance of coming out on top. CNN's way of doing it is particularly neat - not only is the total medal tally in bright red and in the first column, it's augmented by bars. You have to look really quite closely to notice that China is way out in front in golds:

Needless to say, this is a very new development in the American media, and every other nation in the world is still counting the traditional way. Which makes the world's greatest nation look utterly pathetic. I liked the comment by the author of the Guardian piece: "Perhaps the US networks should start celebrating bronze medals as the true sign of Olympic achievement? Because there the USA team still has a big lead."

The "Aussies" in Beijing

2008-08-09T19:09:00.008+10:00

Yeah, just killing time on a lazy Saturday morning, clicking on whatever brightly-coloured item pops up on Yahoo when I finish checking my email... well, I didn't see much of the ceremony yesterday, so I was feeling the need to catch up with the three billion people who did, or however many it was. (click images to enlarge)

Gee, their sandals might be very summery and Australian and all, but in those outfits they could be mistaken for New Zealanders...
(takes closer look at flag)
Ah.

The people at Yahoo USA did do some research - they carefully looked up the name and details of the flagbearer:

... they just failed to notice this was not in fact the guy in question. Despite that nifty Polynesian accessory he's been draped in (hey, are those things kiwi feathers?? Were any endangered national symbols harmed in the making of this opening ceremony?)

You know, I really don't mind. It's just like the Canadians and the Americans. I think the New Zealanders have more cause to be offended for being mistaken for Australians. I'd love to have people thinking that we were seriously committed to environmental goals, dead against genetically modified food and nuclear weapons, and fully in favour of gay civil unions and protecting the dignity of indigenous people.

Mamma Mia: the Trailer

2008-07-09T04:50:00.005+10:00

For those who just can't wait until the preview of a film comes out, we proudly announce a whole new concept in cinema journalism:

The trailer review!

Yes, fed up with waiting for the actual movie, some reviewers are now dissecting the trailer. With hilarious results in at least one instance.

You know, I actually can't imagine any part of the film itself being any more enjoyable than that review was...

German Word of the Day

2008-05-01T11:24:00.007+10:00

Krawalltourist: lit. "riot tourist". Person who goes to Kreuzberg in Berlin on April 30/May 1, and specifically to the Oranienstraße area of Kreuzberg, in the hope of seeing clashes between hordes of riot police and a few kids throwing bottles, stones etc.

Once upon a time, about twenty to thirty years ago, the "revolutionary" date of May 1 (which is internationally associated with the labour movement) was cause for radical left-wing, anti-capitalist protesters to take to the streets of Kreuzberg (and other places in the world) and demonstrate, which would often lead them into conflict with the police. The protests in Kreuzberg were always fairly lively, since the area was a major centre of left-wing radicalism, full of squatted houses. In 1987, in the wake of repressive police activities and against a background of angry protest against the conservative city government, the May 1 protests escalated into an explosion of rioting and violence directed at the police and other symbols of the "capitalist establishment" - shops were looted, barricades were erected, and in a large part of Kreuzberg 36 the rioters were a law unto themselves for several hours.

The few years that followed saw similar violence on May 1, enough to establish something of a tradition; however after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a lot of squatters moved out of Kreuzberg to create new squats in the empty old buildings on the eastern side. The reunification of the city also brought ideological challenges, resulting in conflicts within the radical left which eventually saw a decline in the strength of the protests in the early 1990s. The radicalism of Kreuzberg in general has declined since then, with most squats being shut down by the city government. In the last five years or so, the protests have been little more than a few idiots provoking the police for their own amusement; there is little or no organized political aspect to it. Which is probably how it should be; after all, how radical can a protest be if it happens only once a year and on schedule?? (insert joke about Germans and punctuality.) A "revolution" you can set your watch by? I don't think so.

Nonetheless, every year huge numbers of police descend on Berlin for the event - I strongly suspect Germany's police forces send their rookies for "hands-on" riot control training - and every year the number of Krawalltouristen has grown. Apparently there were some right from the start in 1987, with large numbers of people going to Kreuzberg to marvel at the chaos. At least they had something to look at. These days, the number of "riot tourists" ludicrously outnumbers the actual rioters, and the whole thing has an unmistakable aspect of farce. You wander down Oranienstraße today and the crowds will look exactly like those at a football match, standing about drinking beer, eating kebabs, joking merrily to one another - except that down the side streets there are several hundred police in full riot armour, batons and tear gas at the ready. And inevitably someone will throw something, the police will slowly move in behind a wall of perspex and a few canisters of tear gas will be fired, causing the crowd to run giggling and shouting, spilling their beer and kebab sauce, out into the neighbouring streets.

I can't help feeling that the police should just stand there and do nothing. Or better yet, slowly move away, forcing the provocateurs to follow them. It would spoil the show marvellously.

And perhaps the day would regain some of its political dignity.

A hint of Europe in the air

2008-04-17T18:38:00.007+10:00

It's often said that Melbourne is the most European of Australia's capital cities, and in some ways that's true. It's more liberal politically and socially, has relatively good public transport, and probably a slightly greater appreciation of all things cultural than most of the other capitals.

But alas, the similarities are not confined to the good stuff. There's also the relatively cold weather and the substandard beaches, for example. However, the thing that really makes me think "omg, they weren't kidding when they said this place is European" is the way that far too many of the locals STINK. Yes, Melbournians unfortunately share that old European inclination to believe that regular showering and use of deodorant are lifestyle choices. Even more so, it seems, as we move into the colder months. No people, even though the average daily maximum temperature has dropped to twenty, that is NOT the sign for you to stop showering till spring.

Not surprisingly the phenomenon is at its most, shall we say, pervasive in the gym. What makes it particularly nauseating there is that it's supplemented by another interesting little European trait, namely a total inability to see the signs all over the walls saying "Please use a sweat towel during your workout." So many people both in Europe and here in mini-Europe just do not seem to see any reason to bring a towel with them at all, while others do bring a towel but don't seem to understand what it is for, namely to place on the benches under your sweaty body so that said bench is not left "pre-lubricated" for the next unfortunate user. For them it's just a handkerchief-sized thing that they wipe their foreheads with occasionally. (Actually I can only speak for Germany in this respect; for all I know gym users in the sweatier lands of the Mediterranean may be diligent in ensuring there is a towel between them and any bench surface at all times. But somehow I doubt it.) While not all gym-goers here stink and some do use towels, there is nonetheless considerable overlap between the towelless and the odiferous. Sometimes I really, really wish I wasn't a gym addict.

Newflash

2008-03-24T17:46:00.005+10:00

This just in* from The Age:

More hard-hitting news from the War on Drugs here.

* Well, actually from a couple of days ago now.

The good old days are here again

2008-03-24T15:03:00.006+10:00

Yes, history does go round in circles. These days, it's the Middle Ages that are coming back with a vengeance. Islamaphobia is the new anti-Semitism: after all, Arabs are Semites too - although that's hardly relevant really; this new hatred is defined more by otherness of religion than otherness of race, just like the old. "Christendom" is a more meangingful concept now than it's been for five hundred years. National borders are losing the meaning they first gained at that time, and educated people all over the world can now again communicate in a common tongue. And good old-fashioned medieval sin and penance are back too, in a big way: in response to the apocalyptic preachings of wandering prophets, everyone is now increasingly wracked with guilt about the emissions produced by the planes that take them beyond aforesaid national borders. But fortunately a very appropriate relief is at hand: carbon offsets, which are the new indulgences. Pay your coin and wipe the blemish from your soul.

Of course, the original indulgences never went away completely, and neither did old-style anti-Semitism, of course. But neither are what they once were, and their new incarnations have taken their place. And already there are environmental Luthers hammering their theses on the doors of airports the world over. Next: Reformation, Counter-Reformation (as airlines finally switch to carbon-free fuels), and of course lots and lots of witch burning. That's something else that never really goes out of style.

Musical geekery

2008-02-24T07:42:00.011+10:00

The song chart meme (via LittlestYellowestDifferentest):

And of course I couldn't resist joining in:

Melbourne / Berlin: a district-by-district guide

2008-01-22T08:54:00.002+10:00

Melbourne and Berlin have a lot in common. They're both the most culturally vibrant cities in their respective countries, they're both roughly the same size, and they're both full of fascinating people and places. Not surprisingly, they also appeal to the same kinds of people: Berliners who visit Australia often rank Melbourne as their favourite city, and Melbournians travelling through Europe always seem to fall in love with Berlin. And Nick Cave is by no means the only one who's ended up living in the other city for years.

When I moved to Melbourne from Berlin, I found myself inevitably classifying areas of the new city in terms of areas familiar to me in Berlin, as a way of orienting myself. I was amazed how easy it was, and how neatly it all seemed to fit. This is my guide to Melbourne for Berliners, and to Berlin for Melbournians, according to what Australians call "suburbs" and what Berliners know as "Bezirke".

Caveat: it's only a rough approximation, and there are plenty of differences between the two cities, not least stemming from the fact that the dominant ethnic group in Berlin is the Germans and in Melbourne the Anglo-Celtic Australians. But I think it gives anyone familiar with either town a pretty good idea of how things fit together in the other - at least in the inner city areas. I'm basically restricting myself to those; I could go beyond that but I'm not very familiar with the outer suburbs of either city, and let's face it, outer suburbs just aren't very interesting anywhere really. The further out you go, the more boring and/or nasty things tend to get, and let that be warning enough for you.

First a rough geographical overview: inner east of Berlin = inner north of Melbourne, inner west of Berlin = inner south of Melbourne. Centre = centre.

Northcote = Friedrichshain. Not long ago considered very dull, now increasingly hip with lots of new little cafes/galleries/live music venues and other "alternative" things. Some of these have established themselves, most however are rather ephemeral and will disappear relatively quickly, to be replaced by others. In other words, an area in flux, with a lot of interesting things going on. Some bits are much more hip and/or upmarket than others. Ethnically still pretty much dominated by the traditional majority group, although slowly becoming more diverse. Note that Northcote does not have a Simon-Dach-Strasse area: the closest thing to that is probably the Bridge Rd-Church St area of Richmond.

Richmond = hard to classify in Berlin terms: something like the Hauptstrasse area of Schöneberg mixed with Simon-Dach-Strasse area of Friedrichshain. Close to coolness but not quite there, despite sometimes trying very hard - with the exception of a few venues which are genuinely very good indeed.

Brunswick = Neukölln (Nord - the parts closest to Kreuzberg). Similar to Northcote/Friedrichshain in terms of being in flux, rapidly becoming much more hip, lots of new arty-alternative things popping up. However, both poorer and hipper than Nthcote/F'hain and even more interesting things going on nowadays. Much more ethnically diverse as well: this is an area which has long been an ethnic minority stronghold, particularly for the Arab/Turkish/Muslim ethnic minorities, but with other groups as well.

Coburg = Neukölln (Süd/south). Geographically one step out from Brunswick/Neukölln. Similar to that area, only not becoming hip.

Fitzroy North, Carlton North, Clifton Hill = Kreuzberg 61. Comfortable, relaxed, leafy area of the city, full of quiet well-ordered streets with nice little cafes, bookshops and organic groceries. A few good bars and music/performance venues. Lots of people who vote Green. Becoming more expensive these days, more yuppie-ish, but still very alternative in character, if rather "safe" and unexciting. Traditionally an ethnic minority stronghold (with main ethnic group Italian in Melbourne and Turkish in Berlin), but less so these days as rents rise.

Fitzroy & Carlton, parts of Collingwood = Prenzlauer Berg (especially south of Danziger Strasse). Once the hippest part of town (and originally very working-class), but became much less hip over the past decade or so as all the fashionable young wannabes moved in. Now increasingly expensive and increasingly mainstream and "trendy". However, still a number of good bars and music/performance venues hanging on in various places. Also lots of nice leafy streets and still some interesting little cafes and shops. The alternative past is by no means completely dead, but the area is not as pleasant as it once was, and nowhere near as affordable. Ethnic diversity: fairly low. (Note Fitzroy/Carlton doesn't have nearly as many babies as Prenzl Berg: still more a young singles place than a young families place. Fitzroy/Carlton also doesn't have the old, fairly mainstream gaybourhood that Prenzl Berg does, although there is something of a gay presence there and it's likewise fairly mainstream)

Abbotsford & parts of Collingwood = Kreuzberg 36. Not long ago quite seedy, poor, gritty, very hip in the slightly scary inner-city-ghetto kind of way - drugs, punks, loud bars, etc. Now increasingly gentrified, but retaining a respectable amount of its earlier character. Very strong hippy tradition as well. Located on the banks of the river, with some nice green spots. Features a major arts centre (in a refurbished historic building complex) and a sizeable children's farm. Also has the city's biggest not-totally-mainstream queer scene (although some of the most interesting queer stuff is now happening elsewhere, especially in Melbourne where it's moved to Brunswick and Melbourne City). Still an ethnic minority stronghold (Turkish in Berlin, Vietnamese in Abbotsford). Also continues to have a very strong sense of community, with people willing to protest against new developments they feel will alter the character of the area.
Note: Collingwood/Abbotsford was never quite so hip or vibrant as Kreuzberg 36 was in the eighties; it lacks Kreuzberg's legendary squatting past. Kreuzberg 36 is perhaps unique in terms of its steeped-in-tradition cool and the strength of its community spirit, although both have weakened in recent years under the pressures of development and rising property values - something also confronting Abbotsford/Collingwood.

Melbourne City, South Melbourne & Port Melbourne = Mitte & Tiergarten. All the main tourist landmarks, plus the main business district and the city's major parklands. Also includes the main arts precinct and museums. Lots of fashionable galleries, eateries and nightlife, and the city's most expensive residential districts. Also the city's most expensive shops.

I'm less familiar with the south of Melbourne and the west of Berlin, so the following are only a very rough comparison:

South Yarra (west of Chapel St) = Mitte (Spandauer Vorstadt) but minus Oranienburger Strasse. Expensive and fashionable, but mostly in a rather quiet and understated kind of way. This place has style - expensive style. However, still a few surprisingly down-at-heel corners surviving if you look hard enough. Lots of art galleries and boutiques. Next to the river.

South Yarra (east of Chapel St) & Toorak = Charlottenburg. Also expensive but less fashionable. "Old money" area. Possibly not quite as many art galleries in the Melbourne area as in Charlottenburg, but I haven't really looked closely at either area.

Prahran & Windsor = Wilmersdorf/Schöneberg. Includes the city's traditional mainstream gaybourhood. Generally similar to Mitte/South Yarra (the latter being next to it in Melbourne, on the northern edge of the gaybourhood) but not quite as expensive or as fashionable. Fairly boring on the whole.

St Kilda (minus beach) = Schöneberg/Tempelhof (minus airport). Fairly mainstream, still relatively working class, still some very seedy corners but on the whole undergoing gentrification (and St Kilda has been going upmarket with startling speed, more so than Tempelhof or Schöneberg). Probably more ethnically diverse than the other areas in the inner south of Melb/west of Berlin, which tend to be very much dominated by the majority group. [Edit 26/01/08: St Kilda is probably more like Prenzlauer Berg - not only is it going upmarket from poor origins, it also used to be a quite alternative area popular with artists, and there's still a fair bit of artsy stuff there. It also has a reasonable gay presence, spillover from adjacent Prahran/Windsor. Possibly even more like Prenzl Berg than Fitzroy/C'wood, as those areas have a few patches which are very Kreuzberg.]

And that's it - everything within the borders of my world, which essentially consists of the central areas of two cities on opposite sides of the planet. I'd like to have been able to talk more about Melbourne's inner west - the Kensington/Footscray/Yarraville area - but I really know very little of it, although from what I've heard it sounds a lot like Wedding/Moabit. If you want to check out maps of any of these places, you can find Berlin here and Melbourne here. Explore and enjoy.

"Where are all the moderate Muslims?"

2007-12-20T10:11:00.001+10:00

Boy, am I sick and tired of hearing that old line. I saw it asked most recently by Dan Savage in an op-ed piece in Seattle newspaper The Stranger (on Dec 7 - yeah, this has been sitting on the "to blog" list for a while). Savage is more famous for doing what he is good at, namely giving excellent sex advice. He's less good whenever he strays beyond that sphere, usually leading him to mouth all the usual ill-considered and ill-informed opinions typical of mainstream centre-left America. Such as his wholehearted "humanitarian" support for the invasion of Iraq. Now he thinks it's a "good question" when an op-ed in the New York Times asks where are all the voices of Muslims who are "said to be moderates".

Well, the short answer to that would be – as always – they're in the newspapers you aren't reading.

Mass media organizations generally report news that they believe their readers/listeners/viewers will be interested in hearing. This is particularly true of commercial media organizations, which depend for the their livelihood on the level of interest they can raise among their potential audience. Now, which of these headlines is going to sell more papers: "Girl stoned to death by enraged fundamentalist mob" or "Moderate cleric calls for restraint" ? No prizes for guessing that one. In the same way, media organizations also tend to pander to whatever prejudices or stereotypes their customers are predisposed to have, rather than attempting to challenge those prejudices.

So we begin to see why people like Dan Savage might not be hearing any moderate Muslim voices. Virtually all major (and most minor) media outlets in the USA are commercial. The situation is fairly similar in most of the Western world, Australia included. In the USA, the band of different political viewpoints catered to by major news providers is also relatively narrow: the British press offers a considerably broader spectrum, for example. Furthermore, the range of viewpoints in the mainstream American media tends to be more right-wing and more anti-Arab than elsewhere, reflecting the prevailing political climate.

The New York Times piece which set Savage off was written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, described at the end of the article as "a former member of the Dutch Parliament and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute". Sounds very respectable. But what is the "American Enterprise Institute", exactly? In the unlikely event that any New York Times readers felt the need for critical appraisal of that organization, they would have had to look outside the mainstream American media to find it. There are plenty of blogs out there talking about it and even Wikipedia is not too bad, but my favourite source for this kind of thing is the highly regarded, left-leaning British daily The Guardian. Articles like this have described the AEI as a neo-conservative thinktank which is fiercely pro-Israel and anti-Arab, and one which has enjoyed remarkable favour not only with the Bush White House, but also with a broad cross-section of the Amercian media. Other pieces like this offer harsh criticism of the quality of its policy advice, and argue that its "scholarship" is hamstrung by its extreme political biases.

Not only does the The Guardian provide information which might lead readers to question the agenda and credibility of the New York Times author, it is also one of the very few Western media outlets I know of which regularly reports voices of "moderate Islam", the existence of which Hirsi Ali dismisses as "wishful thinking". A recent example came in its coverage of the British teacher imprisoned in Sudan for giving a teddy bear the name Mohammed. One article contained the following paragraphs:

While many in Khartoum thought the arrest was harsh - the Sudanese blogosphere is awash with derision aimed at the authorities - leaflets were distributed at some mosques calling for protests against Gibbons after Friday prayers.
[..]
There was little doubt the protest had been carefully orchestrated. The banners waved by marchers and tied to the front of vehicles had all been pre-printed.
[..]
The police did not intervene, indicating that the protest received the official approval of the authorities.

In other words, not only do we hear of moderate Muslims condemning the extremists, we are also given the impression that the enraged mob was the result of a carefully orchestrated action by people with a hidden agenda (quite possibly an unpopular government seeking to have unrest vented on a convenient foreigner). Regardless of the ultimate truth of the matter, The Guardian's piece is valuable for its thought-provoking perspective.

My previous post here cited the headline of an article in Australian paper The Age covering the same story. That article in The Age was in fact lifted directly from the article quoted above, citing "The Guardian" as its source. In a graphic example of just how blatantly media outlets will manipulate information to cater to their reader's preferences, The Age dropped all the passages just quoted, along with any other "shades of grey", turning it into yet another story bound to make its readers to ask where all the moderate Muslims are. And given the source citation, few readers would expect those moderates to be found in The Guardian either!

So Dan Savage's simplistic perspective is not surprising. His support for the Iraq war stemmed from the same lack of access to decent information, the same deplorable and deliberate failure of the mass media to provide vital facts. Stephen Colbert got it exactly right with his satirical praise of the White House Press Corps back in 2006: "We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out".

Papa, non predicare

2007-12-02T09:50:00.001+10:00

The World section of today's online edition of The Age has these two items cheek by jowl:

- Kill 'teddy bear' teacher, says crowd
- Pope blames atheism for injustice and cruelty

Enough said, really.

Victory on all fronts – ?

2007-11-29T02:49:00.001+10:00

I'd been reluctant to make this claim up till now. John Howard's defeat in his own electorate of Bennelong at the hands of charming ex-telejournalist Maxine McKew has not quite been officially confirmed yet. More importantly, his party looks like it will retain control of the upper house of Parliament until July 2008, with an uncomfortable trio of minor parties holding the balance of power after that.

However: since their defeat, power within Howard's (right-of-centre) Liberal party has shifted dramatically towards the party's progressive, truly liberal wing (or as Australians say, the "small-l liberal" wing), and away from Howard's own far-right wing of the party (appropriately known as "the uglies"). Senior Liberal figures have been jettisoning core Howard policies with almost unseemly haste. Suddenly we're hearing statements like this: "you can see that Kyoto and the apology to indigenous people are obstacles that were peculiar to Howard. He's gone, story over." Senior Liberals are even in favour of getting rid of Howard's cherished (and deeply unpopular) industrial relations reforms. Could this be the fastest political revolution this country has ever seen?? It looks like the numbers in the upper house will be no hindrance to Labor's programme at all.

Ironically, new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spent much of the past year moving the Labor party to the right, trying to project an image of dependable stability to match Howard's own. Now some Liberals are adopting positions more progressive than those of the new Blairite-style Labor. For example, Malcolm Turnbull, now the second most powerful Liberal politician, is an ardent republican. Rudd, on the other hand, has ruled out a referendum on the republic issue any time soon.

Hopefully the Rudd camp will redress the situation soon. Otherwise right will be left, left will be right, and the result will be embarrassment, confusion, and chaos on the nation's roads.

Islamic Revolutionary Guards CORR!!!

2007-11-14T20:55:00.002+10:00

Some go on about the US Marines. Others enthuse about the SAS. But when it comes to elite fighting units, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps would have to be, without a doubt, the hottest.

The uniforms! Those firm, steady gazes! Those big, big guns!
And oh, above all, the carefully tended stubble, the closely trimmed beards!! The Americans can keep their Marines, with their ruthlessly cleanshaven chins - I've got an itch and it needs SCRATCHIN'!!

One look into those dark smouldering eyes and I'll bet the enemy just surrenders straight away! I know I sure would!!

The IRGC - putting the "war" back into PHWARR!!!

French Word of the Day

2007-11-04T20:31:00.001+10:00

... for today is:

rocambolesque

meaning "incredible, fantastical, over-the-top". As in: "Richard Curtis, un élu du Parti républicain à la Chambre des représentants [..], a présenté sa démission après un rocambolesque feuilleton impliquant un prostitué" (from Têtu).

What an absolutely brilliant word! And it gets better: the word is derived from "rocambole":

roc·am·bole –noun
a European plant, Allium scorodoprasum, of the amaryllis family, used like garlic.
Also called giant garlic.
(From the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, via Dictionary.com)

Isn't that lovely? But what is so incredibly fantastical about a big shallot, I hear you ask? It can't be so big as to inspire dumbfoundment and disbelief, surely?

Well, no. The name of the leek-like vege was used as the name of the title character in a series of bestselling stories in the mid-nineteenth century by one Ponson du Terrail. The stories were, indeed, rocambolesque. More here

The vicomte Ponson du Terrail (whose own name is quite a gem in itself) seems to have chosen this name for his character because the word was already being used in a figurative sense. The nineteenth-century Littré dictionary (available online here) quotes two meanings, "ce qu'il y a de plus piquant dans quelque chose" and "populairement: et toute la rocambole, et tout le reste", both of which probably contributed to the vicomte's choice.

There. Isn't language fun?

The gut feel

2007-10-20T15:42:00.001+10:00

And now, an entirely unimaginative "me too" of a post. I have to add my wholehearted "amen" to the following orison, from Mindless Munkey:

I hate our current Prime Minister so much it's like a physical sensation. Please please please, Australia - make the right choice. The Howard Era should never have happened. It has most certainly gone on far too long. It must end now.

Howard rallies the faithful once again

2007-10-11T07:06:00.001+10:00

This is possibly the most blatantly repugnant thing that John Howard, still Prime Minister of Australia, has ever been quoted as saying. And that is saying a hell of a lot.

The Labor party spokesman for foreign affairs recently sparked a furore when he dared to suggest that if elected his party would campaign against the death penalty in all cases, even for the Indonesians convicted of the terrorist attack which killed Australians in Bali in 2002. Some of the victims' relatives were enraged, baying for the blood of the perpetrators and more or less also for the blood of the Labor spokesman for foreign affairs. Howard immediately seized the reins of the bandwagon:

The idea that we would plead for the deferral of executions of people who murdered 88 Australians is distasteful to the entire community ... I find it impossible myself, as an Australian, as Prime Minister, as an individual, to argue that those executions should not take place when they have murdered my fellow countrymen and women.

The man has an undeniable talent for identifying the worst traits of the Australian people, and then fuelling and exploiting those traits for political gain. Is there any other politician in the world today who can do this with such aplomb? Mugabe has nothing on this guy. Karl Rove would be taking notes.

Labor leader Kevin Rudd, probably the next Prime Minister of Australia, was quick to slap down his foreign affairs spokesman and declare that he would only campaign against the death penalty if it was being imposed on Australians, and certainly not when imposed on the killers of Australians. I'm sure that will go down just marvellously in the international community. However, even despite his pathetic pragmatism, he did not go so far as to utter anything as shameful, as reprehensible, as sickening, as Howard's righteous indigation above.

The hilarity of Thomas Mann

2007-10-09T13:32:00.002+10:00

I'm currently making my way through Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg. I never realised before how hilarious Thomas Mann is. He clearly never ceased to be anything less than urgently aware of the great importance of the task that fate had assigned him, namely that of being a Great Writer. Every one of his works creaks at the seams with the weighty burden of his vocation. They are all so terribly, terribly serious (it's evidently people like him who helped give the Germans their famous reputation in this respect). It's not that his stores are entirely lacking in humour; there are not infrequent moments of wit, sometimes even rather crude jokes. However, it's generally his characters who are laughing; his omniscient third-person narrator never goes beyond a wry smile.

His portentous approach is perhaps most strongly felt in his digressions on philosophical subjects. In the Fourth Chapter, there is an extensive musing on the nature of time, one of the major themes of the book. He begins by discussing the pleasantly diverting disorientation of going on holiday, the way it breaks up the monotony of our regular existence. He then delves into the nature of this monotony:

Worauf beruht dann aber diese Erschlaffung und Abstumpfung bei zu langer nicht aufgehobener Regel? Es ist nicht so sehr körperlich-geistige Ermüdung und Abnutzung durch die Anforderungen des Lebens, worauf sie beruht (denn für diese wäre ja einfache Ruhe das wiederherstellende Heilmittel); es ist vielmehr etwas Seelisches, es ist das Erlebnis der Zeit, - welches bei ununterbrochenem Gleichmaß abhanden zu kommen droht und mit dem Lebensgefühle selbst so nahe verwandt und verbunden ist, dass das eine nicht geschwächt werden kann, ohne dass auch das andere eine kümmerliche Beeinträchtigung erführe. Über das Wesen der Langenweile sind vielfach irrige Vorstellungen verbreitet. Man glaubt im ganzen, dass Interessantheit und Neuheit des Gehaltes die Zeit „vertreibe“, das heißt: verkürze, während Monotonie und Leere ihren Gang beschwere und hemme. Das ist nicht unbedingt zutreffend. Leere und Monotonie mögen zwar den Augenblick und die Stunde dehnen und „langweilig“ machen, aber die großen und größten Zeitmassen verkürzen und verflüchtigen sie sogar bis zur Nichtigkeit. Umgekehrt ist [...]

This goes on for fully 629 words [abridged translation here]. One is reminded of the quip "art is long and life is short; here is evidently the explanation of a Brahms symphony" (attributed to one Edward Lorne, about whom I know nothing else). That is unfair: unlike Brahms, Mann's work is a pleasure; his prose may be long-winded but it is always elegantly beautiful. However, British humourist Terry Pratchett took just nineteen words to make exactly the same point that Thomas Mann did in his 629, and he managed to be light-hearted at the same time. Here's Windle Poons, the world's oldest wizard, musing on the nature of time in Reaper Man:

Everything was wrong these days. More thin. More fuzzy. No real life in anything. And the days were shorter. Mmm. Something had gone wrong with the days. They were shorter days. Mmm. Every day took an age to go by, which was odd, because days plural went past like a stampede. There weren't many things people wanted a 130-year-old wizard to do, and Windle had got into the habit of arriving at the dining-table up to two hours before each meal, simply to pass the time.

Unfortunately for Pratchett, it's portentousness, not pithiness, which tends to win Nobel prizes.

Pimp me, baby

2007-08-27T23:45:00.001+10:00

In the tradition of "Pimp My Ride" (MTV America) and the brilliant "Pimp My Fahrrad" (MTV Germany) comes the latest from German lifestyle show Taff, aimed at beauty-conscious 18-35 year olds: "Pimp My Body".

Sigh.

If I was spending my time here teaching English, this would possibly depress me. As a translator, I can react with equanimity: despite all the talk about the German language being taken over by "English words and expressions", it's pretty clear that there's going to be a need for native English-speaking translators in this country for quite some time to come...

Heaven is a place on earth

2007-08-06T04:15:00.000+10:00

At the end of June, I had the good fortune to attend a huge, brilliant party at Köpi, one of the biggest and most active of the Wohnprojekte ("living projects") dotted around the city of Berlin. These Wohnprojekte are communally-run buildings or caravan communities (wagenburgs) drawing together people looking for an alternative to the isolation and consumerism of modern urban living. Many of the buildings began as squats in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Wohnprojekte are usually left-wing, non-commercial and anti-consumerist. Emphasising independence of lifestyle, the term "Freiraum" is often used, meaning free space, space in which to be free. These spaces frequently nurture artists and community groups. Köpi, for example, has an amazing six or seven public spaces in its ground floor and basement areas, which are used for performances, parties, exhibitions, and regular film screenings.

Berlin's mayor Klaus Wowereit famously described the city a few years ago as "poor but sexy" (arm, aber sexy). The phrase has since become a semi-official slogan for Berlin. What makes Berlin "sexy" (and something Wowereit himself seems to have missed) is the artists, the creative people, out-of-the-ordinary individuals experimenting with new ways of looking at the world. To quote Köpi's own website, "tourists flock to the city in such large numbers precisely because Berlin makes alternative culture possible. The city's charm lies in its diversity, the possibility of experimentation, the opportunity of experiencing something new and different" (my translation).

Köpi and places like it are a vital part of what makes Berlin so extraordinary. Yet they are now being progressively destroyed by property speculators, aided and abetted by a city administration blind to the source of the city's greatest strength. In recent years, numerous Wohnprojekte have been closed down, their residents evicted, their buildings converted to expensive apartments and offices. Berlin is in danger of becoming just another boring European capital, or at best a museum to its own history. Compared to what it was throughout the '80s and '90s, it has already gone a terribly long way down that path. Recent forced closures include Yorckstr. 59 and Open Space at Adalbertstr. 32 (both of which are trying to keep going at least in part in some other form), and the following places are currently under threat: the Schwarzer Kanal wagenburg, Rigaer Str. 94, Rigaer Str. 84, Tuntenhaus [link in English! - one year old but current situation similar], Brunnenstr. 183, and Köpi itself. This list is by no means exhaustive. If Berlin allows itself to continue down this road, it'll soon be no longer sexy – just poor.

The threat to Köpi is particularly urgent. The area where it is situated, just off the river, is undergoing frenetic property development. Just a few years ago, Köpi and its neighbouring wagenburg stood alone in the middle of large grassy area. Now they are nearly overshadowed by the fancy new concrete-and-glass monuments to capitalism which have sprung up all around.

[This image of Köpi is a few months out of date - the white graffiti visible on the left ("The border is not between the nations, but between those on top and those below") is now obscured by a huge, still-incomplete office building hard up against that wall, seen here in the first stages of its construction]

Naturally, this has made investors greedier than ever to get their hands on the land on which Köpi stands. On Monday 13 August 2007, the latest in a series of protests in defence of Köpi in Berlin and elsewhere will take place, in front of the Rotes Rathaus (town hall) on Alexanderplatz. The following update is from Köpi's website ("Rock am Rathaus"; my translation):

On 8 May this year, the property at Köpenicker Str. 137 went under the hammer once again. While attempts to auction the property at the end of the 1990s failed or were cancelled due to massive protests in solidarity, this time the sale was finalised before the public auction took place. The special attraction this time was that the neighbouring properties at numbers 133 to 136, with the Köpi wagenburg, were being flogged off as well. Besnik Fichtner, a Kosovan flooring installer and henceforth managing director of "Plutionium 114 Köpenicker Str. 133-138 GmbH", became the new owner, acting in a puppet role. According to newspaper reports, he intends to build luxury apartments and office space, with boat quays. Evidently it has escaped his notice that his newly acquired estate is not on the waterside. Currently the public prosecutor is investigating him, his probable backers and their nebulous corporate construct for a number of reasons including possible fraud. Meanwhile he has still not made contact with the residents and users of the house and wagenburg. We're happy for it to stay that way. Then his investment would count as cultural and social sponsoring of the city of Berlin. […]
Now and in the future, Köpi will remain a hub for all forms of left-wing political resistance and for all kinds of non-commercial "do-it-yourself" culture. To reinforce this demand, we are meeting at 4pm on 13 August in front of the Rotes Rathaus. Four rock groups from Norway, Holland and Brazil will pamper our ears and call attention to the fact that affordable culture needs a place in this city.

If you're in Berlin, get yourself along to that protest. Berlin needs all the help it can get.

Back in June, I made my way homewards from that party an hour or so after dawn. The party was still going strong, and as I walked out into the peaceful early morning, the birdsong mingled with the dwindling sound of jubilant voices singing along to the following lyrics. They seemed to sum up exactly what I was feeling:

Oh, baby, do you know what that's worth ?
Oh heaven is a place on earth
They say in heaven love comes first
We'll make heaven a place on earth

(Yes indeed: Belida Carlisle is the voice of today's dispossessed youth. Leave a light on for me, for you, for every one of us.)

Berlin sunset

2007-07-18T07:42:00.003+10:00

From the Oberbaum bridge linking Kreuzberg to Friedrichshain, one of the former crossing points between West and East Berlin

(This should really have been a photo of a dawn, shouldn't it. A bright new one. But dawn is such a difficult time of day: I'm usually either in no mood to be taking photos, or in no state to.)