fennec fox

The United Nation’s climate summit that just concluded in Durban, South Africa faced some enormous challenges in trying to recapture the concrete results and spirit of cooperation of the Kyoto Protocols of two decades ago. Some progress was made, I think, during this last session but it remains to be seen if these agreed upon goals will be enough to staunch environmental irreversible change. I admire the European Union’s determination to take a leading role and maintain reduction targets, even among disheartening divisions, and China for, with some significant reservations, moves towards stewardship and sustainability that will potentially upstage everyone. It was discouraging to hear that Canada for financial reasons has decided also to break ranks, since any gains would be undone by the profligate actions of the world’s biggest polluters and developing nations. It’s especially poignant, and I didn’t notice the symbol until after all was said and done, as the UN, I think, choose to hold the summit under the good auspices of Durban with a reference to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince--the baobab tree taking up the whole planet, as the trees would do to the Little Prince’s little home world without pruning.  The Little Prince had more than one world to explore, however, singular domains and ruled by different potentates.  The allegory is a bit inverted but probably apt for the struggle and squabbling over responsibilities for what belongs to everyone.

modular text or cabinet shuffle

Nine months or so after his self-imposed exile in the States, Germany’s former Economic and Defense minister, with the affectionate moniker zu Googleberg (EN/DE) has returned but this time on the board of the European Commission as the advocate for protecting freedom of the internet, especially from oppressive regimes who would quash the voice of revolution and insurrection.

The former minister assures the commission, the executive branch of the EU governing body, that he can use the network that he built up during his time in the German government to promote measures to safeguard democratic and transparent avenues of expression--plus his own honed skills in citation and referencing. This return and announcement, and perhaps this needed post was created especially for him, comes at a strange time in the court of internet freedom, as the US Secretary of State spoke from the Hague, just days prior, demanding that no country attempt to subvert the freedoms of speech and assembly that the internet helps facilitate. This plea seemed a little facetious given that the US and perhaps in collusion with the rest of the western world is concocting its own more insidious forms of oppression. Perhaps the US alone imagines itself competent and high-minded enough to manage the censorship, what with already having blocked wi-fi coverage to areas where protesters planned to gather (the Los Angeles mass-transit platforms) or courts deeming bloggers separate from journalists or SOPA, which more famously criminalizes cover-bands but also suppresses originality that is not licensed and vetted by the industry. I admired our former minister, despite his transgressions and being made to fall on his sword, and I hope that this post is not just an echo of idealized US policy towards free-speech and internet self-regulation.

titanomachy or primus inter pares

In a dispatch from the Swiss edition of thelocal, the central government of the Helvetic Confederacy in Bern is reluctant to share (otherwise befriend America) access to its electronic criminal records database with the United States. The arrangement is not reciprocal, mutual as Switzerland isn’t taking on the whole onerous burden of America’s security apparatus but Swiss authorities are expected to surrender all the vital information of its citizens, in case a native ne’er-do-well ever decides to visit the States, and the only thing that the Swiss people are getting in return for this openness and trust for the US to safeguard its information better than the US can keep track of its own is the right to travel to the States under the Visa-Waiver program, a government web-site that supposedly announces one’s plans and intentions well ahead of time but despite the publicity, one is asked the same stock questions by countless airport personnel coming and going, prodded and frisked just the same.

I think that Switzerland ought to resist submitting to this sort of security theatre, which while mining the demographics of dozens of other countries for something speciously actionable, goes on to treat each and every that’s participating in the Visa-Waiver program (and consequently, sharing their police dossiers) as if they cannot handle their own affairs—or connect the dots and have an over-abundance of domestic problems and are eager to export them to America. The US already bullied the banks into disclosing too much, ostensibly over money-laundering and terrorism, that made a shambles out of everything, as if the US had any business dictating to the Swiss how to manage money. Even after, through controlling the flow of wire-transfers, America became this hundred-handed Hecatonchires of the world’s financial system (or law-enforcement), it was still unable to forecast the knock-on effects of its gross mismanagement of its own business. Private and personal information, of breakers and abiders, is not being entrusted to good hands, I think, and the Swiss ought to allow their waiver program to lapse. Giving up all these records is something much more permanent than the daily fluctuations of the stock markets or the designs of some paranoid security czar. At least requiring a mutual visit to the embassy to apply for a Visa could be one thing that the Swiss could reciprocate in kind.

blue-plate special or everything’s up-to-date in kansas city

For the US presidential election less than a year out, I am guessing that the voting public and the public at-large has only been served the first loathsome appetizers of what rhetoric is in store for them in the coming campaign. Watching from a safer distance yet still not clear of the eruption of embarrassment and the rubber-necking over a profoundly expensive, corrupt and obtuse fight to secure the consent of an increasing narrow majority of the American voters--as much as can be fairly represented by gerrymandering, lobbyists and arcane institutions of indirect democracy.

Disappointment and hopes dashed from the last US election certainly make for a strong aperitif (or apparatchik) and the ultimate differences between the American political parties may only be as significant as that narrow, polarizing majority that either one holds, but the campaigning is already ugly and averting and I am sure that the next course will only be more unpalatable. Just like the farmer and the cowman, the tea-partiers and the occupiers should be friends, and both camps fighting against the establishment and would not revile one another so much if they essentially weren't fighting for the same thing. Whatever the culinary agenda, which I can't imagine would be very rife with surprises and some things are only for internal consumption, before it even begins in earnest, I bet Jesus and Mohammed (along with a whole host of others) are cringing at their summonses, much preferring words not be put into their mouths and dragged into the muck as casually as any other words of sophistry. It seems the attacks get more vicious every cycle, and I wonder when undisguised incivility reaches the point where it is no longer tolerated, stomached, when it becomes an insult to general intellect.

london bridge or two turntables and a microphone

Over British objections, Franco-German efforts to introduce an overarching treaty for all members of the European Union were scaled back (following coverage and some handy infographics from the BBC), and changed rules imposed without the ascension of any individual member, on euro-users and a collection of a few willing hosts. This deal brokered within the bounds of market and trade and below the threshold of submitting the changes before the full EU assembly but also broke by a vocal abstention is basically a mechanism of enforcement of guidelines, a honour-system that was already in place that enumerated the conditions of being a part of the union, like maintaining a healthy debt-to-domestic revenue ratio and reciprocating freedom of movement rights for fellow-member states.  Perhaps from the beginning, such peer-review ought to have been in place, although it does seem a bit of a slight to have one’s national budget, spending plans and tax schemes subject to approval by the EU before one’s own government. Ireland first was the brunt of that outrage, but essentially, in hock and with a narrow discretionary latitude already a puppet on a string to the IMF and other lenders, Ireland was already not in charge of its own monetary affairs.

And although such a shift (and it only applies to situations where economic stability is threatened and rescue funding has been distributed, not as a matter of course) does mark a retreat on national sovereignty, it does seem better (although a slippery precedent) to surrender this bit of procedure that will only underscore weaknesses and highlight where help is needed, than risk peace or protectionism on a bigger, uncontrolled scale. The UK is course right to raise objections and even divorce itself from the whole union, if such is the will of the people, but the tenor of the UK’s hue and cry sound suspect, more like a chorus of bankers and not of Britons, Welsh and Scotsmen. Were banks with the attested aims of protecting the financial sector of the City of London behind the opposition and fear-mongering? Shielding the banks’ profits and misplaced mercy for their transgressions are what created this mess to begin with, and safeguarding the financial sector should not come at the expense of further isolation for the British Isles, a Europe running at two speeds, maybe this estrangement translating to loss not only in integration but also trade and opportunities to do business with the rest of the euro block.

patteran or tacit knowledge

Ranker--and it is amazing what boutique web-sites one can find--showcases the top 50 internet memes of 2011, via Neatorama, which is curating many of the superlatives, achievements and things better forgotten of the past year. Some of these are really funny and flooring and even though for the best ones only a glimpse and no explanation suffices to communicate everything without killing the joke, I do like the Cliff's Notes and appreciate the background with plenty of inspirations and variations on a theme. What other statement in short-hand, writ small, might you include here?

kitchen-witch or jahresendflügelfigur

We have a pretty papier-mâché angel hanging up for Christmas time. Last year, we had it up as well and H's father asked if she was a witch. H was a little embarrassed, but H's parents lived in East Germany, and as H once explained to me, Christmas and all the seasonal trappings were tolerated during the DDR-Zeit, only the idea of angels was secularized in the form of their official catalogue designation: ein Jahresendflügelfigur, basically an end-of-the-year-figure-with-wings. Maybe angels, regaled not as a Guardian Angel (Schutzengel), and such would not be instantly recognizable.  I thought it was sweet what H's father said and having a Christmas witch is certainly something to hang with the mistletoe.

show-boat diplomacy

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced, with the support of the administration, that the US diplomatic machine will no longer suffer the bigotry, discrimination and violence of other nations in regard to gay rights and freedoms.

Stance and human-rights records on the treatment of gay people will be taken into consideration when granting asylum and as factors when figuring foreign aid, just as fundamental rights for women and minority groups have been factored into the equation. I am proud that America came forward with that position but it is a delicate matter. Clinton readily admits that the US does not have the best track-record in civil-rights in general but has made strides, like with the revocation of her husband's compromised Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell policy and though gay people are living and being born all over the world and in some places shunned for it, it is going to be difficult to manage this embassy without appearing to promote cultural imperialism or chauvinism, imposing American norms and values on others. Such fears, though never to be dismissed, are a distant, academic excuse--considering all the other direct and indirect American ambassadors and peddlers of influence. Life isn't easy for anyone and no one can indoctrinate whole nations with the tools of statecraft, nor is anyone trying to--only that countries tolerating or persecuting injustice in its most awful forms not be given equal footing with the rest of civil society. It is noteworthy that just on principle, opponents and detractors of everything the current US administration does or fakes or contemplates, is as shrill and vocal about this change in policy as those few nations that find any degree of support or acknowledgement of gay rights surpassingly objectionable. The German Foreign Minister (Clinton's counterpart) is openly-gay and travels unaccompanied by his husband when his job takes him to lands where this practice is not accepted. I don't know that his husband's absence sends a stronger message to international foils, and personal choice, respected, does not become official position and vice-versa. Not to diminish Clinton's bold work, but maybe first the US as a whole needs to become more tolerant and inclusive, to the point where they too could be represented by such an individual and that nobody knows and nobody cares whom he or she loves.