The main prize. Nominate your favorite European blog(s) here.
Author Archives: David Weman
Satin Pajamas: Best New Weblog
Nominate your favorite new European blog(s) here. First post must be in 2005 2006.
New Synagogue in Munich
On the 68th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom, Germany’s president Koehler joined with other dignitaries in inaugurating a new synagogue in Munich.
Neo-Nazis plotted to bomb the ground-breaking ceremony for the Munich synagogue exactly three years ago. Members of the group were arrested and their leader is now serving a seven-year jail term.
German President Horst Koehler warned of lingering anti-Semitism in the country and noted that neo-Nazi crimes have increased this year.
“This is painful … we must learn the lesson and remain watchful today and for all time,” said Koehler in a speech.
The opening went off without a hitch. Munich is now home to Germany’s second-largest Jewish community (behind Berlin), with roughly 9,000 of the country’s 110,000 Jewish citizens. I haven’t seen the new synagogue in person yet, but it won’t be long.
Moscow’s Respect for Strasbourg
Peter Finn writes in the Washington Post that despite the Russian government’s problematic relationship with the rule of law, it has actually been quite good at complying with rulings from the European Court of Human Rights, aka Strasbourg. Of course, it would have to: Since 2002, the court has issued 362 judgements concerning Russia; 352 of them have gone against the Russian government.
Finn starts with the Salvation Army’s seven-year struggle with the city government in Moscow. The city had maintained with a straight face that the Salvation Army was a foreign paramilitary organization and suggested that it might involve itself in the violent overthrow of the state. Strasbourg was not amused.
Russians now file more complaints with the court than any other member nation. They account for more than 10,000 of the 45,000 petitions Strasbourg receives annually. The vast majority are never heard.
In another case:
For Alexei Mikheyev, redress came even before the court ruled. In 1998, he was subjected to nine days of torture, including electric shock, in a local police station after being picked up as a suspect in the disappearance of a 17-year-old girl in the central Russian city of Nizhniy Novgorod.
Mikheyev confessed to raping and killing the girl but retracted his statement after he was taken to the prosecutor’s office. Returned to the police station and facing more torture, he threw himself out of a third-story window and was left partially paralyzed. The girl he had confessed to killing returned home the next day.
Prosecutors opened and then dropped 23 preliminary investigations into the police force’s treatment of Mikheyev, in what human rights activists call an effort to stymie any trial. After the European Court agreed to hear Mikheyev’s case in 2004, prosecutors reopened the case and finally secured the conviction of two police officers, who were given four-year sentences for abuse of power. In January, Mikheyev was awarded approximately $300,000 in compensation.
(As if another datapoint were necessary to show torture’s ineffectiveness.)
Still, while the Russian government takes its obligations seriously enough to pay fines, Strasbourg does not have enough leverage to force systematic reforms. Still, it is an effective lever, one that deserves to be more widely known outside judicial and activist circles.
18 Mistakes that Kill Startups
In honor of the Lisbon Agenda
[T]here’s just one mistake that kills startups: not making something users want. If you make something users want, you’ll probably be fine, whatever else you do or don’t do. And if you don’t make something users want, then you’re dead, whatever else you do or don’t do. So really this is a list of 18 things that cause startups not to make something users want.
From Paul Graham, by way of Bruce Sterling.
Tinderbox
Spark?
A missile fired from a hand-held launcher damaged a mosque in the southern Bosnian town of Mostar on Tuesday just before worshippers were due to gather for a pre-dawn Ramadan meal, officials said.
The mosque is in the Jasenica area, a Croat-majority suburb of the town which is split evenly between Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats. It was built last year on the ruins of an Islamic building destroyed in the fighting in 1993-1994 between the two groups.
The missile was fired from a “Zolja” hand-held grenade launcher at around 4:30 a.m. (0230 GMT), local police said. Nobody was hurt.
Spain and Senegal Enter Migration Deal
Migration from poorer areas to richer areas can either be managed or un-managed. After years of the latter, it looks like Spain and Senegal are going to try the former.
The deal would discourage illegal migration and give Spain the opportunity to recruit a significant number of workers, Mr Moratinos said.
More than half of the 26,000 migrants who have reached the Spanish Canary Islands this year come from Senegal.
[Spanish Foreign Minister] Moratinos also signed a co-operation deal that will give Senegal up to 15m euros (£10.3m) of Spanish aid annually over five years.
Inventor of impressionism?
Slate has a slide-show essay about John Constable, an English landscape painter who they say very important.
Wow
Never heard of this stuff. Wow.
Another Take on Romania
Business Week published this while I was bicycling across Switzerland. But it’s not like anything reported in the article has changed in three or four weeks.
Bucharest rivals Bangalore for availability of exceptionally gifted programmers at rock-bottom prices