Winneker

Instapoet is on-line

2008-07-29T11:02:00.002+02:00

Instapoet is now on-line. Verse for every occasion.

Words, do not fail him.

Check out today's poem here.

Men in Blue now on MySpace

2008-02-22T16:29:00.002+01:00

Check out videos and gig info on our new MySpace page.

Men in Blue rock!

2008-02-15T14:40:00.002+01:00

Some vids from the Men in Blue gig on 2 Feb. at Sounds club in Brussels!

For more videos from the show, go here.

"Tush"

"Born Under a Bad Sign"

"Rusty Cage"

Apologies to Steve Earle

2007-12-18T18:00:00.000+01:00

Last year, I wrote this about Steve Earle and his political speechifying from the concert stage. I argued that his song lyrics make his political statements more effectively than his sometimes irksome between-song commentary, which at a show I saw last year even included a reference to the Financial Times op-ed page (to be fair, apparently Bruce Springsteen has been making references to writs of habeas corpus on his current tour).

Anyway, I'm here to say, "sorry Steve."

I think Earle's new album, "Washington Square Serenade," is among his best work ever. It's like John Dos Passos set to music.

One of the songs, "Down Here Below," is a classic. And "Steve's Hammer (for Pete)" sounds as if it is a direct response to my complaints about Steve's political harping.

As long as he keeps making music like this, he can bitch all he wants from the concert stage and grow his Taliban beard as long as he wants, I'll be right there with him...

Here's Steve playing the fantastic opening track to the album, "Tennessee Blues":

And here's a short promo film in which he talks about making a record with ProTools, name-checks Lou Dobbs of all people, and plays a couple of incredible songs. His wife, Allison Moorer, is there, too, looking eerily like a young Holly Near.

Cracklin' Rosie

2007-11-12T15:00:00.000+01:00

It's been an eventful month. For updates on our little Rosalind, go here.

Essential Reading

2007-10-04T14:31:00.000+02:00

If you're not reading Wonkette, you should be. Its attitude is exactly right for today's political scene.

Here's a classic recent post on the current (and incredibly boring) political crisis here in Belgium.

The site's current editor is leaving. Hope his replacements don't screw it up.

The Art of Cartooning

2007-08-15T14:13:00.000+02:00

The Onion has been running editorial cartoons, or at least a great parody of an idiot editorial cartoonist. The guy is a total reactionary--a nice replacement for the late, lamented Ed Anger.

Plus, I love the little nod to Tom Toles in the bottom corner...

More Specific Details on How to Build a Laser Gun

2007-07-17T17:26:00.000+02:00

Sigh. A shocking number of you out there, all over the world, are still trying to figure out how to build a laser gun. Thanks, at least, for keeping my traffic numbers respectable, but come on. Why on earth do you need one?

Oh well, if you really want to know, the full scoop on laser-construction can be found by clicking here. Good luck, Buck Rogers!

Watch This Space!

2007-03-19T09:58:00.000+01:00

Hi there, I haven't been posting since starting my new job with the Wall Street Journal Europe, where I am now deputy editor of the Weekend Journal. I plan to begin re-posting soon...

Meantime, some fun viewing:

Top Ten European Songs

2006-11-28T11:27:00.000+01:00

In another of my completely subjective bimonthly surveys for e!Sharp magazine, I list the Top Ten European Pop Songs:

Top Ten European Pop Songs

By Craig Winneker

1. Imagine
John Lennon
Here we go again with another sure-fire argument-starter. Europe has a long and varied tradition of popular music going all the way back to the Middle Ages, when troubadours in tights roamed the landscape singing of chivalric deeds. But enough about Iron Maiden – we’re here to talk about the greatest pop songs the continent has produced.

Continent, you ask? Well, it’s true that by European pop songs, I mostly mean British, since the continent itself just doesn’t seem to really get what makes a good pop song. Sure, there is an occasionally worthy hit from Spain or Germany or France (usually it’s a novelty number), but most of the classics originate a few miles off shore. Fighting words? You’ll find me at the bar, humming Serge Gainsbourg.

So what is Europe’s greatest popular song? Well, I start off immediately with controversy, because even though I consider the Beatles the greatest pop group of all time, I think it would be wrong to pick one or even a handful of their songs for this list. It just isn’t fair to the rest of the genre. So I’ll give them their due by picking the best song ever written by one of their individual members. John Lennon once called “Imagine” an “anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic” song, and it’s true that it is naive in the way that anything utopian is. But it still manages to be a superb pop-song, heartfelt and pure, melodic and catchy.

Rolling Stone magazine called “Imagine” the third greatest song of all-time (but it should be noted that their first two choices were a song with the words Rolling Stone in the title and a song by a band called the Rolling Stones). “Imagine” is a singular piece of music that manages to transcend the pop chart or the passing fad. Here’s hoping it will never turn up in an iPod advert.

2. Anarchy in the UK
The Sex Pistols
Sometimes referred to as the first punk song (though the Ramones had released “Blitzkrieg Bop” a year before, and the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams” was in 1969, etc.), this classic nevertheless put punk on the map in Europe and around the world when it hit the charts in November 1976. The Pistols were terrible musicians but masters of satire and attitude; plus, they managed to show up for more gigs than Babyshambles.

With “Anarchy in the UK”, they didn’t so much as incite violence as strike and outrageous pose and crack a joke or two: “Your future dream is a shopping scheme”, and so on. It’s ironic now to consider that the standard-bearers for the punk movement were actually entirely a marketing creation. Some things never change.

3. 99 Luftballons
Nena
Released in 1983, this New Wave wonder reached the top of the charts in West Germany and in the UK. It also fared well in the US, in both English and German versions, thanks in part to a video featuring sultry Nena and her bottle-black hair in the halcyon early days of MTV. The song’s story line, about a nuclear war triggered when the military overreacts to a release of balloons, was all-too-timely; when it was released, the US was deploying Pershing missiles in West Germany and Europeans feared the breakout of nuclear war. Back then it had ominous political resonance; now we can be (mostly) thankful it’s just a sure-fire happy-hour sing-a-long.

4. One
U2
An incredibly beautiful song from what is probably U2’s finest record, “Achtung Baby”, this song is a fan favourite that consistently makes lists of the best songs of all time. U2 legend has it that the band were on the verge of breaking up when they wrote it, but that discovering its gorgeous melody gave them a new sense of optimism. The song’s heart-wrenching lyrics have been interpreted in many ways –a lovers’ lament; Bono’s troubled relationship with his father; even an allusion to German reunification (the song was recorded in Berlin). Cover versions by Johnny Cash and Mary J. Blige are as memorable as the original.

5. My Generation
The Who
Roger Daltrey, at age 62, is still singing what must be Pete Townshend’s most memorable lyric: “Hope I die before I get old.” Now it can be served up with lashings of irony along with Townshend’s still ear-splitting guitar riffs. But when it first came out in 1965 “My Generation” was serious business, an expression of youth anger and frustration at boring old Britain. Daltrey’s distinctive stuttering on some of the words was meant to evoke a teenager on speed, but there was another reason for the unusual effect: In 1965, singing “Why dontcha all f-f-f...” was the only way to say the F-word – or at least imply it – and still get played on the Beeb.

6. Bohemian Rhapsody
Queen
Frequently voted in British and other European polls as the greatest pop song of all time. Well, maybe. But it’s certainly the most outlandish and, at times, irresistibly catchy. Plus, it has made “scaramouch” a household word. Combining elements of opera, metal, and soppy ballad, the song is five minutes and 55 seconds of pure bliss, courtesy of Queen’s legendary frontman, Freddie Mercury, and a couple hundred overdubbed backing vocals. An Indian Parsi born in Zanzibar, Mercury showed just how far a precocious colonial homosexual could go in Britain – all the way to the top – before his tragic death from AIDS in 1991.

7. Dancing Queen
ABBA
Yes, you could make a case for “Waterloo,” which won the Eurovision Song Contest (one of the few times a song with any staying power has taken the top prize) and catapulted these Swedes to international stardom. But “Dancing Queen” is the better song by far, a pocket pop symphony worthy of Brian Wilson or Phil Spector. Released in the summer of 1976, it was soon topping the charts all over the world, and is the only one of ABBA’s many hits to be included in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. When you’re on the dance floor, you can’t resist it..

8. Boys (Summertime Love)
Sabrina
Well, we had to pick one example of the disco novelty hit, a warm-weather tradition in Europe – proof that kids baked too long in the Ibizan sun will listen to anything. We might have chosen any number of other songs from the European (s)hit parade: “Aserejé (The Ketchup Song)” by Spanish girl group Las Ketchup, anything by the Spice Girls, or even that horrifically catchy Moldovan number that took Europe by storm a couple years back. But what the heck, we’ll take this one, from pneumatic Italian model Sabrina Salerno. “Boys”, a top-five hit all across Europe, was cranked out by the legendary production team of Stock Aitken and Waterman, whose chart successes by the likes of Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley and Bananarama can only be described as “craptacular”.

9. Comme d’Habitude
Claude François
The French have made many invaluable contributions to Western culture, but popular music is not, to put it mildly, one of them. Whether its depressing chanson, embarrassing novelty tunes sung by the Lolita-du-jour, or just lazy French translations of English or American pop hits (did we really need a Francophone “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”?), the French pop oeuvre is truly lamentable. There are a few exceptions, an occasional triumph from Brel or Gainsbourg. Legendary French performer Claude François specialized in French covers (“Si j’avais un marteau,” etc.). But with the classic “Comme d’Habitude” he scored a nearly unprecedented coup – a French song that would be translated into English as Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”. Your present author has made the French version his karaoke signature tune.

10. Whole Lotta Love
Led Zeppelin
Never mind that it was a blatant rip-off of a Willie Dixon song (a fact which eventually won the blues legend a court settlement) or that its fusion of irresistible riff with spaced out wank-rock would spawn hundreds of unworthy imitators and millions of garage-band wannabes. In fact, that’s the best thing about this song, Led Zeppelin’s first and biggest international hit. It gave birth to heavy metal as we know it – pompous and carefree at the same time, the music would become especially popular in communist eastern Europe, where it inspired mullets and moptops from Leipzig to Kiev. Long live rock.

Mexico Jane, the Search Continues....

2006-11-27T16:57:00.000+01:00

Eight new chapters in the continuing saga of the search for Mexico Jane -- which seems stuck for the moment in boozy, smoky, talky South Wales but appears headed for Basque country and presumably the New World in forthcoming installments -- are now posted on Kalimotxo.

The author goes by the handle Duvel99, who says the plot idea came to him "in a dream, a bit like Samuel Taylor Coleridge when he wrote ‘Kubla Khan’ in his nightie". His epic adventure "aims to be part Ken Follett and part Jack Kerouac but will most likely end up being all Len Deighton" He's promising lots of future chapters of Mexico Jane, "like Charles Dickens when he wrote ‘a Tale of Two Cities’ in 472 parts [though] he probably had a bit more of a plot in his head when he started..."

Click here to read...

Here's an excerpt from Part 22:

We meandered back through the village towards Crackity’s car. ‘We need a plan’, he announced decisively and gave me a sly look. ‘Bilbao’s our first stop. Would you mind if we popped down to Brittany on the way?’ he asked airily. ‘Not at all Crackity’ I said sarcastically, ‘I’m in no rush to find Jane after all. Why don’t we have a few weeks in St.Tropez while we’re at it?’ He looked hurt when I said this and so I reluctantly agreed. He clapped me on the back and grinned hugely. ‘Great, we’ll go to Douarnanez, it’s famous for communism and sardines; you’ll love it.’ I had to agree it was a good mix even though I was worried that we’d never get to Spain at this rate...

Pussy Cats

2006-11-27T16:26:00.000+01:00

Playing at being a music critic again...this time for The Bulletin, Brussels' weekly expat magazine.... too tired to put links in for the albums, you can find them on Amazon, etc....

Pussy Cats Redux

Classic album remakes have a mixed history, from gimmicky (‘Radiodread’, an all-reggae version of ‘OK Computer’), to it-must-have-seemed-like-a-good-idea-after-all-those-bong-hits (Camper Van Beethoven’s song-for-song reinterpretation of the Fleetwood Mac flop ‘Tusk’) to just plain unnecessary (Danger Mouse’s ‘Gray Album’).

But New York-based indie rockers the Walkmen doubly redeem the genre with their new CD, ‘Pussy Cats’: a shambolic yet faithful remake that also shines much-deserved new light on the original album, released by Harry Nilsson and produced by John Lennon in 1974.

Recorded during Lennon’s infamous ‘lost weekend’, several months during which he was separated from Yoko Ono and tomcatting around Los Angeles, the Nilsson album features an all-star cast – er, make that an all-drunken-star cast, including Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, Rolling Stones sax maniac Bobby Keys and someone named Sneaky Pete.

This madcap, brandy-Alexander-fueled bunch turned out a strange assortment of sappy ballads, rollicking boogies, a children’s ditty or two, and even a proto-punk reinterpretation of ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’.

The album was an unfortunate turning point for Nilsson’s career, which had previously been on a meandering but nevertheless upward trajectory. Instead of a gifted songwriter with a three-octave voice, he would become known mostly as Lennon’s drinking buddy.

It was an unfair characterization, but not without some justification. Nilsson’s once poetic lyrics became lazier and more coarse. His carousing during the recording of the album took its toll on his delicate tenor, turning it into a harsh growl.

Fans were shocked to hear Nilsson’s voice on 'Pussy Cats’' opening single, the Jimmy Cliff classic ‘Many Rivers to Cross’. The album was a critical and commercial failure. Lennon went back to Yoko and stay-at-home daddyhood, and Nilsson went on to release a string of inconsistent but occasionally interesting albums.

Thanks to the Walkmen, the original ‘Pussy Cats’ rates another listen – and has the last laugh. As enjoyable as the new CD is, the old one is better. Nilsson’s performance on ‘Many Rivers’, which turned off so many of his fans in 1974, sends a chill up my spine every time I hear it.
As for the original recording, it makes you wish Lennon had done more producing. Yes, he had a tendency – probably absorbed from his frequent collaborator Phil Spector – to throw in everything but the kitchen sink. Think Wall of Sound – with somebody’s head smashed through it. The ‘Pussy Cats’ closing track, a rousing ‘Rock Around the Clock’, sounds as if it were recorded with The Electric Mayhem, better known as the Muppet Show band. It’s a gem.

But back to the Walkmen. Their good-natured, low-fi rocking suits the tracks perfectly, as does singer Hamilton Leithauser’s sandpaper voice. On a couple of numbers the guys even manage to outshine the originals, but mostly they’re just having fun playing songs they love (the Nilsson album having been a tour-bus fave). And ponder this: Nilsson was mainly covering other songs; by covering him the Walkmen have given us what must be the first ever meta-cover album.

I should note that The Walkmen have also just released a very fine record of their own material, ‘A Hundred Miles Off’. Their version of ‘Pussy Cats’ is available this month, and the Nilsson original has been reissued with bonus tracks. A nice Christmas prezzie pair for your best drinking mate.

Brit Prog Rock Lit Crit Blog

2006-11-15T16:12:00.000+01:00

The multi-talented former "Baywatch" star David Hasselhoff is at it again -- he isn't just a fine actor and pop legend, he also writes music reviews... well, actually, it's my mate Martin Jones, in a typically brilliant Kalimotxo article, reviewing the recent concert given by Fish, former lead singer of prog-rock dinosaurs Marillion.

Martin, er, Hasselhoff dragged me along to the show and I actually liked it. Fish is a kind of discount Peter Gabriel, except, at 38euros a ticket, he ain't much of a discount. In 'Hoff's review, I play the part of Yasmin Bleeth.

For the full article, click here. Excerpt below:

Hi fellow Kalimotxeros. This week I’m in Brussels watching the mighty ‘Fish’, ex-lead singer of prog rock greats Marillion. For this tour he is going to play the whole of their amazing 1985 concept album ‘Misplaced Childhood’ in one go. Dude, that’s so prog rock! He’s also playing some solo stuff (uh-oh) plus some really old Marillion stuff which is almost as good as Tin Machine. I rushed down to the Ancienne Belgique from my Spanish course where I’d learnt from my teacher that Fish is known ‘El Pescado’ in Andalucia and ‘El Rey de Prrrrog Rrrrrrock – si no incluido Pedro Gabrrriel’.

My friend Jan-Michael Vincent from Airwolf had to cancel as he had forgotten he had to go to a firework display in Crymerch so I decided to give his ticket to Yasmin Bleeth. I met her in a Lebanese pitta place... [click here to read more]

Quiz Scandal!

2006-11-10T13:22:00.000+01:00

Last night's CAF Pub Quiz was a big success, thanks to all who came out to play and help out for a good cause. And, yes, as the Tippler pointed out last night and again today on his blog, it was Little Jimmy Osmond, not Donny, who sang "Long Haired Lover from Liverpool"... I didn't write the question, but still I should have remembered the Brits' fondness for American novelty acts...

Proof below:

Country New Wave

2006-11-10T12:15:00.000+01:00

Some performers just have it. Not sure what "it" is in this case...
The kid in the pyjamas does a great robot dance...

America Votes 2006

2006-11-06T12:14:00.000+01:00

Many of you have been waiting for my election predictions... and why not? I've been wrong so many times before! This year, TCS Daily asked a selected few of its writers to predict the outcome of tomorrow's mid-term Congressional contest: read the full article here, or see below for my section:

CRAIG WINNEKER, Editor, This Europe

Conventional wisdom holds that Democrats will recapture the House - giving them at least two years in which to get medieval on the Republican administration. I for one relish the prospect of Nancy Pelosi staring down George W. Bush in a contest of which deer is in whose headlights.

Democrats had a chance to snag the Senate, too, until last Thursday, when a Zogby poll showed them actually doing it. This was the guy who, on the afternoon of Election Day 2004, predicted a John Kerry landslide. Study hard, get good grades, and you, too, can become a pollster or even a political analyst.

It will all come down to turnout. Yawn. What an election-eve cliché. What it really comes down to is which party will be better able to suppress the potential voting activities of its opponent. One big question mark: will the clandestinely-gay-fundamentalist-Christian-dad vote be mobilized or discouraged by recent news events? I think when push comes to shove these guys will descend from Brokeback Mountain and swarm polling places. They'll probably give Conrad Burns another six years.

Then there is the biennial carping about how democracy suffers because so few Americans bother to go to the polls. I live in Belgium, where election turnout is always 100 percent; citizens are required by law to vote. Well, the electoral system here produces just as many nincompoops as the American one - and the most successful political party has its roots in the SS. So be careful how much turnout you wish for.

My prediction? Democrats "win" in a landslide, but Republicans manage to keep control of the House and Senate. How will this be possible? Not sure, really, but I'm hoping Vanity Fair will explain it to me sometime soon.

Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar

2006-10-31T12:40:00.000+01:00

Tired of being lectured on politics by rock stars and celebrities in general? Take a look at this diatribe on TCS Daily.

Memo to Steve Earle: I still love you!

How to Build a Laser Gun -- The Latest!

2006-10-18T16:00:00.000+02:00

The laser-gun conspiracy I've written about before continues to spread. Every day I get more hits on this website from people around the world looking for information on how to build a laser gun.

Today, persons unknown in Iran, Turkey and Colorado all typed the words "build a laser gun" into Google and then linked to my site. I'm not sure which scares me the most.

Here's the proof, courtesy of Site Meter:

Domain Name (Unknown)
IP Address 85.185.64.# (Shabeke Gostar Company ,Internet Service Provider)
ISP Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI)
Location Continent : Asia
Country : Iran, Islamic Republic of (Facts)
State/Region : Hamadan
City : Gostar
Lat/Long : 35.4667, 48.8833 (Map)

Language Farsi
fa
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Internet Explorer 7.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
Javascript version 1.3
Monitor Resolution : 1024 x 768
Color Depth : 32 bits

Time of Visit Oct 18 2006 6:01:30 am
Last Page View Oct 18 2006 6:01:30 am
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL http://www.google.co...fa&q=build laser gun
Search Engine google.com
Search Words build laser gun
Visit Entry Page http://winneker.blog...build-laser-gun.html
Visit Exit Page http://winneker.blog...build-laser-gun.html
Out Click
Time Zone UTC+2:00
Visitor's Time Oct 18 2006 1:31:30 pm
Visit Number 4,114

...developing...

Belgo-American Relations

2006-10-13T11:51:00.000+02:00

The Bulletin, Brussels' expat weekly magazine, asked me to chart the history of US-Belgian relations, and try to figure out how one of Europe's most pro-American countries became decidedly less so. I took a stab at it.

A Special Relationship

By Craig Winneker

It wasn’t easy for an American eight-year-old to adjust to life in Belgium in the mid-1970s. For one thing, there was no peanut butter.

Not to mention no McDonald’s, few TV shows in English other than the occasional episode of “The Six Million Dollar Man”, schoolteachers with funny accents and disturbingly little sunshine. I thought I’d never survive the three years my father’s employer, a soon-to-be-vilified American multinational, had posted us here. But I did, and returned to the US with a decent adolescent command of French, an early passion for travel, and an understanding that the world was bigger than just America.

Twenty-five years later, when I moved back to Belgium, much had changed. American products were plentiful here, even if supermarkets still weren’t open long enough to make them obtainable outside work hours. The expat community had grown exponentially, along with EU enlargement and globalisation in general, but there seemed to be fewer Americans. The weather? Well, at least it’s getting warmer.

No one seems to know for sure how many of us Yanks now live in Belgium; estimates from the US embassy and the Belgian government range anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000. When I lived here in the 1970s, the number tossed around was 40,000. American businesses back then tended to parachute in mid-level managers. Nowadays they hire locals.

Jim Begg is one of many Americans who moved to Belgium in that earlier expat era and who’ve made it a permanent home. He first came to Brussels in 1962 as a trainee with Culligan, the water-softener company (as in, “Hey, Culligan man!”) He eventually started his own advertising agency, and recently retired after selling it to a big international firm. He shuttles between his homes in Brussels and the South of France.

“I’m an American européanisé,” he says. “But people still say to me, ‘You sound so American!’ And I say, ‘Well, I am American.’”

It’s true that with his flat Midwestern accent, you might mistake Begg for someone just off the proverbial boat. But he’s been in Europe long enough (and has a Dutch wife, and two French-speaking Dutch-American kids) to have experienced the various ups and downs in the Belgian-American relationship.

Like me, he sees two high points, if you will, in the chart-line of US-Belgian solidarity: the aftermath of World War II and the days immediately following 9/11. Like me, he’s watched Europe’s good will towards America waver since the start of the Iraq war. And, like me, he thinks that this anti-Americanism is really only skin deep, that Belgium is still a welcoming place for Americans.

“There’s still a deep feeling here about America and about its values,” he says. “But there’s also a concern about where America is going right now. I’m often the ‘token American’ at dinner parties, and people always start questioning me about what’s going on in the US. They really want to know what the Americans are thinking.”

The implication there, though Begg doesn’t spell it out, is that they want to know what the hell the American administration is thinking – or not thinking, as the case may be.

But he also gets to see another facet of the Belgian view of America. Through his work with the American Overseas Memorial Day Association, Begg is involved in organizing annual ceremonies honouring the 14,000 Americans who died on Belgian soil during World War II. It’s in this work that he still feels Belgians’ love and appreciation for the U.S.

“I spend a lot of time in these small Belgian villages,” he says, “and it’s an amazing feeling, how pro-American these people are. They will never forget what Americans did for them.” He says mayors in small Belgian towns are doing their best to involve young people in the commemorations, so that they learn the history of Belgian-American friendship. Every year on the U.S. Memorial Day a group of schoolchildren from Waregem sing the American national anthem.

Belgians of a certain generation agree with this sentiment, but also see obvious changes in how America is perceived here. “When we speak of Americans we always say we’ll never forget what they did in World War II,” says Marie-Louise Toisoul, who has lived in Brussels her whole life and was in high-school when Allied (mostly British) troops liberated the city in September 1944 and when American soldiers fought the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes throughout that winter. She points out that many in her country are also aware of the food aid given by the US after both world wars, when many Belgians were starving.

But she acknowledges that the goodwill Belgians have traditionally had for Americans – certainly after the world wars, but also after 9/11 – has waned. “Our attitude has changed somewhat,” Toisoul says. “But the so-called ‘anti-Americanism’ is always directed at George Bush – not at the American people. Of course, there are certain sectors of the population who feel that all Americans simply want to dominate the world.”

Her husband, Jean-Pierre Storrer, notes that not everyone in Belgium these days knows what they know about America. “There’s a difference between those who remember the war and those who came after,” he says.

Part of it may have to do with the lopsided balance of power in the world. As Toisoul points out, with the fall of the Soviet bloc, the US is the only so-called hyperpower on the planet, so it’s a big target for criticism and resentment.

This attitude manifests itself in ways that range from merely annoying to somewhat disturbing. Yes, it’s amusing to watch dreadlocked, bongo-beating ULB students staging some anti-American demo even as they swig Cokes and wear vintage Nikes. And who can really get too upset about the occasional condescending remark at a cocktail party or meathead comment from a rock performer who shouts a Bush-related obscenity from the stage as a cheap applause line?

Or there’s the kind of finely textured sentiment offered up by Flemish singer Raymond Van Het Groenewoed., whose “Weg Met Amerika” (“Down With America”), released last year, attacked Yanks as “the cause of the general decay/Short-sighted thinking, loud talking/Sticking to one-liners forever” and advocated sticking “a hot pick up their ass”. One pro-American Flemish commentator wondered why Van Het Groenewoed hadn’t been arrested, as it is illegal in Belgium to incite hatred against people based on their nationality. Instead, the song was played on Belgian state radio.

But one experience I had will always stand out as especially surprising – and even a bit embarrassing. Two colleagues from the US were visiting me in early 2003 and I wanted to take them to dinner at Aux Armes de Bruxelles. This required running the Ilot-Sacre gauntlet of mediocre restaurants and their infamous barkers, who lure unsuspecting tourists by feigning multilingual geniality.

One of them was giving us his spiel when he heard us speaking American English. He quickly became angry and started shouting, “Why don’t you go drop some bombs on Iraqi children?” I informed him that this was not a good way to attract business, and suggested that perhaps we start the bombing by targeting his bordel of a restaurant. We continued on our way to a pleasant dinner, but I had to explain to my guests that this was by no means an indicator of the town’s mood.

Or was it? One American consultant in town thinks the anti-Americanism is getting worse in Belgium – “worse that it was two years ago even. Brussels is a little out of touch with the rest of the country. A lot of people here just want to join in on anything that’s anti-American. People in Brussels are right in the middle of the propaganda machine. It’s not the Belgians, it’s the kind of people who work in Brussels. It’s the Europeans.”

Well, what about the Belgians? “I love the American people,” says Toisoul. “But it’s true that they often believe that America is the best at everything and nothing from anywhere else is any good.” True, I tell her, and isn’t that one of the ways we are so very like the French or the Italians?

American Michael Steinman is a relative newcomer in Belgium, having lived here for 18 months, but isn’t a part of the Brussels or Antwerp expat scene. He’s a sergeant in the US Army, based in Mons, where he is a trombonist in the SHAPE international band and NATO jazz orchestra. In addition to his military service, which takes him all over Europe, he plays a lot of music on the side, interacting often with jazz-loving Belgians.

“The musicians I meet are almost always enthusiastic and we have a great time on and off the bandstand,” he says. “I feel accepted by them, and as an American jazz player, they are really happy to play with what they consider to be the ‘real thing’. They have never brought up US policies or politics or the fact that I’m a service member in any negative way.”

Steinman does, however, confirm the common view among expats that it is hard to get close to the natives. Belgians are family oriented and not known for being especially warm to strangers – understandable for a country that has for centuries played unwilling (or at least reluctant) host to them. After a hard day at work speaking two or three languages that aren’t your mother tongue, you deserve some down-time.

“I barely know my neighbours,” says Steinman. “I’ve heard that in Belgium you can live 20 years in a house and never see the inside of your neighbour’s house. And I guess it’s kind of true. We say ‘bonjour’ to each other and chit-chat, but always outside in the street. They seemed taken aback when I invited a few in for beers once.”

Despite the well-known coolness to outsiders that its people exhibit, Belgium was once among the most pro-American countries in Europe. Belgians loved everything American – even things we shouldn’t be proud of introducing to them, like instant coffee. (“Oh, Nescafé, that was such a revelation!” gushes Toisoul.) They loved our hamburger meat so much they didn’t want to spoil it by cooking it. They bought our big Yankee cars – tailfin Chevys and stretch Cadillacs, even Buicks.

Toisoul remembers that in 1946 and ‘47 “we were all driving big American cars, Studebakers. Nobody wanted to have these little French cars. We wanted American. Nowadays you only see people riding in them for weddings.”

In fact, business is still fairly good for American marques not seen in similar numbers elsewhere in Europe, though an attempt last year by the Belgian government to restrict imports of American cars – by refusing to issue required safety certificates – held up shipments for months and nearly drove some Belgian specialty car dealers out of business. In the US media, the move was seen as another petty example of Belgian anti-Americanism, especially since Japanese imports weren’t getting the same treatment.

In fact, Belgians’ consumption of American products still seems pretty brisk. They still drink Coke, they still wear Nikes. There’s a restaurant on Place Brugmann called Le Balmoral, which is done up to look like a kitschy American diner of the 1950s, complete with Marilyn Monroe and James Dean figurines. You’d think it would be a real American hangout. The only time I’ve ever gone there – I hadn’t heard of it but a French TV journalist tricked me into taping an interview there because she figured it illustrated US politics – the place was full of Belgians.

Is Belgium slowly becoming more American? Is that where the resentment comes from, if it comes at all? The TV channels are now chock full of American entertainment, both good and bad.Yes, the supermarkets here now carry peanut butter, although you have to search pretty hard for it. They’ve got a hundred kinds of sugary breakfast cereal. And they’re even catching on to the brilliance of pre-packaged Tex-Mex fixins.

Maybe, but the Belgian-American bond works both ways. Not long after I left the U.S. to move to Brussels, America entered something of a Belgophile phase. A couple of frites stands set up shop in Manhattan. Neuhaus opened a store in DC, selling chocolates at even higher prices than they do here. And, a few steps from where I used to live in Washington, D.C., a new restaurant quickly became the trendiest eatery on Capitol Hill. It’s called Belga Cafe.

Clarification

2006-10-10T00:45:00.000+02:00

Well, the Foley story gets weirder. But let me make one thing perfectly clear:

While I was at the party mentioned in this article, and was a journalist colleague of the author, I was not the focus of Rep. Foley's attentions...

But of course I know who was. And can confirm the story.

Ahem...

Fair and Balanced!

2006-10-06T21:07:00.000+02:00

Oh, you've probably seen this already, but it' s just too good to resist. The fine folks at Fox News have figured out how to help Republicans handle the Foley scandal: turn him into a Democrat!

The Foley Fiasco

2006-10-02T16:54:00.000+02:00

Oh dear. And I thought the Mel Reynolds transcript was about as creepy as it could get for a Congressman on the make. Now there's the Mark Foley fiasco -- you can read the lurid details here -- although despite ABC News' warning of READER DISCRETION!!!! SICK DISGUSTING CONTENT AHEAD, it's pretty tame stuff. Still, to think I used to go to cocktail parties at this guy's Capitol Hill bachelor pad...

Actually, for the most thoughtful comment on this story, see Andrew Sullivan's blog.

The Philosopher King

2006-09-29T16:56:00.000+02:00

Need help understanding what's going on in Washington right now? Nobody cuts through the crap like Jon Stewart:

Our Polls Are Rising!

2006-09-25T13:59:00.000+02:00

I'm still searching for new ways to make this site a more fulfilling experience for you, gentle reader. I'm toying with the idea of renaming this blog, even though it's already got a nice enough handle. So, I thought I might take the pulse of my readership:

Transatlantic War of Words

2006-09-22T17:03:00.000+02:00

My Brussels readers will know the Tippler, if not by his online handle then by the elbow grooves he's left in every seedy bar in town. He's blogging (I can just see him in the corner at Fat Boy's bashing away at his computer, trying not to drop ashes in his keyboard), mostly about his efforts to shag some poor bird whose name I hope he has changed for public consumption.

His webpage is becoming a guilty pleasure -- one I'd hoped to keep secret. But this week he took a swipe at Americans for the way we, like, talk, you know? So I had to engage.

OK, so he's technically right about our spelling and pronunciation of aluminum (or aluminium, as its known everywhere else in the world), but I mean, who cares? How often does this come up on conversation? I suppose if you're discussing the tensile strength of varying sized containers of Strongbow, it might be an issue. Anyway, I posted the following comment on his website.

Craig Winneker said...
um, i would make two points on your observations on American language:

1) what a crock of shit

2) check out Wikipedia's interesting entry on the subject, in which you will read that American English more closely resembles so-called Old English, before Norman Invasion changes spellings to use the superfluous "u" and ridiculous "s" instead of "z". In other words, you Brits are really speaking bastardized French.
Also, as an editor, you should abhor the British tendency to use seven words when one will do. We Americans have been streamlining, baby, yeah!

Ok, I'm done.

The Tippler, or Tony, as I know him, he's a good bloke and has a way with words when he's sober and even when he isn't, which is more than most of us can say. He replied cheerfully and hey, we're only havin' a bit o' fun.

I'm eagerly awaiting a blog post from him explaining his mysterious switch from beer to cider... Scary...

Change Is Good

2006-09-20T10:50:00.000+02:00

Big changes at TCS Daily, where I've been working as Europe Editor since 2002. The website has been sold by DCI Group to its editor, Nick Schulz. For more on the story, see Nick's article here, and DCI's press release here.

Nick is a brilliant editor and a great human being. I know he'll build on the success he's already made of TCS. Jim Glassman, the founder of TCS and a friend and mentor to me since our days at Roll Call, is now working on re-launching The American Enterprise magazine as The American. This is going to be really big -- everything Jim touches turns to gold.

I'm leaving the TCS staff but will continue as a contributor. I hope to make something more of the blog you're now reading in the coming weeks and months, but I'm also working hard on a new project called ThisEurope. Check it out, and sign up for updates!

Cool Meets Cool

2006-09-19T16:27:00.000+02:00

Bart Simpson meets the White Stripes....

Maybe you've seen this before, but Flemish TV seems to have stopped buying "Simpsons" episodes about eight seasons ago... So it's new to me.

Critic's Corner

2006-09-15T10:06:00.000+02:00

The Bulletin, Brussels' weekly expat magazine, has just published my short review of a very long book, William T. Vollmann's Europe Central. You can't read Bulletin articles online, so I post my original version below (this way you can read it without antiquated English spellings!).

Europe Central
William T. Vollmann
Alma Books Ltd. (£12.99)
800 pages

Reviewed by Craig Winneker

Confronted with a clear moral choice in the face of overwhelming and pervasive evil – submit and have a chance to live, or do the right thing and most certainly die – what would you do?

This was the stark question unfortunately faced by many Europeans in the first half of the 20th century. We all know what most chose. In his astounding new book, Europe Central, William T. Vollmann, perhaps America’s greatest unknown author, looks at Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia before, during and immediately after World War II, and tries to come to grips with why.

Among the real-life characters he portrays are Soviet composer Dimitri Shostakovich, who struggled to stay true to his art even as Stalinism exerted unrelenting political pressure on him and his loved ones; Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, who commanded the German troops at Stalingrad and, against his better judgment, followed Hitler’s order to fight to the last man (but disobeyed the one dictating that he die rather than surrender); and SS ‘hygiene’ officer Kurt Gerstein, who, while participating in the mass killing of Jews in several concentration camps, secretly tried to alert a Swedish diplomat and the Catholic Church to the Holocaust as it was happening.

Also featured: Russian documentary filmmaker Roman Karmen, German painter and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, Russian General Andrei Vlasov, unsuccessful Lenin assassin Fanya Kaplan, and the mysterious muse Elena Konstaninovskaya. (Had he waited another year to finish the book, Vollmann might have thrown in a sensitive German teenager drafted by the Waffen SS who would go on to win a Nobel Prize for Literature and self-appointed moral arbiter of post-war Germany, all the while concealing his true background. No doubt he would have provided a more revealing analysis than we’ll get from Günter Grass’ new autobiography.)

In a structure that recalls John Dos Passos’ monumental U.S.A. trilogy (written before, during and after World War I), Vollmann weaves fictional and real characters throughout a series of short stories, and uses intimate personal experience to punctuate historical sweep. In an extensive notes section, he documents his fabrications as meticulously as his accuracies.

Winner of the National Book Award for fiction, Europe Central has brought a smattering of long-overdue fame to Vollmann, a prolific and immensely gifted writer whose works typically inhabit the world’s seedier realms and explore its darker issues. (Before publishing Europe Central he managed to abridge his seven-volume, 3,300-page attempt to devise a moral calculus for violence, Rising Up and Rising Down, to a somewhat more portable 750 pages.)

Europe Central has been available on these shores since May, albeit with much less attractive cover art than the US edition, which featured a stunningly stylized 1935 German poster, ‘Deutschland, das Land der Musik’; the European edition, with its helmeted German soldier and overflying bombers, resembles a military comic book.

Like its British equivalent, the Booker Prize, a National Book Award (not to mention the universally glowing reviews Vollmann has earned for this and nearly all of his other works) usually ensures bestseller status. But Europe Central’s sheer size and daunting subject matter no doubt turn readers away. Have no fear – choose to read it.

Europe's Economic Boom?

2006-09-08T11:02:00.000+02:00

Occasionally I venture, oh so gingerly, into business journalism. Here I try my hand at analyzing recent European economic trends in a piece for TCS Daily. Caveat lector...

Europe's Rising Stars

2006-09-07T10:54:00.000+02:00

Check out my somewhat unusual and completely random and subjective article on Ten European Rising Stars in the new issue of e!Sharp. You can flip through pages on their website, here or read the article in .pdf format here.

Rock and Roll Confidential

2006-09-05T16:55:00.000+02:00

Chuck Prophet is a phenomenally gifted and criminally unknown guitarist and songwriter who's enjoyed critical success in his solo career (seven albums, each one better than the last). He's currently touring with his old mates in Green on Red, a mid-1980s band out of Tucson and L.A. that also weren't very well known but influenced a lot of alt.country, Americana and grunge-type bands that followed.

Green on Red have been playing club dates and festivals around Europe (where they have a small but loyal following of aging punkers and recovering hipsters). I saw their gig this week in the tiny town of Eeklo, Belgium. I made the hour-long drive from Brussels on a Sunday night to see them mainly because I'm a fan of Prophet's sublime albums and his right-on guitar picking. It was worth the trip: a great, garage-y rock show in a hot, sweaty venue. What more could you ask for?

Anyway, Chuck's keeping an online diary of the tour. It's funny and insightful -- and, like his songs, well-written. He talks about sharing a bill with Guns 'n' Roses, passes along some road-life culinary advice once given him by Exene Cervenka, and just generally riffs on being an itinerant rocker. Here's a sample entry.

Party Like It's 1969!

2006-09-05T12:06:00.000+02:00

Party Like It's 1969

Does this guy know how to analyze a party scene, or what?

thisEurope on myspace.com!

2006-08-30T11:46:00.000+02:00

What is thiseurope.com, you might well ask? Click here to find out, and to sign up for updates on our progress. Or, if you're a myspace kind of person, check out thiseurope on myspace.com...

My Other Blog

2006-08-10T16:28:00.000+02:00

Expatriate Act has updated for the first time in months. Curious?

Europe's Greatest Speeches

2006-08-10T16:00:00.000+02:00

Another bimonthly issue of e!Sharp magazine means another chance for me to conjure up a completely subjective Top Ten list. This time around I look at great speeches in European history. You can read the article (in .pdf format) by clicking here. Click here to take a look at the revamped e!Sharp website, which allows you to flip through the pages of the mag with a mouseclick. Pretty cool.

The Laser Beam Next Door

2006-08-08T09:55:00.000+02:00

Here's the text of my Wall Street Journal Europe article on secret laser projects around the world. Enjoy!

Laser Tag

By CRAIG WINNEKER
August 4, 2006

I recently started my own blog because, like most normal people, I wanted to share various random and mundane thoughts -- as well as any Internet links to which they might correspond -- with anyone interested enough to stumble across them. Little did I know that some crude yet effective blogging technology would help me uncover a terrorist threat simmering simultaneously on every continent in the world.

You read it here first: A disturbing number of people are trying to build a laser gun.

It all began when I was still learning how to blog, tweaking the various features of my Web site to make them more attractive to the online passerby. Just for fun I posted a link to a page I'd come across that includes instructions for building a laser.

In case the existence of such a site worries you, rest assured that the required components for this particular model include a chain saw, a moped, 20 gallons of Vitalis and three cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. It's likely to cause very little damage to anyone but the person attempting to build it. (The Web site, by the way, will also show you how to teach your monkey kung fu, build a time machine and, perhaps most usefully, make fruit salad.) I found it funny and figured others would, too. Hence the link.

Months went by without much happening -- at least in the way of people other than myself visiting my blog. Then, as I was figuring out how to configure my new Site Meter, a Web site hit counter, so that it would ignore my (quite frequent) hits on my own blog, I discovered something else. I could track individual visits to my page, discovering where the surfers were and what search terms they were using to reach me.

A few people were looking for strings of words I'd happened to have posted as titles with various articles I'd written. For example, researchers looking for the "top 10 European movies of all time" have been linking to a magazine article I wrote on the subject and subsequently stuck on my blog. Someone at the University of Leuven in Belgium was seeking "opinion on Interbrew choosing Stella Artois as a flagship brand"; typing those words into Google conjures my blog, where I'd posted a newspaper feature on beer marketing that provides said opinion.

Needless to say, I became obsessed with the people who were reading my site. I was stalking my would-be stalkers. Occasionally someone even searched on my name. That's always a bit spine-chilling -- but not as scary as what I found next. By far, the No. 1 search term bringing people to my Web site, thanks to the abovementioned blog entry, is "how to build a laser gun."

The first such link was from a browser in Terry, Mississippi. No big deal. Probably just some overachiever fed up with having to study intelligent design in school all day. But the next person was in Amman, Jordan. This caught my interest. We've become conditioned to fear the WMD-focused ambitions of people in the Middle East.

Then the next day there was a Web search from Madrid, Spain, where there had been a terror attack a few years ago and where there are still suspected al Qaeda cells. I was beginning to suspect a network. More hits followed, all looking for information on how to make laser guns.

Here's a partial list of hits and their origins: Kingston, Jamaica; Pierre, South Dakota; College Park, Maryland; Pendle Hills, Australia; Brooklyn, New York; Stafford, Virginia (home of Quantico Marine Base); Allahabad, India; Sao Paolo, Brazil; Kelaniya, Sri Lanka; Qiryat Gat, Israel; Lebanon (!), Tennessee.

Every day I check my site stats. About every third day I find someone looking to build a death ray.

Site Meter offers a few other intriguing clues about these would-be mad scientists, occasionally providing more detailed information. A visitor to my site from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in the U.K., was searching from the premises of Research Machines, an educational software company. Another wasn't just from Maine: He or she was from the Maine Bureau of Taxation, raising disturbing questions about regulators run amok.

By the way, these people are not just searching "how to build a laser." They want to know "how to build a laser gun." The former search string will get you a couple of junior-college FAQ Web sites that tell you how to rig up a crude laser. Add "gun" and you get the original site I found so funny, a few online gaming forums and my blog.

You may say I'm crazy to be worried. But I'm stocking up on Vitalis and Pabst.

Mr. Winneker is a writer in Brussels. Check out his blog at http://www.craigwinneker.com. If you want to know how to build a laser gun, visit www.wwujd.com/makealaser.htm.

Copyright 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

How to Build a Laser Gun II

2006-08-04T11:12:00.000+02:00

My piece on the worldwide laser gun conspiracy is published in the Wall Street Journal Europe today. You can read it at WSJ Online. I'll post the text on this site soon for those who don't have a WSJ Online subscription. (Updated: click here to read article.) If you've linked to this site via WSJ Online, welcome! And check this out!

Europe's Greatest Cars!

2006-05-04T17:48:00.000+02:00

The latest installment of my regular column for e!Sharp magazine is a completely subjective listing of the Top Ten European Cars of all time... You can read it in .pdf format here. Enjoy!

All the Pretty Crowes

2006-03-29T13:34:00.000+02:00

I went to a really great Black Crowes concert in Amsterdam last week. I didn't see Cormac McCarthy there, but he seems to have reviewed the show for my friend Martin Jones' website Kalimotxo.... Check it out here.

Great European Films

2006-03-15T15:24:00.000+01:00

The most recent installment of my regular column for e!Sharp magazine is a list of the Top Ten European Films of All Time. Of course it is ridiculous to try to compile such a list, but I did it anyway. And, in fact, these aren't even really the greatest European films of all time; they're just a small sampling of movies I think are brilliant. I'm already starting to second-guess myself...

1. Trois Couleurs: Bleu, Blanc, Rouge
Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993-94
Europe has produced many of the greatest films in history, but in recent years has suffered from an identity crisis. Under attack from the relentless Hollywood blockbuster (into whose gaping maw European audiences unashamedly flock), the prototypically artsy continental film has suffered. The EU and its member governments struggle to protect their supposedly vulnerable European culture with subsidy programs. Meanwhile, unfortunately, some recent European film offerings have acquired a Hollywood sheen – that is to say, they have become crap-tacular.

Compiling a list of the best movies in any category is a difficult and frequently pointless task. But it’s usually a good way to start an argument or at least spice up a dull dinner conversation. So here goes…

My nomination for the greatest European film comes from a man who started his career producing such documentary classics as The Principles of Safety and Hygiene in a Copper Mine and ended it (prematurely, dying just after their completion) with a series of masterpieces. In his Three Colors trilogy of the early 1990s, Red, White and Blue, Poland’s Krzysztof Kieslowski captured a Europe in transition by focusing on grand themes (liberty, equality and fraternity) as they related to intensely provocative individual situations. Never clichéd, always interesting, uniformly unpredictable, these understated films probably do not top anyone else’s list and may seem less momentous than some of the others on mine. But they are so uniquely European in their scope and execution that they ultimately outpace the rest of the bunch.

2. La Grande Illusion
Jean Renoir, 1937
A classic ever since it was first released, this movie has only become more influential over the passing decades. Directors continue to try to remake the war-movie genre, but none has ever topped Renoir’s take, which focuses on the personal relations between men who have become enemies for reasons beyond their control. In portraying Europe’s descent into fascism, the director focuses not on jingoism, but on human interplay that transcends national borders. It may be the first pan-European movie. Needless to say, it had enemies, and was nearly destroyed after the Nazi regime seized Paris in 1940. Prints and negatives, thought lost forever, were rediscovered in 1958. A restored version is available on DVD and should be in your collection.

3. A Bout de Souffle (Breathless)
Jean-Luc Godard, 1960
The movie that changed all the rules, this may have been the first truly “independent” film. Produced on a low budget and left with purposely rough edges, the movie feels as if it were made up as the director and actors went along. Co-stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg are so sexy you can’t take your eyes off them. This was the first film to use cross-cutting and seemingly nonsensical flash-forwards – techniques that have now become commonplace. It’s also a movie about movies, with references and homages to everything from Humphrey Bogart to Godard’s Nouvelle Vague compatriots. Breathless is perhaps not as sublime as other Godard movies, but is so revolutionary it makes this list.

4. Lawrence of Arabia
David Lean, 1962
As a piece of epic filmmaking, it is unrivalled. No movie made in Europe or America (the Lord of the Rings trilogy was made in New Zealand) has ever matched Lawrence of Arabia’s combination of cinematic vision, historic sweep, compelling character, stunning set-pieces and just plain huge-ness. What this film also has is class and, rare for a production of this scale, restraint. It manages to hold our interest through a four-hour running time not with gadgetry and gore but with good old-fashioned storytelling and brilliant acting. It’s often said about other movies but it’s especially true of this one: They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

5. Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, the Wrath of God)
Werner Herzog, 1972
A relentlessly riveting performance by the mad German acting legend Klaus Kinski anchors this tale of a Spanish conquistador disappearing up his own Amazon in the early 16th century. Just as with Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now a few years later, the audience gets the sense that the filmmaker and his star are exploring their personal hearts of darkness in this movie. European colonialism is boiled down to an insanity-fueled quest for wealth and power as Aguirre seeks the fabled El Dorado. And there are a lot of monkeys. Perfect.

6. La Dolce Vita
Federico Fellini, 1960
Yes, it may be that 8 1/2, his more astringently personal work, is the greater film. And yes, lately it has become more fashionable to cite La Strada or Amarcord as Fellini’s best films. But I stick with this iconic classic – maybe because it portrays journalism in such an, er, interesting light. The story follows a disillusioned gossip columnist as he makes his way through a seedy underworld of sex, booze and superficiality. One of its minor characters, the photographer Papparazzo, would forever enter our degenerate mass-media lexicon.

7. Det Sjunde Inseglet, (The Seventh Seal)
Ingmar Bergman, 1957
A friend of mine once told me that as a teenager he sneaked into a showing of this film thinking it would be a Swedish skin-flick. Boy was he in for a surprise. Dark, austere, surreal, this meditation on life, death and the existence of God won’t please moviegoers looking for a good time. A knight plays chess against the Grim Reaper as Europe struggles with the Black Death all around them. The story and the acting are tight but it’s the stark and distorted imagery that stays with you.

8. A Clockwork Orange
Stanley Kubrick, 1971
Ultraviolence, multimedia over-saturation, moral decay, societal breakdown, incomprehensible lingo, irritating electronica: this ever-controversial film predicted much that we’ve come to take for granted in the modern world. That it still turns our stomachs after more than 30 years is a remarkable testament to the vision of director Kubrick (an American who for most of his career worked exclusively in Britain, where at his request this film is still not shown). The film also features Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony way before it ever became the EU anthem.

9. No Man’s Land
Danis Tanovic, 2001
Though it depicts Europe in what was undeniably not its finest hour, this film is one of European cinema’s finest hours-and-a-half. The tragic international debacle that was the Balkan conflict is concentrated on three wounded soldiers – two Bosnians, one Serb –trapped in a trench between enemy lines. They come to terms with the crisis even as the international observers around them – UN diplomats, a British journalist, a French soldier – cannot. A truly pan-European production with funding from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Belgium, France, Slovenia, the UK and Italy.

10. Zentropa
Lars Von Trier, 1991
Von Trier before he became dogmatic, didactic, misogynistic and anti-American. Though his more famous films Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark are undeniably astounding and at times downright revolutionary, this earlier work is more European (it was even called Europa in some markets) and holds up better on second or third viewings. Its mesmerizing use of narration and suspenseful Third Man feel (heightened by stunning black-and-white photography) perfectly suit the story of a young American caught up in post-war European intrigue.

Honorable mentions: Wings of Desire, Withnail & I, The Battleship Potemkin, The Life of Brian, Underground, Au Revoir Les Enfants...

Report from Belarus

2006-03-09T09:38:00.000+01:00

An opposition activist in Belarus reports the following, from last night:

According to the press release distributed by the office of the single candidate from the unified Belarusian opposition, Alyaxandr Milinkevich, this morning, after a meeting of Milinkevich with voters in the "Byarestse" cinema theater, five representatives of his team, including Vintsuk Viachorka were held by the police and driven away. The opposition activists might have been beaten. For the moment, it is not clear where they are. Their mobile phones are switched off.

For more information, please go to [links in Belarusian]: http://charter97.org/rus/news/2006/03/08/gde
http://www.svaboda.org/articlesfeatures/politics/2006/3/F2BF7C97-81D2-4611-9EED-43889A12E660.html

Update: today the source reports that last night the Milinkevich workers "have been found in one of the detention centers in Minsk. A court hearing is supposed to be taking place right now."

For more on the situation in Belarus as the presidential "election" approaches, read this. And this.

Auto-Reply!

2006-03-02T09:42:00.000+01:00

I am blogging this week for The Bulletin, the local expat magazine here in Brussels. They've just re-launched their website, and are still feeling their way through cyberspace (their blog, isn't really a blog yet, but give them time). Surf on over...

A Soldier, Not a Spy

2006-01-20T12:03:00.000+01:00

Here's a great op-ed piece from my friend Grant Doty, published recently in The Washington Post. Grant is an officer in the United States Army who not long ago returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. He has some thoughts on the current US administration's policy on domestic surveillance...

What's French for Google?

2006-01-20T11:46:00.000+01:00

I don't know Jim Warren of The Hague, but his letter to the editor in today's International Herald Tribune is priceless:

The Google challenge
The article "Europeans weigh plan for search engine" (Jan. 18) provides a very interesting comparison of cultures and economies. In the United States, two motivated young guys with a vision start a company from scratch, hire a bunch of smart people who aren't afraid to innovate and work long hours, and in relatively short order build a massive company. Google is now not only one of the world's most successful and valuable companies, but it is also profoundly changing the way we use the Internet.
In Europe, two governments announce a billion-euro tax-funded program to develop a government-subsidized research center that will hire a bunch of smart people who will work 35 hours per week with guaranteed pensions and who will labor under a dozen layers of management to ultimately deliver, many years from now, a more complicated and unwieldy version of what Google is already doing today.
Anyone who still can't understand why there's a large - and growing - competitive imbalance between "Old Europe" and the rest of the world need look no further than this to see the problem.
Jim Warren, The Hague

What Happens in Vegas...

2006-01-18T15:24:00.000+01:00

My most recent article for TCSDaily (the website formerly known as TechCentralStation) is on the huge Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas... You'll find it here.

Brussels' Best Bars

2005-11-18T12:10:00.000+01:00

The Bulletin, the local expat mag, asked me to contribute to their extensive listing of "Brussels' Best Bars". So I did. Here are my five contributions to their list. These aren't my personal favorite bars; they're just ones I thought should be included....

L’Atelier
77 Elisestraat/Rue Elise 77
02/649-1953

This cozy brown bar can be hard to find, tucked away on a side street in Ixelles’ ULB quarter. But it’s worth the effort. Dominating the candle-lit back room is a wall menu boasting more than 200 Belgian beers, from the lowly Maes to the elusive Fantôme. The selection is categorized helpfully into different styles (sweet blondes, bitter ambers, etc.) that might also describe the student clientele. Thankfully, the place’s charm seems to have survived a modernization effort undertaken a couple of years ago (they still spin vinyl on a turntable).

Cafe Belga
18 Flageyplein/Place Flagey 18
02/640-2569 (but I’d be shocked if anyone bothered to answer)

Fred Nicolay owns the coolest bars in town, and they all share certain traits: poor-to-indifferent service, uncomfortable chairs, unbearably hip clientele. Café Belga is his crowning achievement. What makes this Flagey landmark so great is that everyone loves it even though almost everything about it – the too-cool-to-serve-you bartenders (yes, they are handsome, but must they spend five minutes handcrafting each thé à la menthe?), the horrible view (its terrace overlooks an open sewer), the chi-chi patrons (“I’m saving this seat for my cigarette smoke…”) – is unpleasant. It’s packed all day and all night.

Fat Boys
5 Luxemburgplein/Place du Luxembourg 5
02/511-3266

This, sad to say, is the only real sports bar in town (Conway’s, with its craven red, white and blue signage, tries to fool American tourists trapped in the Toison d’Or-bit, but it’s really just a pick-up joint for suburban Belgians). A sports bar is place with more than one television and the courage to tune them simultaneously to different events. Fat Boys usually fits this definition. What’s more, it has something rare for a Brussels tavern: a long bar at which one may sit and drink.

Greenwich
7 Kartuizerstraat/rue des Chartreux
02/511-4167

Refreshingly for an establishment in the St. Géry hipster quarter, no trance techno beat pulses through the stereo. In fact, no music at all disturbs the quiet, well-lit Greenwich, where you can read, chat, or even hear yourself think. In fact, you can even hear the chess players at the next table thinking. But don’t let the sound of brains contemplating queen sacrifices and hands slapping chess timers and fingers ruffling ponderously through goatees scare you off. Order an ale and enjoy the silence.

Coaster
28 Rijke Klarenstraat/rue des Riches Claires 28
02/512-0847

It’s late, very late. You’re drunk and in need of a nightcap – or, more precisely, early-morning-cap. You’re still in enough control of your faculties to avoid Celtica, with its desperate lager-louts hoping for one last chance to pull. So you head to this gem hidden behind the Halles St. Géry, where the music is good, the service friendly, and the cocktails delivered in frosty shakers. Speaking of shaking, so is your booty, most likely atop the bar. The place seems sequestered, mischievously off-grid. Don’t go before 3. In fact, don’t go at all, you’ll just spoil it.

Out of Ethiopia

2005-11-04T14:51:00.000+01:00

My wife, Karen Hoehn, has just this morning returned from Addis Ababa, where she was helping run an NGO training conference for the Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung (German Foundation for World Population). She is safe and sound, but many people she left behind in Ethiopia are not.

Here's what she experienced when leaving the country yesterday:

I came home from Addis Ababa last night, two days earlier than planned. It's a very sad situation there. The government has been pulling people (e.g., university professors, an NGO [ActionAid] program officer) out of their homes and imprisoning them or shooting them dead because they have different political views (e.g., want freedom of the press, elections without fraud, etc.). One woman was shot dead because she cried out "why are you taking him?!" when the military took her husband away from their home. Kids have been shot in the back when trying to run away from the danger.

I'm totally fine, but yesterday was scary. Driving back from the idyllic DSW training center 45 km outside Addis, we were waved off the road by men with automatic rifles. Men with guns were running up and down the road and jam-packed into military trucks -- handling the guns casually, like bling. Gunfire crackled at regular intervals nearby. The government was shooting men in the prison on the other side of the wall from where we were, picking them off like fish in a barrel. Undoubtedly, many were the university professors, etc., who had been arrested the day before. As we waited, sweating and hearts racing, I watched our young driver trying to choke back his tears.

After a while, the gunfire died down and our driver raced full throttle down the gunman-lined road, with us ducking down, holding backpacks and laptops up against the windows to protect against any stray (or intentional) gunfire. Back in Addis, we packed our things and headed for the airport.

It's very sad to think of my friends and colleagues at risk back there -- but in world news, it's not a big thing, so of course no one cares.

If you see any articles about this, you can be sure that the death tolls are much higher than is being reported, and that many of the people being shot are thoughtful, gentle (and unarmed) people.

Please say a prayer for the good people of Ethiopia and ask God to stay the hand of oppressive governments and people with guns.

Schoolhouse Rock

2005-11-04T11:45:00.000+01:00

Hello, back again after not posting for a while...and only to pass along a review I did of a recent concert by Sufjan Stevens here in Brussels. I wrote it for The Bulletin, a local expat magazine, but I'm posting my original version, which includes a few lines they cut for space. The nerve...

Sufjan Stevens
Ancienne Belgique
25 October

My “isn’t this precious” alarm goes off early, just as indie darling Sufjan Stevens and his band, the Illinoisemakers, appear on stage wearing matching University of Illinois cheerleader outfits and brandishing pompons.

Yes, Stevens has titled his most recent CD “Come on Feel the Illinoise”, a tone-poem tribute to the Land of Lincoln, and promises it is the second in a series of paeans to all 50 US states (his previous album saluted his home state of Michigan). As if to address questions about whether he’s seriously going to produce 48 more albums to complete this project, he starts the show with a geographic tour of the US. “It’s part of the act, the 50 states, pack up your bags, it’s never too late,” he sings, managing to mention each of the states in an introductory jingle.

In between songs, the Illinoisemakers stand at parade rest, arms folded behind backs, and listen reverently as Stevens, affecting a village-idiot-savant persona, shyly explains how his next tune is about a wasp that scared him in the Palisades State Park and this reminded him of something existential. Then they give the cheerleader exhortation, “Ready? OK!” and away they go.

Their matching costumes, irritating musical-chairs multi-instrumentalism (is it really necessary for all seven band members to take turns demonstrating they can play the piano?) and pitch-perfect enthusiasm are more suited to a college production of “Godspell” than a rock club date. But this is Irony, so perhaps that, not Illinois, is what the ‘I’ on their sweaters stands for. The Flemish hipster audience eats it all up.

As for Stevens himself, there’s no denying he’s an intriguing fellow with a talent for intricate composition and sly self-promotion. He too plays an awful lot of instruments, including the banjo, which is one we should hear more of in popular music. And it’s a fine ambition to want to chronicle the American Midwest by investigating its history, its landscape, and its people in popular song (even if Springsteen sort of did it already with “Nebraska”).

At their best, Stevens’s state sketches evoke Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology” in their ability to make the mundane seem hauntingly complex. But mostly they try too hard to be Folk Art. The song titles reek of cleverness. Example: “The Black Hawk War, Or, How To Demolish An Entire Civilization And Still Feel Good About Yourself In The Morning, Or, We Apologize For The Inconvenience But You’re Gonna Have To Leave Now, Or…[it keeps going, actually].”

It is when he stops being so clever that Stevens manages to shine. The refreshingly simple “Jacksonville”, for instance, is a standout, even though (or perhaps because) it rhymes “colored preacher” with “nice to meet you.”

It’s always promising when someone’s music cannot be described in three words or less or by comparing it to someone else. I’m still not sure what kind of music Stevens -- with his campus theatrics, his Charlie Brown-theme piano, and his faux naïf sing-song whisper – is making. But I suppose it’s good someone’s making it.

Balkan Reading List

2005-07-19T11:52:00.000+02:00

I have been reading a lot about the Balkan wars lately, perhaps because of the tenth annivesary of the Srebrenica massacre.

Just finished a phenomenal little book written by Zlatko Dizdarevic, a journalist who lived through the siege of Sarejevo. You can pick up a hardbound copy of Sarajevo: A War Journal on Amazon for a couple of dollars. Do it. It will put whatever little worries you might have into chilling perspective.

And I've just started Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo, by the excellent reporter and columnist Roger Cohen. I'm only 20 pages in and already riveted.

Next up is Balkan Ghosts, by Robert D. Kaplan.

To liven things up, I'm trying to knock off a chapter or two per night of Don Quixote, the superb new translation by Edith Grossman...

With Enemies Like These...

2005-07-19T11:42:00.000+02:00

I don't have too many heroes, but Christopher Hitchens is one of them. I don't always agree with him, just mostly. And I admire his writing more than it would be appropriate to say here.

So I'll just quote him. Writing last week in Slate, Hitchens takes aim at those who blame the US for inspiring terrorism and who fret that US allies will be targeted. He says the issue is not who are the US’ allies, but who are its enemies.

Why did Saddam Hussein, that great lion of the Arab and Muslim world, denounce the American bombing of the Muslim-killing Milosevic? Why did Qaddafi do the same? For the very same reason that Christian fascists in Serbia now denounce the intervention in Iraq: They know that the main foe is the United States and that this fact transcends all the others.

There has been a great deal of nonsense published in the last week to the effect that an alliance with the United States can put other countries like Britain in the position of being ‘targeted.’ Why deny this? I reflect on what was not done at Srebrenica, and on what ought to have been done in Rwanda, and on what was put off too long with the Taliban and the Baathists, and I think what an honor it is to have such enemies. Co-existence with them is not possible, which is good, because it is not desirable or tolerable, either. The Srebrenica memorial stands as enduring testimony to that inescapable conclusion.

Quote of the Day

2005-06-27T14:10:00.000+02:00

Today's International Herald Tribune has a fun article about the mythical Polish plumber, of whom the French are so petrified. The piece focuses on the newfound fame enjoyed by Piotr Adamski, a model who is pictured as a studly plumber inviting the French to come join him for a fun time in Poland.

Included in the story is a quote from Nobel Prize-winner Lech Walesa:

Adamski has become such an overnight sensation that even Poland's former president, Lech Walesa, the founder of the Solidarity labor movement, offered him advice for his Paris trip.

"I suggest that he ask the French why the heck for so many years they encouraged Poles to build capitalism when as it turns out they are Communists themselves," Walesa, an electrician by trade, said in an interview published Friday in the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

Conference Fatigue

2005-06-22T12:09:00.000+02:00

So I'm taking part in something called a Blogger's Alley, here in Brussels at a conference on innovation and patents. Yes, for one day, I'm acting like a real blogger, but don't worry, I'm not totally geeking out.

And before I get started, perhaps I could call for some kind of moratorium on conferences in Brussels? Jeez there are about 10 of them a day on one issue or another. A man can only drink so much orange juice from a wine glass.

Anyway, the current speaker is named Paul Harvey, he designs MRI systems. He is very smart. He has more than 20 patents to his name, for advances that have saved lives and generated wealth not only for him but for lots of other people. Not surprisingly, he isn't too keen on just giving away his knowledge for free.

He's impressive. But unfortunately he isn't this Paul Harvey...

A Stroll Down Memory Lane

2005-06-16T15:57:00.000+02:00

Roll Call newspaper, where I worked from 1989 to 2000, has just published a special issue commemorating its 50th anniversary. As the former Heard on the Hill columnist for the paper, I was asked to write a little article on my experiences there. In case you're interested, here it is:

The 1990s were a time of dramatic upheaval in the institution of Congress and, as Roll Call’s Heard on the Hill columnist for most of that decade, I like to think I played at least some small role on the Capitol stage. So, after all these years and from my new home on a different continent, I feel I can finally say this: Sorry!

I’m kidding, mostly, but not about the transition part. When I started writing HOH, in April 1990, Congress was still populated with plenty of endearingly crusty characters from the Mesozoic era of American politics, when — if we’re to believe the quaint legend — Democrats and Republicans got along. In our current era of vituperation and character assassination, this was what is now referred to nostalgically as the Good Old Days.

Members from both sides of the aisle would, after a long day of political bobbing and weaving, gather in some allegedly larger-than-life committee chairman’s office for bipartisan bourbon-and-branches and back-slapping — and we were all supposed to feel good about it. Who cared whether their deal-making was helping or hurting the public weal? Hell, who even knew? By the end of the decade we’d already had the “Contract with America,” the government shutdown, a slew of ethics scandals and the impeachment of a president. We saw the earliest sprouting of the Congressional Pod People who now seem to dominate the legislative branch.

I wrote HOH in a more innocent time, a time when one could make a name as a gossip columnist without frequent and cleverly worded references to sodomy or reliance on unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo — although it certainly wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Going through back issues of Roll Call to write this article has reminded me of what it was like to grow up, professionally speaking, on Capitol Hill. I was there from the age of 21 to 35, and I’ve probably never had more fun in a job or had better colleagues than when I worked at Roll Call.

Where else could we churn out such headlines as “Staffer Fired, Then Murdered” or “Furnishings Chief Quits Abruptly” or, in our version of Dewey Defeats Truman, from the 1991 leadership battle between Reps. David Bonior and Steny Hoyer, “Whip Contest Too Close to Call” (Bonior won by 51 votes)? We used to joke that the ultimate Roll Call headline would be, “Capitol Destroyed by Bomb; Massive Subcommittee Shuffle Ahead.” As I say, it was a more innocent time.

Reading the old papers also brings back memories of a lot of nice folks I dealt with, sources who I’m sure wouldn’t mind being identified at this late date. Indulge my giving a shout out to a few of them: Dan Nichols, the unflappable and unfailingly helpful spokesman for the Capitol Police during the entire time I wrote HOH — if he had ever told me half of what he knows I would have a Pulitzer; Ari Fleischer, who long before he became a poker-faced White House press secretary was a plugged-in staffer for Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and fount of good HOH items (he once called to tell me his boss had flicked a cigarette butt into the wastebasket and nearly burned down the Senate, but I wasn’t allowed to name the boss or the way the fire started); John Edgell, who specialized in working for kooky Members like Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and then-Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) and now sells Arnold Schwarzenegger dolls, and who is going to freak that I’ve outed him as a source; Donald Ritchie, of the Senate Historian’s Office, who was always happy to provide some background context or archaic anecdote; and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who always returned phone calls, even if he spoke so fast it was hard to get his quotes right.

There are dozens more, of course, and if I’ve left you out, I apologize (or, more likely, you’re welcome).

Then there were the less-than-helpful folks, the Pete Starks and Adam Clymers of the world, who despite their best efforts provided some juicy copy over the years. Their mean spirit and lack of any discernible sense of humor only prodded me to go after them more.

I sense from reading current issues of Roll Call that things have gotten ugly on Capitol Hill. Some lament this. But I’m not one to pine for the good ol’ boy days of the late Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-Texas) or then-House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.). I don’t necessarily confuse bipartisan political tradition with effective legislating or healthy democracy.

In those days, when the fix was in, there was nothing to be done about it. At least now some blogger can raise a stink, generate a million fake e-mails, get Rush Limbaugh on the case and end up renaming an airport or something. Er, maybe I’ll take that bourbon-and-branch, after all.

Seriously, be thankful for what you’ve got: a semi-vigorous political discourse. I have been living for the last five years in Brussels, which is similar to Washington, D.C., in many ways except more people in Belgium speak English.

I’ve had some experience writing political gossip for a Brussels audience, in Entre Nous, European Voice newspaper’s version of HOH, and it just doesn’t compare. People here are too damned serious about advancing The European Project to bother with senses of humour (sorry, humor). Another problem: Nothing much happens in the EU. Nearly every news story starts with “plans are being put forward” or “a Green Paper is being drafted on the proposed Directive.” How it makes me long for former Rep. Bob Dornan (R-Calif.).

Still, there are flashes of hope. One recent item in Entre Nous (which I no longer write) was headlined: “Catering Strike Lingers as Mystery Budgie is Found.”

Brussels may finally be catching Potomac Fever.

Rough Trade

2005-06-03T12:03:00.000+02:00

European Voice has just published the profile I wrote of the new US trade representative, Rob Portman. I wrote it several weeks ago, before the Airbus-Boeing fight escalated...

Bush’s international actor

Rob Portman

Sometimes it seems like nothing much ever changes in transatlantic trade policy. The issues come and go and apparent victories are soon undone by endless appeals and counter-measures. Often, the wins and losses cancel each other out, creating a zero-sum game. The negotiations feed on themselves. The billable hours accumulate.

There’s the Boeing-Airbus fight, which feels like it has been going on since the days of the Wright Brothers and shows no signs of coming in for a landing. The battle over genetically modified foods appears to have no sell-by date. Even the banana war, which tripped up EU-US trade relations through most of the 1990s, is making an unwelcome comeback.

Everyone looks for something that will change the balance of power. In the world of trade negotiations, it can often be a personality that makes the difference. So there is sure to be close scrutiny in Europe of Washington’s new chief trade negotiator, Rob Portman.

A change of personality, apparently, is what is needed at the EU-US negotiating table. EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson did not appear to share his predecessor Pascal Lamy’s affection for the previous USTR, Robert Zoellick. Over the last several years Lamy and Zoellick, who became jogging buddies in their days as G-7 sherpas, were two of a kind: workaholic technocrats who spoke the international language of policy wonkery. But Mandelson is a political animal and born spin-control artist. One of his conversations with the prickly Zoellick ended infamously in a phone receiver being slammed down.

The animosity between Mandelson and Zoellick may have been “blown out of proportion”, in the words of one Brussels lobbyist who argues that “trade policy is driven more by issues than by personalities”. But it certainly won’t hurt that Portman, as a fellow politico, is likely be a better counterpart to Mandy. Portman is by no means slick, but his resume includes a number of critical tools for the job: experience with international trade law, election to political office, a penchant for spin, and close relations with the White House.

More important than his personality or political background may be geography. Until his confirmation as US trade representative at the end of April, Portman was a congressman from Ohio – yes, the state that brought you the second term of George W. Bush. More specifically, he is a native of and represented Cincinnati, a city that is home to Chiquita, the major complainant in the banana case against the EU, as well as to consumer-products multinational Procter & Gamble. Throw in the fact that a factory in his district also produces General Electric aircraft engines, and you’ve got a man who has been more or less at the nexus of transatlantic trade relations over the last 15 years.

Still, don’t expect him to be a wind-up defender of local interests. Portman comes from the traditional pro-business, pro-free-trade wing of the Republican party, and has long argued against protectionist policies. But as a politician he will be acutely aware of the constituent-based, protectionist sentiments of his former colleagues in Congress. Like many European politicians, they worry about outsourcing of jobs and cheap importing of goods and services. They will continue to make life hard for transatlantic trade negotiators.

Reviews from this side of the Atlantic have been good, but it is still early days. Most promising was an appearance with Mandelson at an OECD meeting in Paris in mid-May, at which the two were all smiles. They also pledged to work together to breathe new life into stalled WTO negotiations. “He’s a good choice - an impressive guy and very close to Bush,” says an executive with one of the biggest European industrial companies. “He is a serious appointment and will be good for trade - especially in the Congress, in my opinion.” His nomination as USTR was also widely hailed in the US. where colleagues in Congress from both parties saluted his negotiating skills.

Portman had a stellar early career, working just after earning his law degree for the blue-chip Washington, D.C. firm of Patton, Boggs and Blow, where he specialized in international trade. At the age of just 34, he went to work as a White House counsel in the first Bush administration. He eventually served in the key post of director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, making him the president’s chief lobbyist on Capitol Hill.

After Bush père lost his bid for a second term, Portman returned home to Ohio. He won his Congressional seat in a special election in 1993, his victory an early tremor before the Republican landslide in 1994. In that election, held halfway through Bill Clinton’s storm-tossed first term, Americans rebelled against the White House and sent a record number of conservative Republicans to Washington.

These new members of Congress owed their success in large part to the House Republican leader at the time, Newt Gingrich. A kind of GOP messiah, Gingrich crafted a national strategy behind which Republican candidates could march in lockstep: the ‘Contract With America’, which promised lower taxes and an end to ‘big government’. That huge influx of new GOP legislators included a disturbing number of hillbilly drones, retired sports stars, blow-dried Jesus freaks and other assorted pod-people – many of whom continue to serve in the institution (and are, in fact, now in key leadership positions).

But Portman quickly distinguished himself as bright light in a class full of dim bulbs, and his talents were rewarded. He won a coveted seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, where all US tax legislation originates and where most key trade policies are set. (He also served on the panel’s trade subcommittee, a post that brought him to Europe on occasion, so he’s far from unknown in Brussels.)

Portman was briefly the subject of rumours that he would be chosen to replace Vice-President Dick Cheney as Bush’s running mate in the 2004 campaign. But this no doubt was mainly due to the fact that the Congressman had already carved out a successful career playing a vice-president in mock debates. In 2000, Portman helped Bush prepare for his debate performances by portraying Al Gore; the then-congressman also stood in for Democratic vice-presidential candidates Joe Lieberman in 2000 and John Edwards in 2004 Republican debate practice sessions.

More importantly, he provided key help in the campaigns themselves, and last year ran Bush’s crucial Ohio effort. This is the kind of service which does not go unrewarded. It’s safe to assume that Portman will have the president’s ear on trade policy and just about anything else.

Portman, who is married and has three children, is also a published author, but his first and only book does not deal with the worlds of politics and policy – or even what it was like to be Al Gore. Last year he co-wrote a book on the Shakers, an obscure 19th-century religious sect that made its home in Ohio. The Shakers were known for advocating religious tolerance, crafting simple yet beautiful wooden furniture, and shunning procreation. Not surprisingly, they didn’t last long (the furniture they made, however, is still highly prized). “I’ve been fascinated by the Shakers since I was a boy,” Portman said after writing the book, which is entitled Wisdom’s Paradise: The Forgotten Shakers of Union Village. “It’s a story I thought needed to be told.”

Will much change under Portman, other than personality at the negotiating table? It isn’t likely to. “If you look at the people Portman had with him in Paris last week, it was the same people who were there with Zoellick,” says one Brussels trade-policy expert. “The people they’re dealing with in DG Trade are the same. The issues stay the same.”

So maybe it will be business as usual. Perhaps when things really get boring Portman can start imitating Bob Zoellick.

Home From Iraq

2005-05-23T11:55:00.000+02:00

My high school buddy Grant Doty has returned home to the US after a year's deployment with the US Army in Baghdad. Please read the final entry of his superb My Catch-22 Blog for some thoughtful (and, needless to say, informed) commentary on the situation in Iraq.

Thanks, Grant; glad you're back home safely.

The Empire Strikes Back

2005-05-20T16:19:00.000+02:00

Well, I didn't think my article on the political messages in the new Star Wars movie would be taken so seriously, but I guess I should have known better than to treat such an important subject so lightly. And I probably also should have mentioned in my piece that the current US administration is guilty of injecting some Jedi rhetoric into its policies, so it's a two-way street.

Anyway, the Purple Section of USA Today saw fit to quote me on the subject...

Finally, I post the review of the movie (minus political analysis) that I wrote for The Bulletin magazine here in Brussels. Enjoy.

Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
Opens May 18

You know the drill. You know where the story begins, how it ends and – having visited the website and read the bootleg previews and kept up with or been mowed over by the juggernaut that is this movie and the series it brings to a close – you have a pretty good idea of what will happen in between.

Still, when the house lights go down, and as the 20th Century Fox fanfare strikes up, you feel a tingle of excitement. Maybe it’s because in Belgium you are getting to see Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith a day earlier than anybody else in the galaxy (except for some lucky theatergoers in France, Switzerland and Uruguay – oh, yes and a few even luckier journalists, publicists, and assorted movie-industry pukes).

Or maybe it’s because, regardless of whether the movie is good or not, it will end an era in your own personal cinematic history.

You agree with most of your friends on the other five chapters. Like them, you saw the first movie ten times in the theater; you can make a solid case for why the second one was even better; and you were getting a bit too post-adolescent cool for the corny third one. Like them, you hated the first prequel, which surfaced long after your filmic tastes had switched in favor of small, depressing, character-driven, independent films; but you are willing to defend the second prequel as an improvement, with breathtaking fight scenes and unparalleled production design.
So, your expectations are once again high for this, the last-ever Star Wars movie.

The screen goes black and you take a deep breath. There is a sudden, familiar, eardrum-splitting burst of trumpets and timpani. Words scroll back into nothingness, like some black-hole screensaver. You don’t care what they say, and it doesn’t really matter. You didn’t come to a Star Wars movie to read backstory.

You came to be blown away, and you soon are. Yes, you expect the special effects to be incredible. After nearly 30 years of the Star Wars franchise, technology has finally caught up to George Lucas’ imagination. You cannot help but marvel at his ability to create new worlds, each one stranger, more richly detailed, and more visually stupefying than the last.

But what really amazes you is the improvement in the writing, and the genuine emotional content of some of the scenes. You figure it must be true that Tom Stoppard was brought in as a dialogue doctor for the Lucas script.

Even more crucially, Lucas has pared away the plot-muddling hoo-hah that bogged down the first two prequels. Episode One: The Phantom Menace had more talk of interplanetary trade pacts and galactic confederations than a Coreper II meeting. This film’s story is driven by basic emotional themes: love, anger, jealousy, betrayal, lust for power. It won’t win any acting awards, but a few scenes between Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker and Natalie Portman’s Padme actually manage to move you. When could you ever say that about a Star Wars movie?

You read the advance word about how much darker this installment is than its predecessors (or, for that matter, previously made successors), and that it may be too grim for small children. It is indeed dark. But you realize it isn’t anywhere near as violent as the video games every toddler seems to be playing these days.

Plus, you appreciate all the light touches of humor that punctuate Anakin’s downward spiral into Darth Vaderdom: killer droids who say “Ow!” when struck by a light saber, or a hulking and coughing General Grievous who limps around like a robot in need of an oil change, until a fight starts and he transforms himself into a buzz-saw version of one of those BMW bubble-scooters. You giggle at all the deft references to other movies, from Tarzan and Apocalypse Now to Nosferatu and Frankenstein (Lucas has always been a master of homage; the first Star Wars was practically a remake of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress).

But what really clinch it for you are the storytelling, the overwhelming visual style and the unrelenting pace – this is Lucas at his fantastical finest. Nothing in any of the other five Star Wars movies matches the dramatic impact of the last 15 minutes of this installment. It is a combined triumph of seamless editing, skillful directing and, yes, believable acting that almost makes you forget Harrison Ford’s ‘I’m-phoning-this-performance-in’ smirk from all those years ago.

This may not be a movie for kids, but who cares? You were a kid when the first Star Wars movie came out and that one was made for you. You’re grown up now, and this one is also made for you. As Yoda would say: Love it, you will.

Please Let These Star Wars.....Stayyyy

2005-05-11T16:59:00.000+02:00

I was lucky enough to see a press preview of the new Star Wars flick, Episode III Yadda Yadda Yadda (or maybe Yoda Yoda Yoda). Loved it. I'll have a very positive review coming out in The Bulletin and will post as soon as it is published. In the meantime, read a short article I wrote today for TechCentralStation about some bizarre political messages in the movie. Until next time, may the Schwartz be with you...

Theft of Intellectual Property

2005-04-20T14:00:00.000+02:00

Forget about whether I had any illegally downloaded music on my iPod, or how exceptionally cool it may have been. Somebody actually stole my whole damn iPod! That is true theft of my intellectual property.

Memo to whomever is rifling through unattended clothing in the British School of Brussels football locker room while we're out playing soccer on Thursday nights: Eat My Shorts.

And, uh, I hope you like my tunes.

Pod Person

2005-04-08T19:02:00.000+02:00

Wondering why I haven't been posting too much of late? I just got an iPod Shuffle, so all other normal life functions have shut down... Sorry.

Please drop by again later, or send me some music.

In Blog We Trust

2005-03-30T20:39:00.000+02:00

A tip of the fedora to Roland Lloyd Parry at The Bulletin, Brussels' expat weekly magazine, for mentioning this site in his feature article on blogging in Belgium. He quotes me accurately and thusly on the rise of blogging (a subject on which I am quite obviously no expert):

"It's 90 percent nutters, but that still leaves plenty of room for serious ones... A lot of people dismiss it as wankery -- but compare it to the mainstream media. There are a lot of wankers who own newspapers. It's spreading information around in a new and frightening kind of way."

The story also quotes Aidan White of the International Federation of Journalists, who says he is not concerned that the rise of blogging may be a threat to traditional journalism. As White puts it:

"A blogger's view of the world is as interesting as the view from a stranger at the bar or on the bus. It's interesting, but it isn't journalism. Journalism should, at least in theory, be accurate, reliable, useful and ethical. A blogger has none of these constraints, which is why the world of blogging is so fascinating and quirky... Most people, even on the internet, prefer to get their information from traditional sources. Blogging is the art of rumour and speculation. Good fun, but not threatening to journalism."

He clearly hasn't been reading the papers.

Let the Music Do the Talking

2005-03-18T12:23:00.000+01:00

To celebrate a recent milestone, my 1,000th visitor (still a long way to go before I catch up to this guy), I post a small collection of music articles I've written recently. They were originally published in The Bulletin, the expat weekly here in Brussels -- although these are the unedited versions.

A confession about my site-counter: I only just figured out how to make it ignore my own visits.

And a confession about these articles: I'm new to the rock-critic game, so excuse the occasional over-egging-of-the-custard or lazy comparison.

The Saints/The Silos
Le Botanique, 9 March
“Ageing punk band” is an oxymoron on a par with “jumbo shrimp” or “corporate social responsibility”. So it should not have been too surprising that before The Saints began their set a roadie carefully placed two gin-and-tonics and a bottle of Bordeaux by the mic stand. What, no hors d’oeuvres?

Born in the bars of Brisbane, the Saints had a chart hit in 1976 with “I’m Stranded” and were quickly positioned as Australia’s answer to The Sex Pistols. They have soldiered on (and off) ever since, emerging every few years with a different line-up, ever-bloozier new riffs, and occasionally a clever harmony.

Singer-guitarist Chris Bailey is all that remains of the original group, and even though he’s getting on in years (he looks like Paul McCartney on a bad hair day, complete with Macca’s unfortunate mid-90s mullet), his sly grin suits him better than the youthful sneer of yesteryear.

True punk attitude is a tough sell in Brussels, where audiences generally shun moshing in favour of pensive posing, sometimes even allowing a head bob or two. But it’s not worth wasting too much time contemplating such lyrics as “A madman wrecked my happy home/and now I live in a twilight zone”. ‘Tis better to take another sip of claret and get on with thy power chords.

Opening act The Silos, out of New York City, proved the far more rewarding half of the bill. Their refreshing twist on the power-trio format – drums, bass, and three-quarter-size acoustic guitar played through an overdriven amplifier – suited such tight compositions as “The First Move” and “Four on the Floor”. Like the emotional gearbox of the latter tune, the Silos shifted effortlessly between rock urgency and pop jangle, tension and release.

Lap-steel guitar added a plaintive touch to the title track of the band’s new album, When the Telephone Rings – one of the set’s highlights, in which singer Walter Salas-Humara offers what must be the best post-9/11 lyric yet: “Even in New York/How I long for New York”.

Wilco Preview
Elysee Montmartre, Paris, 16 March
Except for a short set on a Werchter side stage last summer, America’s best rock band hasn’t been in Belgium for a while and isn’t coming anytime soon. To catch Wilco in a club setting requires a quick, midweek overnight to Paris -- but isn’t that why we have the Thalys?

Since forming the band after the breakup of alt.country pioneers Uncle Tupelo in 1995, frontman Jeff Tweedy has charted an intriguing and challenging musical course. Gone are the steel guitars and dobros in favor of tape loops and Radiohead-esque knob-twiddling.

But Tweedy’s lyrical brilliance and the band’s top-flight musicianship have been a constants and each of Wilco’s five albums has proven more satisfying than the one before it. Radio airplay has been more elusive than critical acclaim, but album sales are slowly building via savvy internet marketing – and incendiary live shows. The band just won two Grammys for its latest release, A Ghost Is Born.

It’s hip to pine for Uncle Tupelo, but despite the mythologizing of that great combo, Wilco is the better band. Grab a toothbrush and get on the train.

The Neville Brothers
Ancienne Belgique, 26 February
When Aaron Neville takes centre stage he just about fills it, and not without a certain amount of swampy menace -- his heavy-lidded eyes peering suspiciously from under a Stetson brim, his enormous arms bursting out of a T-shirt emblazoned with an American Indian whose face is half panther. Add in the impressive prison ink covering Neville’s biceps, and the dagger (or is it a crucifix?) tattooed on his left cheek, and for a minute you might feel intimidated. Then he opens his mouth to sing and choirs of angels descend.

Nearly 40 years after hitting it big on the pop charts with “Tell It Like It Is,” and known more in recent years for his syrupy duets with Linda Ronstadt, Neville is back together with his brothers, whose eponymous band pioneered the funk-and-soul sound of their native New Orleans.

Brothers Aaron, percussionist Cyril and saxophonist Charles (along with eldest sibling Art, who is recovering from back surgery and missed this tour), could each headline a show in his own right. Their infrequent family reunions are not to be missed – if only because they get Aaron off the movie-soundtrack-ballad circuit and back in the groove.

Now the Brothers have added a generation to the act, which features Aaron’s son Ivan (an alumnus of Keith Richards’ legendary X-Pensive Winos) on keyboards and Art’s son Ian on guitar. The elders seem happy to let Ivan anchor the show with his soulful vocals and virtuoso playing. But sonny can’t overshadow his dad and uncles and doesn’t try to.

With their insistent opening groove, “Can’t Stop the Funk”, from Walkin’ in the Shadow of Life, their first new album in five years, the Brothers restate their soul street credentials. “We been around since bebop,” they remind, “we been around since doo-wop, now we around for the hip-hop.”

The Nevilles have always stirred Motown soul, reggae prophecy, Southern Gospel, African nationalism and even folkie activism into their potent voodoo brew. When they cover the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion” early in the show, you understand their frustration at “what the world is today”.

Later, when Aaron channels Sam Cooke through the ethereal “A Change Is Gonna Come”, you think maybe there’s hope. After “One Love/People Get Ready”, you even start to feel alright. And, at the end of the show, when Aaron sings “Amazing Grace”, accompanied only by Ivan on the church organ, you fight back a tear and believe for a minute maybe there is a God.

Doonesbury's Court Martial

2005-03-12T12:28:00.000+01:00

Grant Doty reports from Baghdad on a debate among his fellow soldiers on the merits of the "Doonesbury" comic strip, which has come under fire in Stars and Stripes for being a "left-wing-subcutaneous-slandering piece-of-crap". Turns out a lot of Lt. Col Doty's comrades-in-arms don't feel that way.

Here's the original letter (Grant redacted the author's name, even though it was published in Stars and Stripes):

As a Marine colonel based in Iraq, I am offended that the supposed "newspaper" of the services would choose to include Doonesbury, that left-wing-subcutaneous slandering-piece-of-crap comic by Gary Trudeau. Can't Stripes find anything better on which to spend its money?

And here is Grant's reply, which the military paper has not yet published (although it has published several other letters defending the comic strip):

After reading the recent rant against the marvelously insightful, frequently irreverent, and always entertaining comic Doonesbury (i.e., "left-wing subcutaneous-slandering-piece-of-crap"), I am reminded of a quote from a small Vermont newspaper editor. While not intending to impugn the author of the rant, that Vermont editor wrote, "One of the values of the letters to the editor section of a newspaper is that it can open the mouths of fools." Keep Doonesbury and your letter to the editor section -- both provide a great service in support of freedom of speech and the press for which we are all fighting.

I'll give a big civilian salute to that.

Opera Cops

2005-03-09T12:01:00.000+01:00

Turkish police may be cracking down on womens' heads, but French cops are busy cracking down on...opera musicians! As Brian Carney writes today in the Wall Street Journal Europe, the authorities are concerned that traveling opera productions are using musicians brought in from Eastern Europe. This upsets their union-card-carrying counterparts. Carney continues:

Of all the unsavory aspects of French police going about the country busting orchestras and locking up their conductors or managers, the worst canard is that it's being done to protect innocent violin-playing lambs from Sofia. In common with price-fixing cartels the world 'round, high-priced French and German musicians have only one interest in this affair, and that is keeping low-priced competition off the market. That this means smallish French towns get no opera, or get it only when heavy public subsidies are made available, concerns them not at all.

This Is a Test

2005-02-25T10:25:00.000+01:00

A local (er, I mean, massively global) communications firm has asked to me to give a presentation today on blogging. I'm not an expert, but I'll give it a shot. I'll tell them about some famous blogs, such as The Drudge Report, wonkette, instapundit. I'll mention some European bloggers and where they can be found. And I will eat a sandwich or two.

L'Afrique, C'est Chic

2005-02-21T16:57:00.000+01:00

Here's an article I wrote last week for The Wall Street Journal Europe, on interesting changes being made at Belgium's Royal Museum for Central Africa.

Haunted by King Leopold's Ghost --- Belgium's Africa Museum Confronts Colonial Deeds; Tour of a Work in Progress

By Craig Winneker
Special to The Wall Street Journal
18 February 2005
The Wall Street Journal Europe
P3
English
(Copyright (c) 2005, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

Tervuren, Belgium -- THE LAST TIME Louise Lion made the 50-kilometer trip from her home in Charleroi, Belgium, to the outskirts of Brussels to visit the Royal Museum for Central Africa was as a student in 1953. She recently returned for a second look -- and the changes she found came as something of a shock. "This is very surprising," she said, pausing on a bench. "I am learning a lot of things they did not teach us in school."

No one would be more pleased with her reaction than Guido Gryseels, who became the museum's director in 2001 and two years ago embarked on a redesign of the state-owned institution -- the first since it was founded in 1897. Two exhibitions that consume more than half of the museum's vast floor space offer a midstream glimpse of this renovation, which won't be completed for another five years.

The exhibits, which will run most of this year, aren't just giving a much-needed makeover to one of the world's most important collections of Africana. They also are spurring a long-dormant debate about Belgium's role as a colonial power. The small country came late to the colonialism game, stayed in it longer than most of its European neighbors, and played it by some of the harshest rules imaginable. It has been slow to reconsider this portion of its history.

There may be no more interesting time to see the museum than now, when it still has one foot in the past and one in the future. Antiquated attitudes still confront the visitor immediately inside the enormous front doors. In the entry hall, gilded statues depict Belgium's supposed influence in Central Africa. "Belgium brings civilization to the Congo," reads an inscription on one showing a priest ministering to an adoring Pygmy tribesman.

But soon the new temporary exhibitions take over, and a more modern sensibility prevails as visitors are led on a journey from before the colonial period to independence and beyond. Return visitors to the museum -- even those who saw it as recently as a year ago -- will be surprised by the drastic overhaul. What once was a dusty collection of glass cases and obscure agricultural charts has become a lively exploration of colonialism.

Perhaps most importantly, the museum now addresses the question of whether Belgium is responsible for genocide -- the deaths of millions of Congolese killed through forced labor, starvation and disease from 1885 to 1910, when the rubber and ivory trades were at their frenzied peak. The Congo was Belgian property from 1885 until 1960, first as the personal fief of the country's then-king, Leopold II, and then as a colony controlled by the government. The king started the museum in 1897 as an advertisement for the colony, and many exhibits touted its economic benefits to Belgium. The present museum opened in 1910 and was little changed for decades.

The 1998 book "King Leopold's Ghost" by American writer Adam Hochschild was a turning point in how Belgium's colonial role has been viewed. The book alleges that as many as 10 million natives died during Leopold's stewardship of the Congo, calling it one of the worst genocides in history.

Mr. Gryseels says the controversy surrounding "King Leopold's Ghost" spurred the decision to reshape the museum. But the documentation he has produced conspicuously avoids discussion of the book, and so do the new exhibits. In places, the museum tackles the question of genocide and brutality head-on, but at the same time challenges the accuracy of some of the numbers, seeking a delicate historical balance.

The bigger of the two exhibitions, "Memory of Congo: the Colonial Era," attempts to come to grips with this history, and to put it in the larger context of European imperialism -- highlighting its positive as well as negative implications. "For us," Mr. Gryseels says, "this is the first step in the renovation -- to look back on our colonial past in a critical way, not only to the eyes of the Belgians but also to the eyes of the Congolese."

Especially interesting are videos showing Belgians and Congolese -- administrators, soldiers, farmers, workers -- recounting personal experiences. (Visitors can listen in French, Dutch or English.)

The last section of the exhibition, "Independence," is lit in bright red, adorned with huge pictures of Kinshasans celebrating their freedom in 1960, and punctuated by African music piped in. Off to one side is a replica of a period Belgian living room. An old console TV shows footage of Belgium's then-sovereign, the young Baudouin, relinquishing control of the colony to the Congolese. It is as close as you can get to reliving history.

The second exhibition, "Congo: Nature & Culture," offers another sneak preview of the Africa Museum of the future, with an emphasis on environment and biodiversity and "the links between people and nature." Its exhibits are showcased in deep, rain-forest green with authentic-looking wooden poles that practically scream "sustainable development."

The museum's permanent collection also has undergone changes. The Gallery of Remembrance, its most controversial room, still honors the Belgian pioneers who died in the Congo and includes an imposing bronze statue of Leopold II, unmistakable with his squared-off beard and perpetual glower. But now there is acknowledgment of the many Africans who died during the colonial period. A recently added plaque reminds visitors the gallery was built in a different era and reflected its outlook, thus "there was no mention of the Congolese victims."

The room's layout has been changed so that what was a somber shrine, closed off at the end of a hallway, is open for visitors to pass through on the way to the new exhibitions. Leopold -- whom Mr. Gryseels was thinking of consigning to the attic two years ago -- glowers in a corner.

Eventually, the exhibits at the entrance will be removed or shown with explanations to put them in context, the museum says. More changes are coming, and the debate over their implications is just beginning. An entry in the exhibition's guest book, written by Bernard de Gerlache, head of the Belgo-African Chamber of Commerce, neatly captures the challenge facing the museum as it walks a fine historical line. "A leopard," the inscription reads, quoting a Congolese proverb, "cannot change its spots."

---
Memory of Congo: the Colonial Era
Congo: Nature & Culture
Until Oct. 9.
Leuvensesteenweg 13, Tervuren, Belgium
(Tram 44 from central Brussels)

It's Like Lisbon...or Something

2005-01-28T10:39:00.000+01:00

This is from today’s Wall Street Journal Europe, but it loses something without the Beavis and Butthead illustration they used in the paper. They also teased it on the front page with a small graphic of B&B and the headline “Lisbon, um, stinks”. They won’t print the word “sucks”, apparently. Anyway, I can retire now.

January 28, 2005

COMMENTARY

Half-Kokked

By CRAIG WINNEKER

BRUSSELS -- You've got to admire the moxie, the determination, the utter indefatigability of the European Union when it comes to the economic stimulus strategy it calls the Lisbon Agenda. Like an emergency-room doctor pounding on a code-blue patient's chest, screaming, "Breathe, dammit, breathe!" EU leaders endlessly try to resuscitate what has long been diagnosed as a hopeless case.

Even the words agreed upon at the Lisbon summit in 2000 (which explains the otherwise inexplicable name) have become a joke: That by 2010 Europe will transform itself into "the world's most competitive and most dynamic knowledge-based economy, capable of sustainable economic growth accompanied by a quantitative and qualitative improvement in employment and greater social cohesion."

Not exactly "It's the economy, stupid."

Nevertheless, every six months or so, the EU coughs up another new initiative aimed at restoring life to the strategy -- while reassuring doubters that sweeping economic reform will not come at the cost of Europe's supposedly cherished social values.

Initiatives and publications abound. Remember the Sapir Report? Chances are you do not. Issued in 2003 by a group of so-called "wise men" -- one of whom apparently was named Sapir -- it excoriated EU governments for failing to meet their Lisbon targets. "Growth must become Europe's No. 1 economic priority," it pleaded. No one -- least of all the politicians to whom it was addressed -- listened. Last year brought the Kok Report, which may have attracted a little attention if only for its Beavis and Butthead-inspired title. It said basically the same thing.

Sapir, Kok, Lisbon. Bureaucrats in Brussels actually expect this mnemonic nonsense to motivate people. Instead, to insiders, the term Lisbon Agenda has come to mean something that cannot be achieved; to the average European, it means nothing. (Lisbon, by the way, is a beautiful and vibrant city. It does not deserve to become a synonym for failure.)

At a recent EU summit, European Parliament President Josep Borrell showed a surprising grasp of reality when he suggested a name-change might be in order. "The first thing which we need to do with regard to the Lisbon Strategy is to stop calling it that," Mr. Borrell told EU leaders last November. "Nobody knows what we are talking about."

Unfortunately, his suggested replacement doesn't exactly fit on a T-shirt, either: the "strategy for competitiveness, social cohesion and the environment."

With the 10-year clock ticking, frustrated and desperate to salvage their economic agenda, and unmoved by Mr. Borrell's brainstorm, EU leaders tried another approach. Late last year, they appointed a commission president who is actually from Lisbon. José Manuel Barroso talks a good game about making economic growth the No. 1 priority of his five-year mandate. But no matter how hard he tries -- or how many reports he produces -- he will still have to get past member-state governments reluctant to act.

He is undaunted. Next week the European Commission will unveil yet another effort. Yes, five years into the 10-year plan, Lisbon is getting a "relaunch." Like a desperate restaurateur hoping a new menu concept will bring in customers, the EU is repackaging the same old ingredients, and continuing to serve up the same promises it will ultimately fail to keep.

Conveniently dropping the talk of overtaking the U.S. as the world's economic leader in 10 years, the relaunch focuses on 10 points. Exactly, it's a 10-point plan for growth, aimed at creating "more and better jobs in an innovative and attractive Europe." These include "attracting more people in employment," "more and better research and development," "promoting innovation and sustainability," "completing the internal market," "creating the conditions for a strong European industrial base," etc.

Do we detect a pulse in the patient? It's very faint. So get ready. The commission is grabbing its defibrillator paddles for one more try. Clear!

Mr. Winneker is editor of TechCentralStation Europe.

Copyright 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Je Blog, Donc Je Suis

2005-01-27T10:18:00.000+01:00

Here's a version of my column this week in European Voice newspaper on how blogging is catching on in Europe. I didn't mention it in the column, but I would add here that Marc Johnson's European Weblog Review offers an excellent look at what's out there.

BLOGGING is a genuine media phenomenon in the US – it played a prominent role in the last presidential election, proving in a few cases to be more reliable and incisive than the ‘mainstream’ press – but it is only just catching on in Europe.

However, if the trend continues, the on-line weblog or ‘blog’ may become a significant media force in an age when major European newspapers are busy losing circulation and sometimes credibility.

True, plenty of inhabitants of the ‘blogosphere’ are certifiable nutters – operating on the lunatic political fringe or somewhere beyond it. But others publish web sites that are well-written and informative – and come equipped with advertisements, useful links and even the occasional scoop.

Naturally, politicians are getting into the act, including the one charged with communicating the EU to its citizens. European Commission Vice-President Margot Wallström has just launched her own blog. Yes, some of her entries are a bit mundane. Take this one from 19 January: “It is six o’clock in the morning. It is also dark, wet and cold. The only living creatures we can see are a fox, two cats and the newspaperman. Me and my husband are out for a regular 45-minutes walk or slow jog.”

But her 13 January instalment – the blog’s inaugural entry – is genuinely moving in places (her concern for friends in Sri Lanka), funny in others (her assessment of 2004 – it “sucked”), and overall an interesting read.

Other Brussels types, including MEPs, have also started blogging. Netherlands deputy Jules Maaten is one of the more active online diarists. In his most recent posting he plugs a speech he gave last week at European Voice’s conference on health care.

New blogs – some serious, some otherwise – launch every week. A Fistful of Euros has a fairly comprehensive list of other EU blogs and even includes a ballot for readers to vote on the best European blog. Nominees include: The Yorkshire Ranter, Viewropa, and the perfectly named, Paris-based website Je Blog.

Then there’s the intriguing and well-written Europhobia, which bills itself thusly: “The musings of a non-partisan one-time Eurosceptic turned pro-European and his far better-informed friends.” Its most recent posting excerpts a lengthy treatise on EU-US relations from the New York Review of Books.

And how could anyone resist the transatlantic musings of the French expatriate whose blog is called Au Texas, Tout le Monde est Fou Sauf Moi?

Political partisans abound in the blogosphere. UKIPwatch devotes itself to skewering the Eurosceptic British party. Socialist Group president Poul Nyrup Rasmussen started a Euroblog during the 2004 parliamentary campaign to “combat voter apathy”. And Publius, in French, is devoted to coverage of the EU Constitution. Its most recent entry links to an op-ed written by Pierre Moscovici in Le Figaro.

Which paddles us back to the media mainstream. Even Le Monde, Europe’s most sophisticated newspaper, has started a blog section, with correspondents filing diary entries on a range of subjects.

Latest example: the paper’s editor-in-chief, Eric Le Boucher, is blogging from Davos during the World Economic Forum. He describes the celebrity panels being held, including one discussion on whether artists can still change the world featuring French model Carole Bouquet. Confides Le Boucher, “J’hesite pas.”

Update on Mr. Bang

2005-01-13T14:10:00.000+01:00

Well, I've helped to make Bang even more famous than he already is. The Bankgok Post has reprinted the article I wrote from Koh Mook. You can read it here if you haven't already seen it via TechCentralStation, and even if you have read it before you can at least see a picture of Bang. The other guy in the photos is not me.

Whassup

2004-12-31T13:14:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone, still safe in Thailand. Here's a story I've written for TCS -- it isn't much in the way of disaster journalism but it may interest you to know what's going on in one place that hasn't suffered too badly from the tsunami.
Happy New Year
Craig

To Be Safe and Fortunate in Thailand

2004-12-29T14:15:00.000+01:00

"Sawasdii krap" from Thailand. As I write this the devastation around south Asia is intense and the death toll in countries around the Indian Ocean is mounting (is it just me or do the cable networks seem obsessed with the body count figures?). But Karen and I are safe and sound at an idyllic spot on the calm and beautiful Andaman Sea. We were up north, in Ayuttaya, when tragedy struck, and have been safe at all times on our vacation. Sadly, many other tourists were not so fortunate. The island we are on now, Ko Mook, in the south of Thailand, was almost completely (and miraculously) spared major damage from the tsunami. It was shielded from the wave by another island nearby, Ko Kradan. The resort where we are staying is beautiful and it is nearly full of people. We have air-conditioning, clean running water and drinking water, delicious food, beautiful beach, sunsets, everything. Unfortunately, like you, we are watching the devastation elsewhere on CNN. We are watching such scenes of horror and it makes us feel a little uneasy about our vacation. We are especially saddened by the scale of the tragedy in South India, in the state of Tamil Nadu, where we were two years ago at this time and where we have friends -- and also by what is going on in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia, and north of here in Phuket and Krabi in Thailand. They just cannot cope with a disaster like this.
A small fishing village on the other side of the island we are on now was pretty badly damaged, and we are going to spend some of our time here helping the people there. The Thai people are very friendly, and they are all smiles, even though many of them have lost friends and family on other islands. A smiling man appeared at the door of our resort's office this morning, chatting away with his colleagues. Someone mentioned to us that the man's wife had been killed by the wave. She worked at a resort affiliated with this one on Ko Phi Phi island, which was totally devastated by the wave. Most Thais are Buddhist. Perhaps he is comforted by his belief in reincarnation. But I doubt it.
I will try to write more later, but wanted to let anyone know who checks this site that Karen and I are safe. We have always been fortunate in our lives with our family, friends, health, safety. We continue to be that way.
We will stay safe. You do the same.
Love, Craig

This Is Rumor Control

2004-12-04T13:00:00.000+01:00

Got a minute or six? Check out a very cool blog edited by a former colleague of mine who is operating under a nom de plume taken from Aliens. The movie, not from actual aliens. I can't exactly remember which one Apone was but he seems to have a good kill ratio.

Send Rove on Over

2004-11-29T17:27:00.000+01:00

In today's Wall Street Journal Europe, I suggest dispatching Karl Rove to the EU, where he might help orchestrate victories in the various constitutional referendums. You need a subscription to read it online, but I'll post the article below for those of you who don't have one. Please don't tell the fine people at Dow Jones...

Roving Europe

By CRAIG WINNEKER
November 29, 2004

After masterminding President George W. Bush's re-election victory,
Karl Rove probably needs a new challenge. Nothing could be more
difficult than getting the EU's unwieldy constitution through a series
of national referendums.

Soon, up-or-down votes on the controversial 855-page (including annexes, protocols and declarations) document will be held in many of the EU's 25 member states -- among them the U.K., Ireland, Denmark and other "countries like France." But EU leaders and political spin-meisters have proven exceedingly inept at communicating the constitution's benefits, and polls show support for it slipping almost everywhere.

If even one country votes no, the constitution is dead. Who better than the widely acknowledged "Smartest Man in Politics" to sell an almost entirely unsellable and incomprehensible document to an increasingly dubious electorate?

So, just as he did for Mr. Bush, Mr. Rove might come up with a targeted campaign effort in each problem country. Here's how it might look:

• The U.K.: This will be the toughest nut to crack. Most Britons do not even think of themselves as European, much less support the idea of giving up more of their "sovereignty" to Brussels via a constitutional treaty.

Classic Rovian strategy here would comprise a two-pronged effort. Prong number one involves countering the influence of Rupert Murdoch. Yes, he was on Mr. Rove's -- sorry, Mr. Bush's -- side in the U.S. election, but his coverage of the referendum debate will not be so fair and balanced. Fortunately, there are other tabloids in Britain that rival Mr. Murdoch's Sun and Times of London. They also have Page Three girls and run made-up stories about the royal family. Throw in a forged memo and let the bloggers handle the rest.

Prong two requires discrediting the man who has become the telegenic face of the anti-constitution effort: Former TV presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk. After being booted from his BBC chat program for making some controversial remarks about Muslims, Mr. Kilroy-Silk took up the banner of the fiercely anti-Europe U.K. Independence Party and wound up winning a seat in the European Parliament.

But several skeletons could be let out of his closet -- by privately funded groups acting independently of the pro-constitution campaign, of course. For example, in a publicity stunt reminiscent of John Kerry's tossing of Vietnam War medals over a U.S. Capitol fence, Mr. Kilroy-Silk was the star attraction at a demonstration during which a copy of the EU constitution was brandished ominously near Traitor's Gate at the Tower of London.

Traitor's Gate -- sometimes the 60-second spot just writes itself.

• Denmark: This small Scandinavian country has proven to be an inveterate flip-flopper when it comes to EU referendums -- a reputation that should be exploited to maximum effect. Case in point: Denmark actually voted against the Maastricht Treaty before it voted for it. Just as the indecisive Hamlet eventually chose the road that led to self-destruction, so can today's wavering Danes be trusted to eventually vote "yes" -- and, with Mr. Rove's help, maybe even in less
than two rounds.

• Ireland: Forget trying to win the whole country, it's not going to happen. But Mr. Rove will have done his homework, and certainly knows that old Irish political maxim: "As votes the Dingle Peninsula, so votes County Kerry." Besides, Ireland has gone from being one of Europe's poorest states to one of its richest, all thanks to lavish infusions of money taken by Brussels from taxpayers in other, wealthier European nations. So it's really not too different from Florida.

• France: First order of business is a massive get-out-the-vote operation, consisting mainly of explaining to the French electorate just exactly what is a referendum and how it works. Then, have Jacques Chirac give a nationally televised speech in which he argues that a non vote on the constitution will hand over effective control of EU foreign policy to "countries like the U.S."

If all else fails, organize a train strike.

Copyright 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Hey, thanks

2004-11-26T11:33:00.000+01:00

I'm not going to get all sentimental on the subject of Thanksgiving, but I will link to this short and sweet posting by my high-school buddy Grant Doty in Baghdad. He's an officer in the US Army, stationed in the Green Zone, and if you aren't reading his Catch-22 blog regularly, you should be.

Condi, Condi

2004-11-25T16:06:00.000+01:00

Here’s the profile of Condoleezza Rice I did for this week’s edition of European Voice newspaper. I've gone in and fixed all the little edits they do to make me sound British. In other words, I’ve put it back into modern English. I may have missed a few titbits, er, sorry tidbits...

Bush’s ‘Yes’ minister
Condoleezza Rice

By Craig Winneker

NOTHING better sets the tone for George W. Bush’s second term in the White House – after the ideological cleansing of suspected moderates from his first administration, the sudden solidifying into Orwellian irrefutability of his electoral ‘mandate’ and the seemingly unconditional surrender of his vanquished opposition – than the nomination of Condoleezza Rice to be US secretary of state.

Assuming she is confirmed by the Senate for America’s top cabinet position – its version of foreign minister – Rice will become the most powerful African-American woman in her nation’s history (not counting, of course, Oprah). From humble beginnings in the segregated South to a meteoric rise through the academic ranks to international prominence as chief spokeswoman for the Iraq war, Rice now finds herself with a new challenge: restoring international credibility to US foreign policy.

It’s tempting to expect her to be nothing more than the velvet glove sheathing an iron fist. True, she is not even close to being the most hawkish or hardline member of the new cabinet. She was not originally one of the ‘neo-cons’ who dreamed up the so-called Bush doctrine of preventive war and have worked hard to preserve it in the face of world opinion…and of reason. If anything, she is a policy chameleon. But given her background as the ultimate teacher’s pet and recent conversion from nerdy academic to slick practitioner of, yes, neo-conservatism, it would be dangerous to predict how and whether she will change the State Department after the departure of Colin Powell.

At least until his embarrassing presentation before the UN Security Council last Spring, Powell was Europe’s favourite member of the Bush administration. What will Rice’s appointment mean for Europe? If EU leaders worried when they spoke to Powell that the departing secretary of state did not have enough of a moderating influence in the administration to do much more than pay lip-service to their concerns, they have another thing coming with Rice.

What makes her so formidable is the fact that she is the president’s alter ego – his ultimate ‘yes woman’. The New York Times fretted that, after the choice of Rice for the job, “the whole world seems to be noticing that George Bush is stuffing his second-term cabinet with ‘yes’ men and women”. But it noted correctly that “when the president did have dissident voices in the top tier of his administration, he did a very thorough job of ignoring them. Optimists can regard the new team as a more efficient packaging of the status quo”.

Rice, therefore, is an improvement for Europe – even if leaders here do not agree with her brand of diplomacy – because at the very least they will know she speaks for the president. That is something they were able to believe less and less about Powell over the previous four years. She will, however, have some fence-mending to do.

“Punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia,” was her widely quoted remark last year as the Bush administration lashed out at allies who had not backed them on the war. Observers on both sides of the Atlantic expect her to try to repair the damage done by those kinds of comments. But it will take more than shuttle diplomacy.

Some here are already expecting the charm offensive. A European Commission official from Italy notes wryly that Rice’s first name, loosely translated into the Italian con dolcezza, means ‘with sweetness’. But, he laughs: “I don’t think the French will necessarily translate her name that way.” Probably not. Then again, they may be too flabbergasted at the idea of such a powerful position being held by ‘a woman of colour’ to have a rational reaction.

In announcing his decision to nominate Rice, Bush spoke movingly of her compelling personal background. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, she quickly established herself as a child prodigy: a concert pianist, a trained figure skater and a star student. According to one source in Washington who went to grade school with Rice, the teacher used to preface every question to the class this way: “Does anyone except for Condoleezza know the answer to..?”

She served in the Bush senior administration as a Soviet expert, just when that job was becoming irrelevant. After Bush’s loss to Bill Clinton in 1992, she returned to academia, becoming provost at Stanford University. But she had become personally close to the Bush family and, when George W. launched his 2000 campaign, Rice was brought on board as one of a team of experts tasked with applying a patina of credibility in the international affairs arena. Translation: she was Bush’s foreign policy tutor.

She also became an attractive and seemingly moderate public face for the overwhelmingly white, middle-aged and conservative Republicans to put forward on the national stage. Young, black and female, she defied the political stereotypes.

Now, if confirmed, Rice will be third in the line of succession to the presidency (after the vice-president and speaker of the House of Representatives). Despite her impressive background, sharp intellect, and thousand-kilowatt smile, Rice does not have a strongly positive profile with the American public. She has not benefited much from her historic status. Rather, she is often seen in negative terms – perhaps a reminder of the know-it-all types everyone used to hate in grade school. She is therefore often portrayed as a Bush pet (although perhaps the critics have the caricature the wrong way round). One cartoonist for a major US newspaper last week showed Rice as a parrot perched on the finger of a baby-talking president, who asks: “How woodums wike to be Secwetawy of State?” Rice responds: “Awwrk!! OK, chief! Anything you say, chief! You bet, chief! You’re my hero, chief!”

Offensive as the characterization may be, it does not overstate how close the president and Rice are personally. The Washington Post recently reported that “Bush and Rice know each other so well they have conversations based on body language, with maybe four words exchanged”.

As national security advisor, she frequently accompanied Bush and his wife to the presidential weekend retreat at Camp David, in Maryland. Given the pressing security issues of the day, this shouldn’t be so surprising. But what to make of an incident that fired up the gossips in Washington last April after a juicy item was published in New York magazine?

At a dinner party attended by several top Washington journalists, Rice was overheard to say: “As I was telling my husb—” before stopping abruptly and correcting herself: “As I was telling President Bush…” Paging Dr Freud… It may be a testament to her schoolmarmish image that almost nobody in Washington thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item.

But Rice, who has never married, does have her admirers. American roots rocker Steve Earle this year offered up ‘Condi, Condi’, a reggae tune in which the outspoken left-winger admits a tongue-in-cheek infatuation with Rice. “Sweet and dandy pretty as can be/You be the flower and I’ll be the bumble bee/Oh she loves me oops she loves me not /People say you’re cold but I think you’re hot.” (Not since comedienne Carol Burnett’s 1957 hit ‘I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles’ has a secretary of state been so lovingly serenaded.)

What does the future hold for Condoleezza Rice? Occasionally during the first Bush term there were rumours that she’d be picked to replace Dick Cheney, who would resign as vice-president, thus positioning her advantageously for a campaign four years hence to become the first woman and first African-American president. This, of course, would most likely pit her against the former first lady and now New York Senator Hillary Clinton. Refuelling the speculation in the days following this year’s election was the sudden visit of Cheney to the hospital for ‘chest pains’.

Hillary versus Condi in 2008? As the president would say: “Bring it on.”

© Copyright 2004 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved

Get Over It?

2004-11-20T13:27:00.000+01:00

The Brussels-based Parliament magazine, an in-house glossy for MEPs, asked me to write a piece describing "the US view of the European reaction to the US elections". Once I figured out what that meant, I wrote the following piece:

US to EU: Get over it!

Bush’s re-election may not have been popular in Europe, but could it turn out to be good news?

Despair…frustration…clandestine joy…even perverted glee. These are just a few of the immediately detectable European reactions to George W. Bush’s re-election as US president.
Granted, they are also some of the responses found among Americans themselves – even as they handed Bush a surprisingly strong victory on 2 November. But it’s been a revealing exercise during the campaign and in its immediate aftermath over the last several days to gauge the European mood.

After all, Europeans seemed to have invested an unprecedented amount of emotional and political interest in an American election. For the most part, they wanted Bush to lose to his Democratic challenger, John Kerry. Some went so far as to set up websites such as TellAnAmericanToVote.com. Others, such as UK’s Guardian newspaper, attempted to influence the election outcome more directly. (The paper’s letter-writing campaign aimed at undecided voters backfired spectacularly. Clark County, which the Guardian had targeted, was the only one in the state of Ohio to give more votes to Bush this year than it did in 2000. Bush owes the Guardian’s editors a thank-you note.)

So it’s no surprise to see such widespread shock and dismay over Bush’s victory. Congratulatory messages from European leaders were delivered through gritted teeth. Newspaper headlines (the UK Daily Mirror’s “How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?” and Libération’s “L’empire empire” come to mind) were harsh and dismissive. Some reaction was even gleefully condescending – as if Bush’s re-election confirmed the view held by some that Americans are overweight rubes who care only for their SUVs and low tax rates.

Then there was the rash of condolence emails from Europeans to their American friends: one showed a map of North America showing the states that voted for Kerry renamed the ‘United States of Canada’ and the rest ‘Jesusland’; another circulated Michael Moore’s ‘17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists’.

Putting aside the derision, how have Americans accepted this unusual level of concern over how they chose to exercise their democratic rights? Well, their message to Europeans who’ve had such visceral reactions to the US election result might best be summed up in three words: ‘Get over it.’ (Or perhaps three other, more crude words suggesting an anatomically impossible physical act.)

But this presupposes that a significant number of Americans would even concern themselves with how they are viewed in Europe or anywhere else abroad. If that were the case, Kerry would be rehearsing the oath of office. But his strategic decision to make a key part of his campaign a promise to restore US credibility around the globe clearly did not pay off.

Let’s face it: Europe’s predominant support for Kerry was mainly the product of wishful thinking. The Democrat was not going to pull US troops from Iraq, did not support the Kyoto protocol, and talked just as tough as Bush about “hunting down and killing” terrorists. He even went out and shot a goose. It was ridiculous to think his election would suddenly turn the US into some bastion of multilateral sustainable development and social cohesion.

A good example of this mindset was the post-election statement issued by the European Parliament’s Green group leaders, Monica Frassoni and Daniel Cohn-Bendit. “We regret that a change of course in US foreign, security, environmental and social policy – hoped for by many Europeans – is now very improbable,” they opined. But this ignored the fact that Kerry had offered to make none of these dreams come true.

Several American commentators have called on Europe to stop fretting about Bush’s re-election and start dealing with it. “President Bush is no fluke, and there’s no wishing him away,” wrote conservative columnist James Glassman in the Wall Street Journal Europe. “The good news is that Mr. Bush isn’t devious or unpredictable. He’s entirely open and obvious. A major theme of his campaign was that he does what he says.”

In fact, Europe should be pleased as punch with the Bush victory for another important reason. A Kerry win would have forced reluctant EU nations to consider helping to clean up the mess Bush has made of Iraq. With Bush still in the White House, Europe’s political leaders can continue to keep their hands clean – and wring them at the same time. And, as many have noted, an emboldened Bush may give Europe just the impetus it needs to get its foreign policy act together.

Some Europeans realize this and are already choosing to play the hand the US has dealt. “The re-election of George W. Bush means that the Europeans will be under far greater pressure to come to grips with the U.S. foreign policy agenda,” says Werner Weidenfeld from Germany’s Bertelsmann Foundation think tank. He predicts Bush will now send the Europeans more demanding signals but that this only provides an opportunity to act.

To their credit, Frassoni and Cohn-Bendit seem to have realized this, too. “In the next four years the role of the European Union as a counterweight to the US will become ever more important,” they proclaimed. “Only a strong, united Union that is able to act decisively when needed, will be capable of fulfilling this task. Therefore, a rapid ratification of the Constitution must become priority number one in Europe.”

So is that Europe’s silver lining in the Bush re-election – which could rally EU leaders to a common foreign policy and EU citizens to a realization that only with a European constitution can there be an effective check on US hegemony? Would we see headlines in US papers asking, “How can 450 million people be so UNITED?”

Don’t bet on it.

Thinking Outside the Tank

2004-11-04T11:41:00.000+01:00

Just back from a conference in Bulgaria, where some new think-tanks were networking, and sharpening their thinking and tanking skills. Appropriately enough, I had a few random thoughts about the whole thing, which you can now read in my TCS column. News of the last few days has me thinking seriously about heading back to Bulgaria...

Is This the End of Rocco?

2004-10-27T11:20:00.000+02:00

Yes, it is. But before incoming European Commission President Jose Barroso decided to withdraw his slate of candidates for the new commission today, I had this article in the Wall Street Journal Europe on the Rocco Buttiglione flap. I'm just happy to have been able to make a gratuitous reference to the Spanish Inquisition, which of course no one expects.

Sin of Commission

By CRAIG WINNEKER
October 27, 2004

BRUSSELS -- Good old-fashioned political battles are rare in Brussels,
where marathon disagreements over cod-fishing quotas or
qualified-majority-voting logarithms are what normally pass for high
drama.

So it has been refreshing over the last couple of weeks to see
politicians, bureaucrats and opinion-leaders in the EU capital
engaging in the kind of down-and-dirty melee we've come to expect in
Washington or London.

What started out as a hubbub -- indignant reaction from
parliamentarians to some ill-considered comments made by Italy's
nominee for the European Commission during his confirmation hearing --
has grown into a full-fledged hullabaloo. At stake is not simply the
question of whether 25 new commissioners will be allowed to take their
posts next week nor even the fragile political standing of the
institution's next president, but also the future of the European
project and possibly even democracy itself.

OK, that may be overstating things a bit. But the Pope has already
gotten involved and Mel Gibson can't be far behind. This is serious.

* * *
Incoming Commission President José Manuel Barroso has impressed many
with his media savvy and his near-Clintonian ability to say exactly
what any particular audience wants to hear. But the concrete of his
European political foundation is only just beginning to dry, so
naturally members of the EU Parliament -- especially ones from the
center-left and left-leaning political groups who didn't want him to
get the top job in the first place -- want to scratch their names into
it. Rocco Buttiglione, a former minister in the Italian government and
the man Mr. Barroso had chosen to head up the commission's justice and
civil rights department, gave them the perfect opportunity.

During his Parliamentary confirmation hearing, Mr. Buttiglione
declared that women exist "to have children and be protected by their
husbands" and said he believes homosexuality to be a "sin." He also
said he wouldn't let his personal moral beliefs influence his
policy-making. But the remarks caused an uproar and led to his being
the first commission nominee in the history of the EU to be rejected
by a committee of the European Parliament.

Some, including the Vatican, have rushed to defend Mr. Buttiglione,
accusing his tormentors of a "secular Inquisition," although a more
appropriate analogy might be the Monty Python Inquisition, in which
the torturers used such implements as "the comfy chair" and "the soft
pillow" to great effect.

The Italian last week issued the requisite apology -- or at least a
textbook non-apology that amounted to expressing "deep regret" for all
the fuss. And Mr. Barroso bent over backwards to appease his critics,
promising to set up a subcommittee of other commissioners to make sure
Mr. Buttiglione's personal views do not encroach on EU legislation.

This offer was rejected as too little, too late by socialists in the
Parliament. Never mind that it was both unnecessary and absurd. The
commission acts as a whole, and nearly everything it does is subject
to the approval of member states or the Parliament, so the notion that
Mr. Buttiglione would launch a one-man jihad against working gay
mothers is far-fetched.

But the issue no longer seems to be Mr. Buttiglione or the handful of
other commission nominees who have offended one party group or another
for some pet political reason. Now, it's an interinstitutional battle,
a game of chicken between the historically strong commission and the
once-weak but gradually empowered Parliament.

The Parliament must approve the 25 commission nominees en bloc; it
cannot reject one or a few. If it vetoes the whole incoming class, the
EU would suddenly find itself without a new commission -- and would
have to ask the outgoing one to stick around for awhile. Departing
Commission President Romano Prodi, displaying once again his talent
for saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time, has already
nobly declared his willingness to serve if called. That may yet prove
precisely the sort of threat Mr. Barroso needs to ensure that his
commission slate is approved at today's session of the 732-member
assembly. The former Portuguese prime minister yesterday told
parliament that he wouldn't change his line-up.

So Mr. Barroso is gambling that MEPs won't sacrifice the whole slate
of candidates just to make a point. Either that or he's hoping that,
at the last minute, Mr. Buttiglione will cash in his chips and head
back to Rome.

But what would really happen if there were no Commission? We don't
have to look that far back in EU history to find the answer: Not much.

In March 1999 the commission headed by Luxembourg's Jacques Santer
resigned en masse after allegations of fraud had tarnished a few of
its members. Europe was left without a commission until the new one
was appointed six months later. The EU functioned, the 19,000
bureaucrats who work for the commission continued in their jobs, and
the earth turned on its normal axis. (Actually, in that case, the
disgraced commissioners continued to serve during the interregnum in
what was called a "caretaker role" -- prompting the question, what is
the difference?)

* * *
As for this year's standoff, we won't know for sure whether a
full-blown crisis can be averted until Day One of the new commission's
mandate, when its members either take office or don't. Actually, we
may have to wait until Day Three. Monday and Tuesday are holidays for
the EU.

How to Build a Laser Gun

2004-10-23T14:46:00.002+02:00

SEPTEMBER 2008 UPDATE ON BUILDING A LASER GUN: click here.

UPDATE (from July 2007) on how to build a laser gun can be found here...

IMPORTANT UPDATE (from AUGUST 2006): For the latest on how to build a laser gun, click here and here!

unedited post from October 2004 follows:

Dear Friends and Future Readers,
Thanks for all the input on the website. As you can see, I've changed the colors a bit in an effort to make it more readable. I promise to work on making the posts themselves more readable. And, in the course of my research, I discovered a nifty project for a rainy Brussels autumn. Good luck!

Three-Pillar Circus

2004-10-20T14:54:00.000+02:00

Wondering about that huge circus tent in the middle of Brussels' Rond Point Schuman? Of course you are! Now posted on TCS: my analysis/review of a phantasmagorical EU project aimed at defining the Image of Europe. I'm working without a net here, folks...

Let's Talk Turkey

2004-10-05T17:12:00.000+02:00

I take a typically over-simplistic look at a problem of great political, social and theological significance in this week's TCS column. Enjoy!

Check Out My Links!

2004-10-05T11:39:00.000+02:00

Just a brief post to encourage visitor(s) to be sure to check out my links -- not just the ones on the right side of the page, but also the post headings, etc., which are hyperlinked. You never know what you might find...

The Beers That Made Belgium Semi-Famous

2004-09-28T18:14:00.000+02:00

Two new articles to add to the collection: my latest piece on TCS has posted today; check it out for some instanalysis of the European Commission confirmation hearings.

And in the Wall Street Journal Europe I hold forth on something I actually know about: beer. The subtopic is marketing, of which I know nothing. I paste it here, since the WSJE is subscription only.

A Tale of Two Belgian Beers
Business Europe
By Craig Winneker
27 September 2004
The Wall Street Journal Europe
(Copyright (c) 2004, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

Brussels –

Beer, like popular music, is usually more about marketing and demographics than such elusive and unquantifiable phenomena as, say, taste.

Anheuser-Busch's now-iconic Bud Light did not, in some singular cosmic occurrence, suddenly become a more satisfying form of refreshment than Lite Beer from Miller. Rather, a relentlessly clever advertising campaign simply overwhelmed a competitor that had become America's first successful low-calorie pilsner in the 1970s with TV spots featuring aging sports heroes and a slogan -- "Tastes great, less filling" -- that was memorable if doubly dubious.

Then there is Rolling Rock, a beer now favored by Blackberry-wielding young hipsters paying premium prices for it on the U.S. West Coast, while in the Rust Belt, where it has been brewed for decades, it remains the default pitcher-filler of the hardhat set. They drink it because it is cheap, and local.

It all has to do with brand positioning -- and, yes, with the undeniable lure of something that appears to be new even when it isn't.

In Belgium, home to the finest beers in the world (including a handful still crafted by Trappist monks -- although one suspects they, too, have beefed up their marketing staffs), a new battle is brewing between one of the world's largest beer companies and a small but clever local competitor.

It has all the makings of a classic beverage war: expensive marketing campaigns, a struggle for the right kind of retail visibility, ambitious brand re-positioning, and the occasional bevy of tank-topped women in a bottle-shaped truck.

Order "une biere" or "een pintje" in just about any Belgian bar -- from the grandest Art Nouveau cafe to the humblest corner tavern -- and you are almost certain to be served one of two nearly indistinguishable pilsners. Stella Artois and Jupiler, both produced by Belgium-based multinational Interbrew, are ubiquitous in this small country.

Moortgat Brewing, on the other hand, is a small, family-run operation based in a suburb of Antwerp. Its flagship brand, Duvel, is sold around the world and is justifiably considered one of the finest beers available anywhere. Its light, slightly sweet flavor is notorious for fooling British lager louts into thinking they can drink huge quantities with impunity. They can't; its alcohol content is nearly 10%, or three times as strong as any English beer.

But recently, Moortgat has moved beyond simply promoting Duvel around the world as a super-premium product for connoisseurs. It is taking aim at Interbrew in the local market for beers made to be quaffed.

And it has a secret weapon. Frederic Nicolay opened his first bar in Brussels in 1995 and has since amassed an empire of trendy establishments that now includes everything from converted warehouses serving shaggy students to a Michelin-starred restaurant. But back at the beginning, when he was broke and just looking for a change from the usual dark-wood and smoke- and ennui-filled Belgian brasserie, Mr. Nicolay was visited by a Moortgat rep who offered a free refrigerator if he would sell the company's beers.

It was fortuitous timing for both: for Mr. Nicolay because he had no money and needed a fridge, and for Moortgat because it had just struck up a relationship with a young man who would turn out to have the golden touch when it comes to in-crowd nightspots. "Little by little we started to work together and they saw that I sold a lot of their products," Mr. Nicolay says.

His establishments, one of which opens soon in London, share certain characteristics: they are understated and clean in design, have service that is stylishly indifferent, they are full every night -- and they all feature Moortgat beers.

Eventually, the brewery became partners with Mr. Nicolay and now co-owns all of his restaurants and bars. And when they decided to relaunch one of their nearly unknown products, an unassuming pilsner called Vedett, they asked Mr. Nicolay to mastermind the whole effort, from the label design to the advertising and promotion campaigns.

Vedett, it must be said, tastes like just about every other Belgian pilsner. To be honest, it's not a whole lot different from Schlitz. But its recent marketing efforts have been more eye-catching than anything the big boys have done in years. First came beermats that appeared to have mobile-phone numbers scrawled all over them, enticing customers to pick them up. Then came the bottles with little pictures of photogenic young Belgians; each label had a different hipster, and there seemed to be no two alike, thus encouraging bar patrons to collect several at a time.

Still, Moortgat is appropriately post-modern about the campaign, and its Web site acknowledges the absurdity of the Vedett rebranding. It has even crafted a sort of legend around what it says was once a "cult" beer favored by "an intimate circle of insiders in the Antwerp-Brussels region" but is now going through a "second childhood in a number of trendy cafes." It proudly proclaims the beer's image to be "hip, young and slightly absurd."

How has Interbrew responded to this small-scale attack? The only way a big company can when confronted with an energetic upstart who can make an advertisement painted on the side of a cement mixer look cool: by getting bigger. Much, much bigger. Interbrew has been buying up small, medium and large breweries everywhere; it is now the world's largest beer producer by volume.

And, strangely, it has changed its name twice in the last six months. First, after merging with Brazil's AmBev (whose flagship brew is Brahma, a beer that could taste good only if consumed on a sweltering hot Rio beach -- and whose ads feature thong-clad women choosing instead to pour it on their bodies), it become InterbrewAmBev.

That, wisely, did not last long. Now, in a move that is neither likely to improve the flavor of Stella Artois and Brahma nor send Mr. Nicolay back to the drawing board, it has become . . . InBev. Actually, it's !nBev, with an exclamation point substituting for the capital I and signifying, well, who knows what. !'ll probably have a Vedett instead.

The Next Blog

2004-08-27T12:40:00.000+02:00

I'm new to the blogging game, and clearly I've got a long way to go before I can catch up to the likes of this, which I found at random by just clicking the "Next Blog" link at the top right of the screen. Awesome stuff. Sigh.

Farmer's Almanac

2004-08-26T10:58:00.000+02:00

Check out my friend Dave Farmer's new blog, Farmer's Almanac. It's not just a clever name. You can read his editorials from the Lewiston (Maine) Sun Journal newspaper. Disappointingly, he does not appear to be predicting the weather or providing tidal information...

Meanwhile, stay tuned to this space for the imminent Grand Opening of this site...

Meet the New Boss

2004-08-19T12:31:00.000+02:00

Hello Reader! Someday I hope to have more than one of you...
Anyway, TechCentralStation-Europe has just published my article on promising recent moves by the new European Commission president. Enjoy, and feel free to comment here or on TCS.

Two from the Vault

2004-08-10T18:00:00.000+02:00

I am just back from a two-week trip to the U.S. and am swamped with work, but have updated my list of links on the right side of this page. I hope to have more articles posted soon. In the meantime, here are a couple of old articles: one from this spring in the Wall Street Journal Europe and another I did last summer for the Washington Post. I don't have live links to these, so I'm pasting them in. Read at your own risk...

Throwing Money out the Windows

By CRAIG WINNEKER
March 26, 2004

As politicians, business leaders and consumers ponder the larger meaning of the EU's harsh antitrust action against Microsoft, including a record-high fine of €497 million, one question remains unanswered: What will the European Commission do with all that money?

Knowing that Brussels bureaucrats often need help figuring out ways to spend such large sums, I offer the following list of suggestions (and, thanks to a recent commission ruling on forced licensing of comedic intellectual property, I can freely adapt an innovation of talk show host David "dominant position" Letterman: the Top Ten List):

10. Buy five million new, MediaPlayer-free copies of Windows for Commission computers. There would still be enough money left over for the nominal bandwidth charges related to downloading (free) versions of MediaPlayer.

9. Build half of a new Berlaymont. Remodeling the Commission's headquarters building in Brussels after an asbestos scare closed it down nearly a decade ago will end up costing taxpayers more than €1 billion. With 10 new nations joining the bloc in May, it might be worth using the Microsoft loot to add a spiffy new east wing.

8. Pay some old legal bills. Two big European companies, Schneider Electric and MyTravel, are currently suing the Commission for pain and suffering they endured as a result of Mario Monti's efforts to block their separate attempts to merge with other firms. The European Court of Justice overturned the Commission's decisions in those cases and allowed the mergers to go forward. To quote a competition lawyer I know but can't identify, "This money can make their little problem go bye-bye."

7. Subsidize more farmers. It's only a drop in the milk bucket, but still, €497 million percent is about, well, 1% of the EU's annual budget for the Common Agricultural Policy. When you're trying to grow sugar beets in arctic climates, every little bit helps.

6. Help preserve France's key role in the EU. The European Parliament is forced to spend nearly €200 million per year to shuttle back and forth between its seats in Brussels and Strasbourg. This could help extend this noble tradition by . . . almost three years!

5. Ferraris for commission staff. The fine would pay for a new Ferrari Modena ($180,000 MSRP) for each of the 600 officials working in the Commission's Competition directorate. There'd be enough left over to buy 5,000 Smart cars. But don't think of it as the latest example of commission excess -- it's economic stimulus for central Italy.

4. Build new houses for members of the Commission. Bill Gates' ultra-modern lakefront home cost $50 million, so these would only be half as fancy as his. But it's a start. And there's still another Microsoft investigation waiting in the wings.

3. Two words: EU Spacelab.

2. Finance a film project. Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson is available. Give him half the money to make a blockbuster trilogy on The Lisbon Process. Give the other half to Eurostat -- and watch it disappear!

1. Boost innovation. The EU could finance development of a new computer operating system that seamlessly ties together various software programs in a dynamic, easy-to-use format. Oh, wait . . .

washingtonpost.com
A Perfect Specimen Of Colonial Mythmaking

By Craig Winneker

Sunday, August 10, 2003; Page B04

TERVUREN, Belgium

I recently revisited Belgium's Royal Museum for Central Africa for the first time since I went there on a class trip more than 25 years ago, when my family lived here for a time. Turns out I hadn't missed much.

Housed in a splendid Louis XIV-style palace on the outskirts of Brussels, the museum has proclaimed the glories of Belgian rule in the Congo for more than a century. And during that time, its impressive collection has remained largely unchanged. Imposing gilded statues depict Belgium's influence in Central Africa. "Belgium brings civilization to the Congo," reads the inscription on one, showing a priest ministering to an adoring Pygmy tribesman. Others illustrate the "security" and "well-being" that were brought to the natives by their colonial masters.

I did notice one new feature, though: a small posterboard sign that appeared earlier this year, with no fanfare, in one of the more controversial exhibits. The "Gallery of Remembrance" is a shrine to Belgians who died while serving in Central Africa. Its walls are painted with the names of some 1,500 fallen military officers, bureaucrats, traders and pioneers. A bronze plaque salutes the martyred leaders of an anti-slavery campaign. But now, the new sign offers a one-paragraph addendum in French, Dutch and English:

"The attentive visitor," it reads, "will not fail to notice that, at the time, no need was felt to question the Belgian presence in Central Africa. There was no mention of the Congolese victims, for instance. The viewpoint is exclusively European and concentrates on a few historical episodes. The underlying reality of colonial events was completely ignored. The memorial to the campaigns against slavery, unveiled in 1959, is a rather late example of mythmaking."

For the first time since it was founded in 1897 by King Leopold II, the museum is finally getting ready to recognize that "underlying reality" and "mythmaking." It may take an unusually "attentive visitor" to find it, but the temporary plaque is a small step in a two-year project aimed at transforming the institution to acknowledge the brutal realities of Belgium's colonial history that have come to light in recent years. It is the first public measure the country is taking to make its citizens aware of the atrocities committed a century ago.

These long overdue plans have stirred controversy. Some Belgians argue that changing the museum too much will obliterate what they see as their country's honorable role in improving life in Central Africa. Others say the institution, considered one of the foremost of its kind in the world, should be preserved as it is -- as the embodiment of a particular kind of worldview during an important period of history. I have a more postmodern view: The best thing to do with this museum might be to display it inside another museum.

Once you know the history behind the collection -- as I do now but didn't as a grade-schooler -- there would seem to be no choice but to change it. In 1998, writer Adam Hochschild published the best-selling "King Leopold's Ghost," a book that vividly described what the museum does not: how Leopold, a first cousin of Britain's Queen Victoria, persuaded the world to let him take personal control over a domain nearly one-fourth the size of the United States; how he duped America and Britain into thinking he would establish a free-trade zone in Central Africa, "civilize" the natives and fight the scourge of Arab slave-trading; and how, instead, he established a brutal regime that exploited the territory's population and natural resources for his personal benefit.

Hochschild's book revealed how mercenary soldiers forced Congolese men into the jungle to gather wild rubber for the bicycle and automobile industries. Those who refused or failed to meet their quotas were liable to have their hands chopped off or to be whipped nearly to death; some were simply shot dead. Others went into hiding, leaving their farms to fail and their families to starve. There never was any anti-slavery campaign. In fact, Hochschild estimates that Leopold's quarter-century reign of terror caused the deaths of 10 million Africans.

Suddenly an inconspicuous cardboard sign doesn't seem adequate. Especially since the rest of the museum today looks much the same as it did when it was built -- even if it no longer features reconstructed Congolese villages with real tribesmen on display.

Director Guido Gryseels has already launched the effort to overhaul the museum with several exhibits running through the summer entitled "The Africans Have Their Say," featuring the work of contemporary African artists and photographers. Gryseels calls the museum's current design "paternalistic" and says the campaign he's started will give the collection a modern, "multidisciplinary theme." Out will go the bland, detailed presentations on export crops (installed decades ago to convince Belgians their colony was worth having), and in will come a more holistic "historical journey," synthesizing social and natural sciences with art, culture and such contemporary notions as "sustainable development."

"The big controversy," Gryseels conceded to me recently, "comes with how do we deal with our colonial past? A lot of people who worked in the colonies are sensitive." In fact, when translated editions of his book were published in Belgium, Hochschild was met with anger from many quarters, especially from associations of people who had worked in the colonial administration, or their descendants. These same people are not likely to be pleased that their government, which owns the museum, will soon be accusing them or their relatives of having taken part in genocide. They "get emotional," Gryseels acknowledged, and argue that Belgium had a civilizing influence on the Congo, helping provide infrastructure, schools and medicine. Somehow they overlook that when Belgium pulled up stakes and left the Congo in 1960, it left behind only 14 African university graduates and a continuing legacy of political mayhem.

What the museum hopes to do, Gryseels said of the colonial atrocities, is "recognize that [they] happened and . . . provide the context. Some people will walk out and say that Leopold was a murderer -- other people may recognize the vision he had."

Belgium is not the first nation to have to confront a dark part of its past. To be fair, few other European countries have come completely clean on their colonial records. France and Britain have long accepted their responsibility to help former colonies, but they do little to highlight atrocities. Germany only recently acknowledged and apologized for its massacre of Herero tribes in 1904-08 in what is now Namibia.

Belgium has come later than most to its face-off with history, even though this history was never a complete secret. It was a matter of public record, though that record was sometimes hard to find. Over the years, any atrocities were erased from official history, not taught in schools, not acknowledged as part of the national memory. So a full reckoning now is bound to be painful.

And not everyone sees the need for contrition. At a press conference Gryseels held to announce the museum's makeover, I overheard two Belgian journalists complaining about the changes, deriding them as "politically correct" leftist revisionism. A comment written by a Belgian in the museum guest book pleads, "Don't change it too much! It is a magnificent museum of which Belgians can be proud."

Perhaps there's something to the notion that the museum in its current state provides its own unique lessons. As offensive as it appears when viewed in the light of modern knowledge and sensibilities, it's fair to ask whether, from a historical perspective, overhauling it is the right approach. It's one thing to revisit the record and make it a more accurate reflection of reality, but it's another to ignore different versions of what happened. Like it or not, the museum is a kind of time capsule that perfectly illustrates the evil of colonialism and the paternalism and racism that allowed it to exist.

Gryseels' planned "historical journey," on the other hand, sounds suspiciously like so many modern "interactive" museums that overdo the computer animation and the Disney-fied dinosaur bones, where the largest exhibits always seem to be the gift shops.

The dilemma posed by the project is summed up in a painting, specially commissioned for the museum, by Congolese artist Chéri Samba, whose works combine a playful, cartoonish visual style with often gruesome political and social commentary. Entitled "Reorganisation," it shows Gryseels watching a group of Africans drag a particularly patronizing sculpture out of the museum while a clutch of Belgians tugs desperately in the opposite direction. "We cannot accept that this work should leave the museum," the Belgians are protesting. "It is what has made us what we are today." To which the painted Gryseels responds: "It's true that it's sad, but in fact the museum must be completely reorganized."

Maybe so. As I walked through the museum's dusty and dated galleries, I couldn't help agreeing that a makeover is necessary. It's a travesty that there is no mention of the millions of Africans who died so that the treasures visitors ooh and aah over -- the stuffed animals, the rocks and minerals -- could be brought to Belgium. I watched groups of museum-goers who hadn't read "King Leopold's Ghost" touring the exhibits and listening to guides who never mentioned the horrific truth that lies behind the display cases, and I felt they urgently needed some context.

Still, part of me wants to keep this bizarre, offensive time capsule just as it is, to preserve it as an example of the kind of imperial hubris that reigned in turn-of-the-20th-century Europe -- not as a tribute, but as an artifact.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Press Review 27 July

2004-07-27T18:22:00.000+02:00

Here's the latest installment of my press review for European Voice newspaper. Enjoy...

HOLIDAY time is upon us, bringing with it a kind of hazy, sangria-fuelled news siesta. So once again this column revisits what that street bard Will Smith, aka The Fresh Prince, called “a new definition of summer madness”.
Le Monde looks at a military action waged by France’s most lethal fighting force: anti-GM food campaigners. Protesters invaded yet another field of genetically modified maize on a test site in southern France, uprooting the plants and causing general mayhem – at least until the lunch break. Anti-globalization leader José Bové is warning that more GMO crops will be destroyed in the coming weeks.
Le Figaro points to a report by the French Health and Food Safety Board made public on Friday. According to the paper, “It highlights, albeit cautiously, the fact that certain GMOs could be beneficial to health, reducing the use of pesticides... and possessing improved nutritional qualities.” Put that in your pipe and smoke it, José.
Actually, Bové might have to turn his Luddite sights onto a new bakery in Paris that offers bread to customers in a hurry. It’s a drive-through boulangerie.
Several wire services describe the courageous venture, which is set in a former service station on a busy road west of the French capital. “’Drive-in Joly’ boulangerie is the first in France and caters to about 200 customers per day,” Reuters reports, quoting the owner as saying customers are increasingly rushed and need convenient service. This kind of thinking just reeks of efficiency.
Meanwhile, Madrid’s El Pais reports that former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar paid a lobbyist $2 million in public money to secure a medal from the US Congress.
“This episode shows that Aznar has confused himself, his post and the state,” the paper says.
A current prime minister who takes it on the chin from his national press is The Netherlands’ Jan Peter Balkenende. De Volkskrant describes some bizarre comments he made during a visit to Germany to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Balkenende told an audience of Bundeswehr recruits that the incident “was an important link in the creation and development of European cooperation and integration”.
Radio Netherlands’ press critic sums it up this way: “One of the great advantages of being a prime minister is that you can travel abroad and say things there that you could never say at home without being dismissed as a bit off the wall at best and, at worst, a blithering idiot.”
Not as long as What the Papers Say is in business you can’t!
But even sun-addled leaders can’t compete with ordinary Europeans when it comes to downright weirdness. Consider this grab-bag:
* Reuters reports that Irish airline Ryanair has sacked two of its workers who sat in an overcrowded plane’s toilets for a flight from Spain because there were no other seats. The captain of the packed flight from Girona, near Barcelona, to Dublin airport resigned after he gave the two cabin crew permission.
* Norway’s NRK radio tells of a four-year-old boy who caused chaos at a Norwegian airport this week when he hopped aboard a luggage conveyor belt as if it were a merry-go-round.
“Ole Tobias crawled onto the belt next to an unmanned check-in desk Monday, continued unnoticed through a trapdoor along with bags and suitcases about his size, then passed through an X-ray scanner and into the luggage hall,” according to wire reports.
* The Italian town of Monza has banned pet owners from keeping goldfish in bowls, according to Agence France Presse. Explains a town official, “A fish kept in a bowl has a distorted view of reality...and suffers because of this.”
That’s all from the Brussels goldfish bowl. Have a great summer!

Press Review

2004-07-21T11:23:00.000+02:00

My weekly press review column appears in European Voice newspaper, which is available by subscription only, so I've decided to start posting a sort of enhanced version here. I can add links to the stories I mention, which I can't do in a good, old-fashioned newspaper.

So, here you go. Enjoy. Still working on a better name than the one European Voice gives it ("What the Papers Say")....

British papers go ga-ga over what appears to have been the biggest news out of the opening session of the expanded European Parliament: a newly installed British MEP’s unexpected discourse on gender issues.
Once again (remember when Silvio Berlusconi, almost exactly a year ago, likened a German MEP to a Nazi concentration camp guard?), a sideline incident satiates the public’s already bird-like appetite for news from Strasbourg.
The Independent’s Stephen Castle describes the scene: “Nominated by UKIP for the Parliament’s Women’s Rights Committee, Godfrey Bloom, newly elected MEP for Yorkshire and Humberside, made a bizarre series of comments that seemed destined to dent his party’s credibility as a serious political force [sic].
“Speaking on the fringes of a press conference Mr Bloom joked that women ‘don’t clean behind the fridge enough’ adding: ‘I would represent Yorkshire women who always have dinner on the table when you come home.’”
Writing in The Guardian, Martin Wainwright adds a literary twist to the saga. “While the shades of Amy Johnson, the Brontë sisters and other famous Yorkshirewomen whirled beyond the grave,” he writes, “Mr Bloom unrepentantly went on local television - promptly syndicated - to make sure that his mission statement was understood.
“‘The more women’s rights you have, it’s actually a bar to their employment,’ he said, citing his experience in the Territorial Army and a London investment firm for which he still works as a researcher. ‘No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age.’”
Hmm, I wonder how he would know that.
The Daily Mail sees fit to mention in the last sentence of its account of the Bloom incident that “Spanish socialist Josep Borrell, 57, was elected as the new president” of the Parliament. Glad we could fit in that piece of information.
Speaking of the latest Iberian to secure a top EU post, Spain’s El Pais calls Borrell’s election the product of the “complex balancing acts” which have come to typify the institution. “He is a politician with great management experience, who spent a long period in the wilderness and who faces a task which is less partisan than being a deputy in the Spanish parliament,” it says.
But Polish papers think Liberal group candidate and Solidarity legend Bronislaw Geremek should have won.
“There could hardly have been a better candidate to lead the European Parliament,” says Rzeczpospolita, “in which for the first time we have deputies from the part of Europe that was once cut off by the Iron Curtain.”
The paper complains that many MEPs still think in terms of a division between “old” and “new” Europe.
Trybuna argues that the choice of Borrell over Geremek reveals the true balance of power in Europe. “It’s very unfair, but it is the strongest who decide on the order of the world and its institutions,” it writes. “The largest groups in the European Parliament agreed long ago who its president was going to be and shared out the offices between their candidates. So the outcome of the vote was a surprise only to those who believe in willpower overcoming the laws of political physics.”
The International Herald Tribune's Thomas Fuller wonders about the choice of Borrell after the selection of Portuguese prime minister José Barroso as Commission president and Spaniard Javier Solana as the EU’s first foreign minister.
He notes: “The Iberian domination of the EU’s top posts is coincidental but somewhat incongruous, analysts say [translation: it is obvious to this writer and everybody else], given that leaders from the Union’s western fringe are taking office two months after the Union expanded eastward.”
Never mind the Iberian domination of top posts. Despite what UKIP has to say about it, let’s do something about the masculine one.

Articles

2004-07-16T10:27:00.000+02:00

No real blogs yet, but here are some articles I've written recently:

My Ode to Spam, in the Washington Post

A banana as the symbol of freedom, from the Wall Street Journal

Czechs, We Have No Banany
By Craig Winneker
Sometimes, to misquote Freud, a banana is not just a banana. Sometimes it is a symbol of freedom.
Such is the case in the Czech Republic, where in the decade and a half since the fall of communism, the banana has become the fastest-selling fruit at the green grocer. Per capita annual consumption of bananas in the country has risen from almost zero in 1990 to more than 15 kilograms per person, one of the highest levels in Europe.
And it's not just the Czech Republic; all of Eastern Europe loves bananas.
Legend has it that during the Cold War, West Berliners used to throw them to their neighbors on the other side of the Wall. When the Wall came down in 1989-and again when Berlin marked the anniversary of that dramatic event 10 years later-bunches of bananas were passed around as if they were celebratory bouquets. In former communist countries bananas are seen not just as a tasty and nutritious snack but as an exotic delicacy that freedom has made easy to obtain.
Enter the EU. That's what the Czech Republic and nine other countries have just done, to much deserved fanfare. But one of the many soon-to-be-felt side effects of this historic reunification of the continent is that the banana will change from a symbol of sweet liberty to an emblem of a spoiled rotten trade policy way past its sell-by date.
Followers of EU affairs will recall that bananas were at the center of one of the longest-running and, let's face it, most complicated and insufferably boring trans-Atlantic trade wars. Put as simply as possible, the EU protects banana producers in its former colonies by limiting access to its markets for others, such as Latin American growers. This artificially controls supply and keeps banana prices high all across the union. The new member states started operating under this regime on May 1-and the price hikes will hit soon.
"Suddenly, Czechs are going to have to line up for bananas . . . again," complains a friend from Prague. That's an overstatement. What they will have to do is pay more for banany than they have been, and a lot more than they should have to.
Chiquita, the U.S. banana giant that fought the EU quota system (achieving only minor success) has a big market share in Eastern Europe and recently sought assurances from the European Commission that it would be able to retain it once the quotas take effect there. "Consumers in those countries will be exposed to greater market dynamics," says a Chiquita spokesman. That's putting it delicately.
What's even more galling is the secondary effect this will have on shoppers in the 15 pre-enlargement EU member states, who are by now used to paying too much for bananas (and sugar, and a lot of other products). They'll benefit from what one industry lobbyist referred to as a "blowback" from the still cheaper prices in East European countries.
In other words, in the richer West, people will pay less for bananas than they have been, but still more than they should have to.
Thanks a bunch, Brussels.

My weekly column in European Voice can be read here, but only with a subscription.

My artices on TechCentralStation.com can be read here, for free!

Hello

2004-07-16T10:07:00.000+02:00

Testing, one, two, three... testing... hello? First blog entry!

Do you support the idea of having a poll to choose a new name for this website?
	Yes, it's a great idea that helps me feel more a part of the online community
	No, your website is not a democracy so why should you trust a bunch of strangers who happen to come across your site?
	I really don't care, yet it appears I care enough to choose this answer and click 'vote'
	Why, can't you come up with something yourself?

Free polls from Pollhost.com