2014-03-04: Past peak Putin
I think this is it, we are seeing the endgame of the Putin era.
Look at it this way. Over the last few years, the Russian government has acted as if it tried to hold on to control when it was already losing it. The invasion of Crimea is only the latest in series of increasingly desperate measures.
And guess what – it’s not working. Putin probably knew it wouldn’t before he even started it. The markets already sent a resounding thumbs-down. Does Putin care about the markets? I think he does.
If you want to run a country as an undisputed dictator, you have to isolate it from the world. That’s why it’s working (if you want to call it that) in North Korea. But Russia does not want to isolate itself. It needs to trade; it wants to be seen as a power in the world.
Does Putin wants to see what real allies Russia has left? Possibly. And, who are those allies? So far, I fail to see any. That must be a sobering realization. Germany has been the closest Russia has had to an ally in the West, and now the German chancellor tells the president of the US that Putin is living “in another world” – basically saying that he has lost his mind.
If you follow the Twitter tag #russiainvadesukraine at the moment, you will see (at least at daylight hours in the Americas) calls for Obama to grow a pair and stop Putin. That’s just dim-witted slurring of course; that would be extremely dangerous. I think all those doomsday warnings about World War 3 being imminent are way over-hyped, but the US starting a war to protect a country that is not even a NATO member could make those dire predictions come true.
Maybe the most frustrating aspect is that the rest of the world will have to help Putin find a way out of the hole he has dug himself into so he doesn’t completely lose face. I doubt has has it in him to do that himself.
And now let’s hope that the Crimea adventure, and the Putin era, come to a peaceful end. And soon.
2013-08-31: It doesn’t work this way.
The United Nations chemical weapons exports just left Syria and will prepare a report during the next few weeks.
The armed forces of the United States are widely reported to be preparing for a unilateral military strike.
What’s wrong with this picture?
2012-10-12: European Union to receive Nobel Peace Prize
Finally, one could say, will the European Union be recognized for what is its most important and lasting achievement. Yes, it has brought wealth and economic security to most citizens in most of its member countries (and I still think this to be the case even with the current debt crisis in some of its member countries – it would probably be a lot worse otherwise), but look back in history and try to think of a period of almost seventy years in which the people of western and central Europe have not been at each other’s throats! War between France and Germany used to be more like a recurring event, and now? Unthinkable!
I am very happy with the decision of the Committee. The European Union truly deserves this recognition.
2011-12-30: Looking back on 2011
So 2011 is almost history; for us, it’s another 25 and then some hours, and then the new year will be upon us.
All over the Internet I hear how 2011 has been a shitty year. Well, it hasn’t really been that shitty for me. Personally, I mean.
Work-wise, I have met interesting people, spent 11-hour days working in an office bunker in Tel Aviv, took the opportunity to visit the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem and the most interesting places around Jerusalem (thanks Jackie for the pointer). I went to a lot of other interesting places too. I even made some good money out of all this.
We fulfilled one of our long-held holiday dreams and visited New England during Fall Foliage. A decently-paying job for both of us and a favourable exchange rate made it possible to enjoy a no-holes-barred three-week holiday taking in both New York City and New England and enjoy both tremendously.
Our relationship has been going strong throughout the year (reaching 25 years as a couple just about two weeks ago), and health-wise things have been pointing up more than down.
So all in all, 2011 hasn’t been too unkind to me (or us, rather).
Let’s see what 2012 will bring. We are ready to take it on!
I wish all of you a very happy 2012, may you experience success in all your endeavours!
2011-11-02: Why I think the Greek referendum is a good idea
I think the decision of the Greek government to hold a referendum on the austerity packages is a very wise one. The reaction of the markets was foreseeable, but I still find it very disappointing. Popular unrest is running high, and the government can’t ignore it (or violently oppose it) forever.
So the government is putting the matter to the people: Do you want to continue the good life with Blackberries and the Internet, or do you want to go back to the Stone Age and live solely on what the land will yield? If it’s the former, you have to play by the rules of capitalism, and accept the mess you have gotten yourself into. If you are happy with the latter, just default on your debt, cease importing anything (except what you can barter for feta cheese, olive oil and wine – forget tourism, nobody’s gonna come) and live off what you can produce yourself. Maybe that means a few less people.
I am not saying the austerity measures the outside world is trying to impose on Greece are fair. I am also not saying the austerity measures the Greek government is proposing are socially just. To be fair, I’m pretty positive that they are not.
But no matter what, the times of spending by lending are over. I think that forgiving a substantial part of the debt is essential, and then Greece can join the circus again, at a lower level for everyone than today.
There is an alternative. But I don’t think the protesters on the streets of Athens are really prepared to take it. By putting it to the people, Papandreou can then point to his renewed mandate (if he does get it) and carry on trying to salvage some of the good life with Blackberries and the Internet for his people. Or he’s voted down, and then it’s going to be the Stone Age.
But either way, he will have a mandate.
2011-10-23: Random ramblings of a New England traveller
We have spent the last three weeks travelling in New York and New England. I have been visiting the US five times in the last two years, but this has been the longest time I have ever continuously spent in the United States, and so here are some random ramblings of a New England traveller. Comments are welcome, as always.
- Food:
- While there is very good and tasty food available, there is also a lot of terrible food, especially on chain-hotel breakfast buffets. The food processing industry screws up everything. They take out fat and put in sugar; they take out sugar and put in high-fructose corn syrup; they take out the syrup and put in artificial sweeteners. Nearly every processed food item you can buy in a regular supermarket has something taken out that belongs in (like fat in milk and yoghurt) or something put in that does not (like extra vitamins into a fruit mix), or both. I tried one of these fat-free yoghurts from a breakfast buffet once; it tasted as obnoxiously chemical as bubble gum and had a texture like some kind of building material. On the other hand, a freshly boiled soft-shell Maine lobster with drawn butter is to die for. And even a home-made half-pound burger with fries in a country store somewhere in Vermont can be really really good.
- Soft drinks:
- Forget it. There is no sparkling water (and if there is, it has been brought over from Italy), and the sweet stuff is undrinkable because it is either sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (see above), which tastes awful, or artifical sweeteners, which are bad for you. Tap water is chlorinated and therefore also tastes kind of funny, even if it is available for free everywhere. So you end up drinking a lot of bottled, uncarbonated water.
- Beer:
- I can happily report that New England is home to a number of excellent microbreweries that make really good beer, like the Long Trail Brewing Company in Vermont, and that their products are readily available in restaurants, bars, and shops.
- Wine:
- Wine is expensive. Eight dollars plus tax and tip for a 6-ounce glass of house wine? Three dollars buys you a bottle of drinkable red in a German supermarket. We mostly abstained. See “Beer” above.
- Rubbish:
- The amount of rubbish you generate is mind-boggling. Even in middle-priced hotels, the only plates, cups and cutlery available at breakfast time are discardable plastic. The Wal-Mart (and other) plastic bags are now very thin, but they are dispensed as liberally as ever.
- Driving:
- The existence of speed limits everywhere, and the fact that it usally applies to trucks as well as cars, makes for a very relaxed driving experience, even on Interstates. Plus everything has tons of parking space. Or nearly everything.
- Road signs:
- I really love the way highways are marked as going north, south, east or west. Much better than the German system of listing intermediate destinations which makes it necessary to have a rough idea of the geography around you to figure out which way you need to go.
- Prices:
- Most of the time, but not always, there is some form of sales tax added to the prices you pay, which sucks. Not because of the rate, which is ridiculously low at well below 10 per cent even in New York City, but because it means you can’t easily predict how much anything is really going to cost. Plus, you often end up with some amount just above an full-dollar amount which leaves you with a lot of bulky change if you just fork over a banknote.
- Dollars:
- Dollars suck really badly. The banknotes suck because they are all the same size and practically the same colour, even the latest editions of some denominations that have a hint of a different hue on them. The coins suck because they are so few one-dollar and half-dollar coins (we went through the whole holiday without seeing a single specimen of either) that you always get single dollar notes, and quarters as change, which are quite big, bulging up the coin compartment of your wallet. For a fun effect, try giving exact change to the person at the supermarket check-out. They will look at the coins in disbelief and start counting them as if they do it for the first time in their lives. They are obviously not used to handling coins, except to hand them out as change.
- Customs and Border Protection:
- Ugh. Nuff said.
All in all, we had a wonderful holiday and really enjoyed our time over there. But I do know that I am happy to be back home here on this side of the pond.
2011-08-29: Apple is out of innovation
Look at Apple today; it’s a sorry sight. No, I am not referring to Steve Jobs retiring as CEO of Apple. Clearly, I personally wish him all the luck in the world so that he can enjoy many more years in good or at least acceptable health, with his family; it is the sorry carcass of a company I am concerned about.
To me, Apple has never been a highly innovative company; their play has always been to take what others have found, combine it in new ways, make it pretty, and sell it. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but they should acknowlege their origins as the original copycat company and leave others alone.
Now, along comes Samsung with their 10.1 Galaxy Tab. I have such a thing so I know what it’s like from first-hand experience. The problem for Apple: their gear is a sorry piece of obsolete junk next to it. Apple: obsolete 1024 by 768; Samsung: 1280 by 800. Apple: no Flash (will they ever learn?); Samsung: Flash works fine. Apple: 4:3 grandma-TV aspect ratio; Samsung: 16:10.
So what does Apple do? Instead of innovating themselves out of a tight corner (which they obviously cannot) they try to throw photoshopped evidence at a German court to try and subdue a clearly superior product.
2011-06-25: Berlin celebrates being … what? queer? weird? or just liveable?
Today is the day that Berlin celebrates its CSD parade. Maybe I can be just a little bit proud about my native city that the celebration of “not being the same as everyone else” (for Austinites: “being weird”) is held in such high regard around here. Gay or straight, flush or broke, it doesn’t matter so much around here.
Berlin (and other German cities, notably Cologne) has embraced Christopher Street Day or CSD rather early, to the point that many party people out on the streets will not know what the original phrase meant, or where it came from. It goes back to the Stonewall Riots in NYC on June 28th, 1969.
While I myself am heterosexual, I actively support the freedom of people to live their lives unmolested, whatever their sexual orientation or preference. And from what I have seen today (and over and over again throughout the years), Berlin as a whole feels the same way. That, to me, is “Berlin Pride” – the pride of being part of a city that lets people be happy with what they are.
2011-06-24: Apple totally loses it.
I know it’s only a patent application at this point. I know there is no guarantee there will be a marketable product at the end of this. But to even think about this kind of thing proves yet again in which low regard Apple holds the interests of their customers.
It’s not the first time either. Hardly alone in this, Apple has always been at the forefront of denying their customers the right to make full use of the hardware they have bought from them. This, at the moment, is primarily true of iOS devices, but with the Mac App Store it will increasingly be true for the Macintosh platform too. (The only Apple device I own, an iPod Nano 4g, continues to be unaffected as long as iTunes continues to import any MP3 file, whatever its origins, and upload it to the iPod. Not something to be taken for granted though. Maybe I should save a copy of the current version of iTunes.)
In case you are wondering what I am talking about: reportedly, Apple has applied for a patent for an encoded infra-red signal that would cause any digital camera so equipped to refuse to record images if so told by said infra-red signal. The stated use case would be cinemas but it is only natural that it would mainly be employed by abusive police forces, like we get to see so often these days in Germany. Or Libya. Or Syria. Or the US.
Let’s consider the hypothetical fact that I owned a device that has been enabled in the way the patent – as widely reported – describes. A third party which is not under any control from anyone, like a theatre owner or an abusive police force, can set up a signal to a device that I own, that I have paid for with my own money, so that said device will disobey the commands of its rightful owner to activate the “Record” function. This is so outrageous it actually defies belief. I can, to a point, see why fanbois will happily turn over control of their devices to Apple Inc. – I still find it revolting, but why not, it’s a religion, so to a point reason is suspended. But to enable third parties to do that, and such a sensitive function – think “Arab Spring”?
I hope they receive their just reward. I can’t see how anyone could spend a dollar (or even a Eurocent) on an Apple product again after this.
2011-05-03: So Osama bin Laden is dead. So what?
So an US-american commando unit has killed Osama bin Laden.
Do I rejoice? Definitely not. I would have preferred him to be hauled before the International Criminal Court in the Hague, but that wasn’t an option as the United States are not a party to the treaty (which in itself is completely indefensible), or before a criminal court in Pakistan (I am pretty sure he has broken Pakistani law on more than one occasion).
I am also not happy with the German Chancellor endorsing the targeted killing. I would have preferred her to simply endorse him being captured without making mention of the fact that he was killed in the process. That omission would have sent a strong enough signal.
But let’s face it: This is one individual who declared war on the West (and on the US, in particular), and showed himself and his organization, Al Qaida, as being capable of following up that declaration with facts, and as the Supreme Commander of a self-declared party in this war, he was killed by a commando unit of an adversary in that war. Tough luck, dude.
