Tag Archives: Europe and the world

Liesl Prokop: Intellectually Dishonest

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No doubt the usual suspects will be hugely enjoying the claim by Austria’s hard-right interior minister Elisabeth (Liesl) Prokop that 45 per cent of Muslims are “unwilling to integrate”. In fact, it’s more than a claim – as well as rhetoric, she’s got a “study” to support her election positioning. Unfortunately, the study still isn’t complete – its leader, one Prof. Matthias Rohe, has yet to draw conclusions from the data. Not only that, there are some serious concerns regarding the methodology – at the link, it turns out that the study included, as well as a mixture of questionnaires and focus groups, a “consideration of media reports”.

Ah. I think I get it. Someone like the emetic FPÖ goon Andreas Mölzer has his pet newspaper (Zur Zeit) rant about TEH TERRORISTS, and this is duly marked off by the responsible minister’s pet academics as evidence for Mölzer’s policy. But there is much, much worse.

According to her spokesman, “20 per cent of Muslims had difficulties with integration for religious reasons and 25 per cent with the cultural background”. So, obviously 45 per cent of them REFUSE TO INTEGRATE AND MUST BE ELIMINATED! Errr..well. Perhaps if religious and cultural differences were mutually exclusive, that might approach the truth or something akin to it.

But of course they are not. In fact, I’d argue that in this case they are barely distinguishable, which implies epic double counting and a truly mendacious misuse of statistics. After all, I suspect that not far off 100 per cent of them agree with me that the current Austrian government is a bunch of racists and cheap-arsed hacks with their fingers in the till, and using the same class of mathematics, we can therefore conclude that 145 per cent of Muslims in Austria are dangerous non-integrators.

Updated: Well, the study was eventually presented, and it doesn’t contain either the phrase “unwilling to integrate” or the figure of 45 per cent. How strange. It’s almost as if someone was lying.

Forget It Jacques, It’s Clearstream

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It never stops when your blog has to cover an entire continent. Hardly had the Italian left taken AFOE’s advice to get Giorgio Napolitano elected as president than the Clearstream scandal in France was getting out of hand, and nothing at all on the blog! Fortunately, at the moment the news from that quarter is coming so thick and at such a howling rate of speed that it wasn’t going to be hard to catch up. The latest despatches suggest that, firstly, it was De Villepin and Chirac, and secondly, that the victim-Nicolas Sarkozy-probably has something to hide too, as in any good film noir.

And that’s before you get on to the 300 million francs in the president’s secret Japanese bank account. Allegedly.

So what is a Clearstream and why is it a scandal? Clearstream is a bank clearing house in Luxembourg that permits banks to carry out international payments on a net basis, paying just the balance of their transactions in cash every business day. It has a bad reputation in France because of one Denis Robert, who has written three books alleging that it’s responsible for money laundering on a vast scale. But more relevantly, it’s also the supposed cause of a major political crisis.
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The HRC is dead, long live the HRC?

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The UN has elected a brand new Human Rights Council to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission. Why was the old HRC discredited? Well, basically and officially, because several of its members were known to violate human rights and/or to protect their own interests. It is only logical. However, who will be taking a seat in the new and improved HRC? Right, some of those very same countries that were known to violate human rights: China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
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Berlusgone

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Well, this is a little late, but we ought to put on record that the fun-lovin’ minicaudillo’s fingers were eventually pried from the Italian prime ministership. As predicted, he went out with a considerable degree of low comedy, as the Italian senate struggled to elect a speaker largely because the Berlusconi side insisted on making a fuss about whether ballots cast for the eventual winner read “Franco” or “Francesco” Marini. Eventually, though, it was done.

The Senate speakership had been the last real opportunity to cling on, as the Left has a working majority in the lower house and therefore appointed its man without trouble. The deeper play of the Senate vote, by the way, was an effort to cause trouble in the Unione’s ranks – Romano Prodi chose to put forward a Refounded Communist, Faustino Bertinotti, as speaker of the lower house, thus getting the far Left on side, and therefore needed to balance the ticket by putting someone from the ex-Christian Democrat wing of his coalition in the Senate. This being achieved, Berlusconi had no longer any excuse to hang on.

The next problem will be to elect a President. In Italy, the presidency is a nonexecutive position more like that of Germany than that of France, but the president does choose who is asked to form a government, so without a prez there can be no prime minister. Now, the simplest option would just have been to re-elect Ciampi, but he says he’s too old. This is where it gets complicated, because a super-majority is needed to elect a president.

Recalling that the Refounded Communists got the speakership of the lower house, and the ex-democristiani the speakership of the upper house (and in all probability the prime ministership). Which major faction on the left is empty-handed? That’s right, the non-refounded communists, who in fact really did refound themselves to become the Democratic Left, unlike their former comrades in the Refoundation who didn’t refound themselves and remained communist. Their leader, former PM Massimo D’Alema, was therefore put forward as a candidate for the presidency even though the chance of Berlusconi’s side supporting him was exactly nil.

In fact, the Right is threatening a campaign of mass demonstrations in the event of his election, and suggesting that Marini be the President. This, your keen and agile minds will soon perceive, is a transparent device to reopen the speakership issue and thus destabilise the Left. Alternatively, the Right proposes, the secretary of the Presidency, Gianni Letta, might be a candidate.
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Shipbuilding

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The European Union will soon have the world’s second-biggest amphibious warfare fleet. As well as the Royal Navy’s two LPDs (Landing Platform Dock – what the RN used to call an “assault ship”, basically a ship with a large dock in the stern, a shitload of radio gear, a heli deck, and space for several hundred soldiers and a gaggle of landing craft) Albion and Bulwark and one LHA (a helicopter carrier) Ocean, France has one LHA, and is building two more of the Mistral class, Spain has two LPDs and is building a large LHA, Portugal is building one LPD, Italy is building three LPDs, and Holland has a big (18,000 ton) LPD. That adds up to a fleet of 14 amphibious warfare ships of various kinds, not counting the UK’s four auxiliary dock transports that are a-building. By comparison, the biggest fleet is the US Navy’s, which has 10 LHAs and 12 LPDs organised in several amphibious warfare groups, usually of one LHA and two LPDs and a regiment of Marines.

Rob “Lawyers, Guns and Money” was discussing this in terms of the pre-1914 battleship race and the curious way countries with no need of battleships, indeed who could not maintain a meaningful fleet, were desperate to have just one ship. I replied that you had to look at the whole, and that he was right to think it might be about taking part in multinational operations. Just not necessarily the same ones…

In essence, these ships are the fruit of the late-90s efforts to lessen EU dependence on US assets in defence, and specifically the Nice Treaty’s goal of a EU Rapid Reaction Force similar to the NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps but without the Americans. One might think nothing had come of this except for a new HQ in the Brussels ‘burbs, what with the change of emphasis from the 60,000 man EURRF to small scale battle groups (essentially a way of fulfilling the letter of the plan without more money). But the ships are a-building…

Armenian Accession

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The German newspaper whose web site has marginally improved published an interview today* with Arthur Baghdasarian, leader of the second-largest party in the Armenian parliament. He has been president of parliament since 2003, and he is seen as a leading candidate to be president of the republic in 2008. They talk about whether or not Armenia needs a revolution, though not what color it might have, probably because Baghdasarian opts for reform rather than revolution.

More interesting for afoe readers is this quote: “Armenia’s future is not in the union of Russia and Belarus. Armenia’s future is in the European Union and NATO.” Later on he adds, “I am convinced there is no alternative [to EU accession]. Not just Armenia, but also Georgia, and why not Azerbaijan as well. We are small countries, and for us that will be the best structure for cooperation and peace. Europe needs a secure, conflict-free Caucasus and democratic neighbors.”

Whether or not the current 25 members are ready for enlargement, much less the old 15 (or 12 or 6 or whatever), potential enlargees are eager. The EU will have to answer these questions one way or another. My bet is on more members.

* Annoyingly, it is only available online in pay-per-view. It’s on page 5 of the paper version, if you have access.

Doha Adieu?

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Steve Clemons, who’s quite adept at reading the Washington tea leaves, writes that the Doha round of trade negotiations is effectively over.

Why? For most of the present US administration, Bob Zoellick had been the US Trade Representative. Zoellick was an old hand, wise in the ways of both trade and Washington. But when Condelezza Rice was appointed Secretary of State, Zoellick went over to become her deputy. His successor, Rob Portman, was a Congressman from Ohio who had been involved with the nuts and bolts of trade legislation for many years. He was serious and experienced, with friends on Capitol Hill. Now Portman has resigned as Trade Representative to head the Office of Management and Budget; a bigger responsibility, but not connected to trade.

The upshot is that the USTR position will now be empty for some time, the current president’s authority to negotiate agreements that the Congress cannot amend is expiring soon, and the administration sees little hope of progress in the Doha round before it leaves office. Looks like it could be the end of the line for Doha.

Irritations Over Holocaust Records

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By Craig Whitlock, of the Washington Post

Boxed away in a former Nazi SS barracks in this central German town is the core of one of the largest collections of historical documents from World War II. All told, the archive contains 50 million records that list the names of 17.5 million people, including concentration camp prisoners, forced laborers and other victims of the Third Reich.

For 60 years, the International Committee of the Red Cross has used the documents to trace the missing and the dead, especially those of the Holocaust. But the archive has remained off-limits to historians and the public, fueling an increasingly bitter dispute among Holocaust researchers, Jewish groups and the 11 nations that oversee the collection.

Katja Gelinsky’s Peculiar America, Pt. 3

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It’s time to play the Gelinsky game, in which one of Germany’s leading newspapers confirms prejudices about the United States, not by making things up, of course, but through slanted selection of stories. Here are seven headlines from Wednesday’s news flow in the US. Which two stories were chosen for Thursday’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung? (Answer below the fold, and for fairness I’ve excluded stories that would be clearly covered by the other reporter in the bureau.)

1. Mass[achusetts] Bill Requires Health Coverage
2. Theme Park-Like Camp for Cub Scouts Built on Old Disney Site
3. DHS [Department of Homeland Security] Spokesman Is Accused of Soliciting Teen Online
4. Hurricane Forecast: Calmer Than ’05
5. Majority of 32 Wisconsin Towns Vote for Iraq Pullout
6. CDC: Kids, men are fatter; women’s obesity peaking
7. Rivers Near Cresting Threaten Minn[esota] Town
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Es Lebe Das Exportventil!

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Chris “Stumbling and Mumbling” Dillow has a very interesting post on signs of German economic recovery. Interestingly, the bellwether Ifo confidence index has shown a dramatic uptick, reaching its highest level since 1991. Dillow proceeds to examine its correlation with the DAX stock market index.

Now, as Chris points out, DAX-constituents are likely to be the most globalised German businesses. The DAX tracks the Ifo with about a three month lag. This all suggests that a) the most globalised German businesses are feeling chirpy, as you’d expect in an economy struggling to raise domestic demand that trades with several raging boomers, and b) that some things never change.

Back before the Second World War, before the Nazi seizure of power, there was something known as the Exportventil in German. This means something like “export safety valve” in translation. What it meant in practice was that German industrialists believed that exporting was a hedge against the economic and political instability at home, and duly specialised in exporting as much stuff as possible. That is pretty much exactly opposite to what you’d expect – after all, you normally assume that German businesses know more about Germany than Country X and therefore face lower risks at home, not to mention the foreign exchange risk involved.

There were good reasons for this, though – economic conditions inside Germany were dire, the devaluation of the mark was helpful – and alternatively you could price your products in hard currency and thus protect yourself against the hyperinflation. It also helped that you had a stream of foreign-denominated revenue, which meant you could borrow in the US. The downside of the Exportventil, though, was that German businesses were highly operationally geared with respect to world trade, and German banks tended to have long-term German assets and short-term US and sterling liabilities.

The onset of the great depression, of course, slashed demand for German exports – and the beggar-your-neighbour policies drained world trade of liquidity, which hit the Germans twice as hard because of export dependence. So the safety valve turned out to be more of a seacock that let more water into the ship. Germany, however, still seems to love exporting – which perhaps explains the strong “home bias” that Chris claims to have identified.

In a tangential theme regarding historical legacies and the way things don’t change, check out this post at Veronica Khokhlova’s. Seems the Ukrainian electoral map divides along the ancient border of Kievan Rus..