Nation building in failed states can be a little tricky, as not just a few political strategists are realising these days. With respect to Iraq, the deadly result of their misconceptions can be watched on the hour every hour. This, on the other hand, has, for better or worse, reduced the world’s attention devoted to Afghanistan, the other major construction site. Afghanistan is still a country worn and torn by decades of internal and external warfare, ethnic, religious strife, a country where traditional social structures and modernity clashed harshly, wether it was modernity disguised as Imperialism, Communism, or Islamism.
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Author Archives: Tobias Schwarz
Bloggers *in* Paris riots!
Below, David asked about Bloggers who contributed to our common attempts to understand what is happening in France, and possibly elsewhere in Europe, and why it is happening. But it seems, some Bloggers have been contributing a little too much: No pasaran! and Loic LeMeur link to a Reuters report (in French) stating that three bloggers have been arrested for using their blogs to incite people to participate in riots
I guess that’s a first.
Angie 2.0 – March 26, 2006?
Update (2/11/05, 01:30 CET) – Maybe Angie 2.0 is actually a guy: two East German are now heading Germany’s biggest parties. The SPD crisis management team agreed late Tuesday evening to offer Brandenburg’s state premier Matthias Platzeck (German biography) the party’s chairmanship. Absent any surprises, this nomination will probably be confirmed by the upcoming party conference.
Update (1/11/05, 16:19) below the fold.
Does everybody really get a second chance? Or will it just be Angela Merkel? Not too surprisingly, Edmund Stoiber was the first to realise that the SPD’s power reshuffle after Franz Müntefering’s sort-of instant resignation, even in case a successor will be named quickly (currently, the only two candidates allegedly under consideration are the state premiers Kurt Beck and Mathias Platzeck), is leading to a situation in which the arithmetics of a grand coalition don’t really add up anymore, not simply because coalition talks with a SPD delegation headed by a combination of acting and designated leaders will suffer from a relative affluence in cooks dealing with the broth.
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EU mandatory data rentention directive(s)
To keep track of the of the legislative process (or not) regarding the controversial EU mandatory data rentention directive(s), Statewatch.org has prepared a heavilly “annotated guide to the issues and documentation.”
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M’s very own locusts.
After starting off this year’s early election campaign with a debate about the dangers of the sometimes problematic short term investment horizons of private equity firms, it was the SPD’s very own loony left’s locusts in the party’s board that forced their chairman, Franz Müntefering, to declare that he would not seek re-election at the party conference next month and that he was no longer certain whether he could then serve as the minister in a grand coalition. Certainly, given that surprises seem to have become the rule in German politics by now, things might look different by then.
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Does relative size matter?
Over on almost a diary, I’ve recently mentionend a survey of German blogging called “Weblogs 2005 – Bloggen im deutschsprachigen Raum”, conducted by Jan Schmidt at the University of Bamberg. While the German blogger himself is a relatively unknown species to date, the relatively small size of the German blogosphere as a whole has been observed with some interest for a while now, particularly when compared to the French blogosphere, and the amount of attention blogs have suddenly gained in the so called German mainstream media. It’s one of the eternal questions of humanity asked a new variant: Does size matter?
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Never Change a Winning Team.
Gentle readers, as you may have noticed, following our recent move to a new hosting provider, afoe has been riddled with problems, both on the front and on the back end, making it rather diffictult for us to post, and sometimes for you to read and comment. Should you publish something online yourselves, be warned – if fiddling around with servers and software configurations for hours is not your favorite passtime and changing hosts is not entirely unavoidable, just don’t do it.
We had to, unfortunately, due to a number of considerations. So as much as we would like to concentrate on non-technical issues, a lot of our energy is currently absorbed by bits and bytes flowing in the wrong direction. We are working on the problems, but doing so might include some open heart surgery. So don’t be surprised should some parts of afoe not work as expected. Please bear with us.
Of Demons and Details.
Tonight, a French friend sent sent me an email expressing his disappointment about the fact that a Eurodistrict comprising the French (Euro-)city Strasbourg and the German regional authority Kehl, which will be officially created by officials from both parties at a signing ceremony tomorrow afternoon, is falling far short of the enthusiasm it was conceived with (some details by Reuters (in French)).
During the heyday of the latest Franco-German governmental rapprochement in early 2003, Chancellor Schröder and President Chirac signed a declaration calling for new forms of European institutional cooperation. But lacking consistent ideational support from the two governments, the regional authorities were unable to overcome different administrative practices, legal concerns, and – problems to fund a bridge. Thus, they will not establish a new form of supranational institution but rather “just another” council for regional cross-border cooperation. And they won’t get a new bridge.
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Almost a Fistful
Vicenta, Edward, Tobias, and David (from left to right)Some light Friday afternoon reading, and some faces you may not have seen yet. A month ago, almost exactly two years after the day that will live in infamy, the first afoe meet-up took place in Stockholm.
Despite the fact that not everyone in the fistful could make it to the Swedish capital, it was a great opportunity to discuss the past, present, and future of Europe, the world, blogs in general and afoe in particular. But above all, it was great to finally meet some of the people with whom so many emails were exchanged – a valuable reminder that the blogosphere can not only lead to a meeting of minds, but, in some cases, also to a meeting of entire people.
Problems. And Games.
Unfortunately, following our recent move to a different hosting provider, some Euros in the Fistful are still experiencing technical difficulties when trying to post. We’re trying to solve the problem as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, other people are experiencing problems as well. The “K-question”, the question who will become the next Chancellor, and presumably the amjor stumbling block on the way to true coalition negotiations between the CDU and the SPD, is still as close to a solution as it was when the polls closed on September 18. Both parties are still hoping the other one will blink first.
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