Well, that escalated quickly. In the latest revelations to come out of the NSA scandal, it has been revealed that not only does the American intelligence service snoop on German communications to a much higher degree, the NSA has also utilized America's outposts, within and without, to spy in the old-fashioned sense on European Union institutions.
Not only were the diplomatic safeguards of EU business violated to conduct in the US subject to bugging but also back at home in Brussels by safe-houses within the neighbouring American controlled portions of the NATO Supreme Command. It would not be surprising if all such outposts, the lingering bases and consulates, were not retrofitted for the same purpose, since the attitudes of younger and older veterans remain, Cold War thinking and opinions that judge Germany's immigration policy as too liberal and too forgiving and made the country the locus of the 9/11 terror attacks in some minds. The spying on the EU and Germany cumulatively, however, suggests that America wants to head-off more than terror and anticipate policy and business changes, especially taking into account where such listening-posts are situated. Such a valuable upper-hand is not easily surrendered, despite the shrinking footprint of occupation and its public rationale for staying.
Sunday, 30 June 2013
speaking with forked-tongue
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ช๐บ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ฅธ, foreign policy
sunday drive: a jury of one's peers or next exit
Seeing that there was going to be a fleamarket in the town of Linsengericht on the way back to my workweek apartment, I decided to stop and find out what there was to discover in that place with the funny name.
Discouraged I returned to the Autobahn but got off again at the next exit to marvel at Burg Ronneburg, dominating the gently ascending foothills that it lends its name to. The castle, first documented in 1231, played an important role in the protestant reformation for the region but also hosted the persecuted from other confessions, and ownership is still being swapped among royal houses to this day. Next time passing by, I think that this is another place for H and I to explore together.
Saturday, 29 June 2013
the whole point of a doomsday machine is lost...if you keep it a secret
While there is word that US government computer systems are set on blocking access to this newspaper for fear that soldiers and bureaucrats might become a bit more informed or inadvertently participate in spillage (network-hygiene, it's called), undeterred by this potential loss of readership, the Guardian is reporting on how the former number-two in rank of the US Army leaked to journalists the methodologies behind an open-secret, admitting that the American cyber-offensive colluded with Israeli forces in order to sabotage Iran's nuclear programme.
neudeutsche or bahnglisch
Sometimes I get very frustrated, after trying to formulate how to translate something in my head, only to have it paraphrased by a native speaker as, “Ja—das Meeting wรผrde gecanceled.” Aber hatte ich schon das Satz gegoogled...
There was initiative taking place in the hallowed halls of the national German railway network, die Deutsche Bahn, to standardize signage and spoken terminology, insisting on
consistency for in-house jargon on the pain of being written-up and for
dealing with the public, to cater to international travelers with a mix
of English and German, which seems to play out as a disservice to
speakers of either or both languages. First, there was the newly
labelled ,,Counters” as opposed to Schalter or Theke and ,,Service
Points” are something different—Auskunft spots, I suppose but guests in the train station were put in a position to guess. There are hybrids like ,,Ausgang – City,” exit to the Stadt or complete inventions like Rail&Fly. Fortunately, the ministry of transportation is reclaiming much of this pidgin language and has ordered the reversion to proper German and less pseudo-English phrases. Not juried by linguists, I suspect, this constructed language was rife with inconsistencies and a source of confusion but it was interesting nonetheless to see how different conceptions, under the lesson of your grammar called “At the train-station,” were presented and understood.
the long now or end-station mellrichstadt
One place being considered among a list of many is the sleepy town of Mellrichstadt, on the border with Thuringia and not very far away from us.
The town is being considered because of its relatively sparse population and similarly geologically constituted for long-term stability. Besides the fact it's in our backyard, consideration probably discounts the fact that the Rhรถn mountains here are a range of extinct volcanoes, and, as with virtually any spot in Germany that may appear like a suitable place for the long-term sequestering of spent nuclear fuel, that surety is threatened by the ambitions of prospectors who peddle American-style fracking as a solution to help meet the goals of the Energy Reform mandate. Germany will not simply export its problems but dealing with not inconsequential by-products takes foresight and commitment, not necessarily to be conduced into accepting this toxic burden but also looking further down the line towards legacies that are hard to imagine or keep in perspective.
catagories: ⚕️, ⚛️, ๐ฉ๐ช, environment, Rhรถn
Thursday, 27 June 2013
painting the roses red or mezzoamerica
Though not necessarily enjoying the moral high-ground due to their own speculative surveillance practices, China and Russia have little reason to dignify threats from the US over harbouring a fugitive from Justice.
Ecuador's bold and unflinching withdrawal, however, from a export regime, instituted to curb cocaine production, with America in response to sabre-rattling over its willingness to grant Snowden asylum is an act of standing up to bullies and the system deserving of one of those slow claps that gallop to a round of applause. The US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee has moved to deny the South American country preferential treatment in trade—something like a Most-Favoured status which is accorded to some 130 nations. The defiance is more than symbolic, since though they will find other willing buyers for their oil and other natural resources, the vegetable and cut-flower industies will take a hit. Ecuador even does its tormentors one better—not only rejecting this framework to end the blackmail but offering to repatriate or render the equivalent millions of dollars it has realised in benefits to the US to fund institutions and programmes in support of transparency, civil liberties and protecting the right to privacy.
catagories: ๐ฑ, ๐ฅธ, foreign policy
Wednesday, 26 June 2013
brusselsprout oder marco... polo
Some euro-skeptics have maintained from its conception that the union was a means for Germans to enjoy a Mediterranean holiday with minimal fuss. I do not share that opinion and believe that there are far nobler causes and potentials behind this experiment of a united and inclusive continent.
Tuesday, 25 June 2013
for more information, please re-read
ravelin or navi knows best
Although I really appreciate GPS (a navigational system) for never saying, “Why do you want to go there?” though turning really bossy and panicky if one strays from the
direct route and sometimes betraying a twisted sense of humour, maybe
sometimes the question should be asked. On the way back from one of the
few errands that I need to drive to accomplish, I decided to find out
what Fort Biehler exactly was. I had spied this turret from the
Autobahn every time I passed that way but it turned out it was not part
of the fort at all, but a much older watchtower (Warte) of the village of Erbenheim, the landmark built in 1497. It difficult to find the right angle and distance to take a picture of the tower, which had little contrast against the overcast skies but some thoughtful person put a miniature model in his garden, though the actual tower was facing just beyond.
The fort, I found out after a long walk through the neighbourhood and the forest was an inaccessible ruin, cordoned off behind a security fence in a training groud used by the German and America military for exercises and there was not much to see of the foundations itself.
Completed in the last decades of the 1800s, Fort Biehler was part of a massive ensemble of defensive constructs known as Fortress Mainz, this area being where the Palatinate's possessions slipped south of the Rhein and into Hessian holdings, named in honour of the chief of the Prussian corps of engineers and architect, General Hans Alexis von Biehler, who designed many such structures, including the citadel at Spandau and was nearly as prolific as his French rival, Marquis de Vauban, whom we've chased around during our travels as well.
In accordance with the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, Fortress Mainz was defanged and the fort was used to garrison French forces before eventually being cannibalised for building material in the 1930s. With sweeping views of Wiesbaden and Mainz from this area, it was easy to imagine the vantage such a fortification had and I'm glad that GPS devices are not overly opinionated or timid about exploring.
Monday, 24 June 2013
of mice and men or hoodoo economics
Though it is hard to say how well the experiment's participants were shielded from the fact that they were subject to research, since knowing that one is taking part in a psychological or behavioural study makes people act in strange ways, trying to prove their cleverness or uniqueness—the observer-expectancy effect, sort of like a clinical Stockholm Syndrome, the Frankfurter Rundschau (via the English daily the local) features the work of a sociological battery of test conducted in Bamberg, raising the stakes, to illustrate how a competitive environment can quickly undermine our convictions and values.
Sunday, 23 June 2013
heel, toe or a shoe-horn, the kind with teeth

Saturday, 22 June 2013
prism break or needle in a haystack

catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ฅธ, foreign policy
Thursday, 20 June 2013
of malls and mosques
Writing for the Spectator, Norman Stone has an interesting primer on the developing situation in Turkey, which challenges some of the stereotypes and assumptions that pooled a lot brave and bracing defiance into a batch of plainly detrimental expectations. Maybe the Western world really wants this place to live up to their idea of an acceptably Muslim and swarthier version of Germany, and of course in Germany and anywhere else home to a diaspora, there's discomfort and a certain sort of blanket surmising and feeling of being crowded out balanced out with an imperfect logic of thinking that the immigrants (anyone vaguely Turkish-ish) weren't able to hack it back at home, so Deutschland is not recipient of the choicest of masses.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ช๐บ, ๐น๐ท, ๐ง , revolution
Wednesday, 19 June 2013
one hand clapping or monkey see, monkey do
The science desk of the BBC features an interesting study and meta-analysis of the mentality and momentum of audiences, concluding basically that applause is a social contagion. Watching footage of hundreds of endings to live speeches and other performances showed that the catalyst was the clapping of one or two individuals, sustaining the ovation, until an equal sampling of the audience stops.
catagories: ๐ง , networking and blogging
vernacular
Collectors' Weekly has an excellent and engrossing article profiling the curators and collection of the smallest museum in the world, located serendipitously down an alleyway in Manhattan.
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
unmoved mover
catagories: ๐น๐ท, ๐, revolution
oh weal, oh woe or ttip—ta ta for now
Watchdog CEO (Corporate Europe Observatory) delves into the details of the US-EU trade agreement that was ratified at the G9 summit and shows how, without much imagination of an embarrassment of gullibility, public welfare is becoming a nuisance easily steamrolled by business interests, constituted in such a way as to give industry carte-blanche to flagrantly ignore established national laws and policies and give pause to governments thinking of championing the common weal. Of course this development is vying for attention (or rather, seeking cover) with the Conference itself and the effective-date for FATCA in Germany, plus whatever distracting scandal of the day.
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฑ, environment, labour
let me see you shake your tail-feathers

catagories: ๐, environment
Sunday, 16 June 2013
neutralitat or bread and butter
Meanwhile back in Switzerland, as Reuters reports (bad link), the president of the federal council says that he would lend his support into an investigation into the claims of a CIA-leaker that his tour time spent in Geneva was formative. This is one man airing his opinion who happens to be the leader of an executive body of seven individuals representing the closest thing that the free world has to direct-democracy, stemming from checks and balances established in medieval times. Of course, he's entitled to it and the story, unverifiable, of the leaker given in recent interviews did seem a little imaginative and incredulous, but it did seem like something a bit weaselly to say, at first hearing: a concession to justice American-style brokered at a sensitive time when the US is intent on barn-storming Swiss banking regulations and hosting such a circus might make the States back off from their demands a bit.
With privacy sacred and enshrined, however, it does not seem like a thoughtless comment meant to sacrifice or discredit anyone. Credibility is impossible to speak to, especially considering how America's trumped up reasons for engaging Iraq was shot full of holes like Swiss cheese by a fax transmission intercepted by the Confederation (the Swiss read all of your faxes). Maybe it was a deliberate invitation for entrapment to reveal the real scope of America's surveillance programme or a way to help ensure that a nuisance is not simply disappeared or sacrificed to maintain the status quo. I honestly feel more than a bit dissuaded from looking into this case, for fear it's already on my permanent record, and maybe a summons is what we all need to stand up to bullies, since after all, the actions—though only confirmed after a long career—of the CIA and NSA are not treaties to surpass local law but have yet negated Switzerland's (and those of everyone else) attitudes and protections for privacy touching all matters.
sunday drive: by jove
In an on-going effort to try to discover more my surround neighbour- hoods, I took the chance one afternoon to explore the suburban borough of Schierstein, bordering the Rhein and just southwest of Wiesbaden-proper. I had passed through this part of town a few times and frequented an old stand-by flea-market in the industrial area but was happy to have the opportunity to explore further, owing to a disappointing search of the market.
Passing through previously, I usually rounded a corner that held a representation of the town's crest, a blue and gold globus cruciger—that is, a crossed sphere of royal regalia, the orb, sceptre and crown. I am uncertain why the town adopted this symbol but found it interesting that the iconography was known already in Roman times and may have been introduced by the place's early occupants. An intact Column of Jupiter from the year 221 BC, depicting the Roman ruler of the gods riding a ship's figurehead, hood ornament-like rendering of the Germanic god Wotan, Jupiter's local equivalent (possibly meant to be an insult to the native Teutons and an assertion of supremacy of the Empire) was unearthed in the mid nineteenth century in the same spot on the town's harbour, a dock for a lot of leisure boats and home to Wiesbaden's yachting club.
The town's rooftops and with the help of the care of its human residences have also been transformed into a sanctuary for storks. This suburb enjoys one of the highest populations in Germany and signals that such recuperation and healing campaigns can be wildly successful, with couples returning to the same roost to build their nests and rear their young year after year.
Saturday, 15 June 2013
silk road or it happened on the way to mulberry street
Although we did not seen much evidence of this native industry during our recent vacation to the Lombardy region (but it is surely there if one seeks it out and knows where to look), Como and its environs produce an astonishing quarter of the worldwide output of silk.
Not quite on a mission to save souls, two monks were sent to the Far East, charged by the French monarchy of finding out the secret and bringing back to Europe, in the mid fifteenth century, in what may be the earliest example of industrial espionage. Having learnt the process, the monks smuggled seeds of the mulberry tree and eggs of caterpillars in diplomatic pouches, messenger tubes of bamboo. Mulberry leaves were the exclusive diet of silk-worms, the juvenile form of the moth Bombyx mori who spin cocoons out of silk.
It's sad and unfair that these little hopeful caterpillars are boiled alive in the middle of their metamorphosis in order to harvest their weave and warp, but having mastered the cultivation and working the material, places like Lyon soon became very rich and influential for having broken the cartel. Without the zealous explosion in mills, producing ever more intricate and automated patterns, the industrial and modern computing may have never happened—the looms emerging as something programmable and Turing-complete with cards, instructions for producing designs. The rest of Europe was not content to let the French have all the profits and glory, however, and others learnt the process, including the former Italian and Venetian middle-men in the original and established trade process, sore at having their business suffer.
Thursday, 13 June 2013
macarthur park is melting in the dark
The sustained attention is a positive outcome, but in for a penny, in for a pound, it seems a bit of a poor volley to inspire sudden changes of heart and arm-chair relativism and acutely detracting from the message. Originating as a human barricade to protect the city's green-spaces from commercial development and growing from there, the government did not entertain dialogue or negotiation but suppressed the outcry, rather, with violence. It's OK to admit ignorance as to the developing situation in Turkey, with the the hope that information will be unmediated and forth-coming, without prospecting and with pressured demure.
catagories: ๐น๐ท, revolution
re-flagging or from blueberry hill to bath in the meadows
I was disappointed to learn that after years of digging in her heels, credulous with disbelief and subject to politics and planning that were not exactly rooted in reason that I missed the official ceremony that was the city of Heidelberg's final relenting—held literally just around the corner.

catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐บ๐ธ, foreign policy, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz
Wednesday, 12 June 2013
old head waters run dry or cry me a river
Tragically a lot of people along the flood plains of the Danube, Elbe, Rhine and the Main are being made to contemplate the unimaginable—starting over and with nothing salvageable. Not comparable to over concurrent outrages, still it seems we were all unwitting accomplices, lulled into thinking that rivers would be contained with concrete and dams, shored up in response to a disaster in 2002, and policies that enabled sloppy, muddy footprints from everyone of us, as contributors.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ช️, environment, food and drink
Tuesday, 11 June 2013
through the looking-glass
Though there is no other side of the coin, no deflecting of blame that makes trawling the internet in the name of security any more dolphin-friendly or excusable behaviour, but perhaps early-adopters of new technologies might exercise more caution and general-users might want to give less weight to convenience, banking on-line or ordering from shops on the internet or over-sharing.
After all, it seems that a Handy is a tracking-device, a transponder (and not a black-box) that happens to include something called a “Calling - App,” and so forth. Smart phones can summarily out fox us. Although corporations have tried to quash freedom and utility on the world wide web, no monopoly or cartel—or legal codex, has been able to keep in stride with innovation and re-invention. Should the newest gadget or platform, however, be regarded with the healthy suspicion that they are merely casings for bugs and spy cameras, maybe America will realise that its policies and diplomacy have consequences, inward and outward.
catagories: ๐ฅธ, networking and blogging
Monday, 10 June 2013
duomo di como
Among all the interesting sights we saw was the City of Como on the south western leg of the lake.
From the harbour, we were greeted by a monument to science.
We overheard a tourist declare to her husband tha was in fact the “Temple of Como,” flatly, as if some pagan god dwelt there, battery-powered.
Rather it was a memorial for native son Alessadro Volta and held the first engineered and practical energy sink and cell in the world. Campers, among many others, tip their hats to Volta, I'm sure. Next after exploring the piers, we came to the ancient cathedral among the ensemble of the oldest part of the city and other sacred architecture.
We were joined in admiring the series of altars and niches by a contingency of Buddhist monks clad in orange robes. I wondered if they were fellow-tourists or if initiates were sent out into the world to document their experience on tablet devices. They seemed genuinely engaged as we were, in any case—treated to an organ concert. The performer was seated at the keyboard beneath an unusual nave with a crucifix figure coiffed with genuine human hair.
catagories: ๐ฎ๐น, ๐️, religion, technology and innovation, travel
roy g. biv or the dark side of the moon
It's not as if out of the blue, the US intelligence agencies now can see us as God and the Angels or Santa Claus—not quite or that the congress of private individuals, businesses and the negotiations of statesmanship was heretofore above snooping and observation, but still to be confronted with the brute and raw data, the scope and depth, is chilling. Already, America has demanded the flight-manifests of passengers world-wide and has become a clearing-house of financial transactions, bullying those reluctant to play along into submission. The herding instinct, strength in numbers kept us safe individually. Underscoring the tribunal of fellow-sieve Bradley Manning, a contractor with the nebulous National Security Agency could no longer face the sinister realities, of course assumed but danced around and it turns out veiled with a spindly cover of lies and false-modesty.
Thank goodness that there are individuals with the strength of convictions to speak out and force the erosion of privacy—long beat up but rarely addressed in earnest, since these quantified revelations, billions, trillions of data elements per month profiling citizens all around the world, drag-net style, like cases of industrial espionage, political baiting and spy-rings tend to create an overall confessional mood. Perhaps the owning up will be more than the fessing up that all intelligence agencies spy on one another but might inspire some more whistle-blowing. How could the German Chancellor greet the American President next time, from a background where the private-sphere is enshrined and protected and discussed and debated and shake hands with an equal who has basically appointed himself as her parole-officer, knowing more intimate details (at least anything with an electronic finger-print) than the Stasis without a blush of anger and feeling violated on behalf of the people she represents—not that Germany was more or less of a target than any other nation, the USA included.
smugglers' roost
We ended our vacation with a detour to the isolated village of Samnaun, which was like a little Las Vegas nestled in the Alps or a giant duty-free shop. Due to its remoteness, until 1905 only accessible by road from Austria, it was granted a tax-free status, which it still enjoys though there is a direct route up a steep mountain route with a series of tight and intimidating tunnels that can only be passed one vehicle at a time.
Tankers haul petrol, luxury goods and booze up to the top of the mountains and people flock there to save some fifty Rappen per liter on fuel and realize steep discounts once the VAT is taken away. There are arguments that this sort of break is no longer necessary, since the villagers are not quite so inaccessible and see immense profits from all their visitors but it certainly does create for unique environment, a sort of a land that the law forgot. I did not realize it at the time but when we were lounging about the shores of Lake Lugano, a similar Italian enclave (enjoying the same tax exclusions but for reasons of historical intrigues and not just owing to its isolation) was just to our south—Campione d'Italia, cut off from the rest of Italy only by a few hundred impassable meters and with access exclusively through the Confederation.
catagories: ๐จ๐ญ, ๐ฎ๐น, foreign policy, travel