Why I don't enjoy being in Germany during the World Cup

(or the European Championships, or any time their national football team is playing)

Because I really dislike German nationalism, that's why.

It only seems to lead to disaster: disaster for them and disaster for everyone around them. And it does this because it always seems to lead the Germans into a horrible, disastrous combination of arrogance and short-sightedness. They start to think that they can and should pursue some course of action which, while it causes tremendous suffering for other nations around them, seems to be just fine for them – but which in the long run causes disaster for them too, because Europe's countries are small and closely interdependent; none of them exist in isolation. Something that causes most to suffer ultimately always causes all to suffer. Every conflict there is internecine.

They did this in 1914 and they did it again in the 1930s, and the latter episode resulted in such a catastrophe that it kept German nationalism suppressed for decades later. But it inevitably revived as older people died and the collective memory faded, and now it's all happening again.

Joschka Fischer said it so well just over two years ago:

Germany destroyed itself – and the European order – twice during the 20th century, and then convinced the West that it had drawn the right conclusions. Only in this manner – reflected most vividly in its embrace of the European project – did Germany win consent for its reunification. It would be both tragic and ironic if a restored Germany, by peaceful means and with the best of intentions, brought about the ruin of the European order a third time.

The only part of that I even slightly disagree with is the words "and with the best of intentions". To me, Germany's intentions seem nothing but arrogant, foolish and selfish.

At that time Fischer urgently called for Germany to change course, saying that the salvation of the euro and the European Union requires not only "structural reforms aimed at restoring Europe’s competitiveness" but also "political and fiscal unification" and "short-term growth policies". Since then there has been no significant movement by Germany on either of those last two points. Germany has continued to impose its deeply misguided austerity regime on the eurozone with arrogant blindness to its fundamental flaws, its lack of success and the pointless pain it is inflicting in nearly every other country. Analysts are talking more and more about Europe facing a "lost decade" economically.

With the exception of Germany [emphasis added], none of Europe’s biggest economies have returned to the level of economic output they had at the beginning of 2008... The figures suggest that Europe is already well into what could become a lost decade — a period of pernicious stagnation and wasted potential that could have lasting effects on ordinary citizens.

The truth of Fischer's observations two years ago is becoming increasingly clear:

We are once again learning the hard way that this kind of austerity, when applied in the teeth of a major financial crisis, leads only to depression. This insight should have been common knowledge; it was, after all, a major lesson of the austerity policies of President Herbert Hoover in the United States and Chancellor Heinrich Bruning in Weimar Germany in the early 1930s. Unfortunately, however, Germany, of all countries, seems to have forgotten this reality.

Germany's collective memory was once the country's best asset. It seemed to be pretty much the only country in the world that had successfully learned from the past. Now Germany has collective amnesia, and the results are exactly what you would expect them to be.

Euro trainwreck update

The eurozone continues on its depressing path to destruction: we've now reached the stage where some people in the hard-hit countries of southern Europe are seriously proposing leaving the euro. The only thing that surprises me is that it took them so long, but people do tend to have a great fear of the unknown. But with Germany still refusing any real sharing of wealth with the southern countries, still insisting that the only solution to the crisis is years and years of massive pain and misery for the south, it's pretty much inevitable that those countries are eventually going to decide that leaving the euro will be less awful than staying in it. At the moment it looks like Italy will be the first to go, which isn't too surprising because it's big enough to be confident about surviving on its own. But who knows, Cyprus might even beat them to it. In any case, once Italy goes, the death of the euro must surely follow soon after. At which point Germany's export sector, subsidised for more than a decade by the relative poverty of southern Europe, will largely collapse. And that, I have to say, will look a hell of a lot like poetic justice. I wonder if many people in Germany will then be willing to admit that their government's policies were wrong? Will we get people saying, "Gee, maybe if we'd introduced some sort of Finanzausgleich for the entire eurozone, we wouldn't now be stuck with massive unemployment and economic decline?" I doubt it, somehow. People always find some way of blaming someone else for their own stupid mistakes, don't they.

Outlook: unchanged

I was going to write another rant here about the euro crisis, but then I re-read my last post from January and realised that I basically said it all back then.  The situation has barely changed.  There's a somewhat greater sense of urgency and desperation in the air, although admittedly not, it would seem, on the part of Angela Merkel, who has only become more blatant in her refusal to countenance the action necessary to save the euro.  This despite the fact that even she now seems to realise that Germany will be in plenty of trouble when the euro breaks up.

Looks like Paul Keating was right yet again.

The only positive thing I've seen anywhere lately was this opinion piece from Berlin's Tagesspiegel, which is the most sensible assessment of the situation I have ever seen in the German media.

This too shall pass

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

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

... 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

(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

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

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

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

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.

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

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...

... 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

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

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

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"

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

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)"

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.