Digital distribution changing industries? So very 1999.
Think again.
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Author Archives: Doug Merrill
Not on Faith Alone
The pending crisis of the Barroso Commission isn’t limited to the dust-up over all-too-aptly-named Buttiglione. Another committee of the Parliament declined to endorse Laszlo Kovacs as commissioner responsible for energy policy. And that could cause the problem to escalate.
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FAZit
The German newspaper whose web site really could be better organized had a fistful of bloggable things on Tuesday. Just pretend I’m discussing them a little more punctually than two days later.
? Stoiber says collecting signatures to oppose Turkey’s admission to the EU is prudent. I suppose. It’s a good way to find conservative voters, but it won’t do diddly about Turkish accession. First sign the CDU/CSU knows they’ve lost on this issue.
? Headline: Central Government and States Dispute Federalism. Dog bites man. Nighttime dark.
? Suspects nabbed in bombing of Indonesian embassy in Paris. Not to worry, it was just a little bomb. It can’t happen here. (Speaking of bombs, we’ve got our own letter bomber in Bavaria. First it was a number of local officials, but he’s now moved up to the Polish consulate in Munich. And speaking of bombs, the dee-lightful folks who were planning to bomb the cornerstone ceremony of Munich’s new Jewish cultural center are on trial. A couple have turned state’s evidence. The proverbial book is being thrown.)
? Libya awarded Hugo Ch?vez, president of Venezuela, the Moammar Qaddafi Prize for Human Rights. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.
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Keep an Eye on the North Caucasus
The forty-day period of mourning traditionally observed there is coming to an end for the families of people killed in Beslan. When I was in Russia (far, far from the scene of the crime, I hasten to add), I heard numerous predictions that revenge would be taken shortly after the mourning period ended. That’d be soon.
Peter Baker’s story in the Washington Post is very good.
Reckless Predictions
Little Brown Spots
The Frankfurter Allgemeine, whose web site could generally be better organized, gets it right in their main comments on the election of extreme right candidates to state legislatures in Saarland, Brandenburg and Saxony:
We hope the debate that the two big parties were at each other’s throats about after the election in Saarland will not be revived: Who strengthened the extreme right? The SPD, with its program of socio-political insecurity, or the Union [CDU-CSU], which withdrew when things got serious? This debate leads nowhere, because the truth is that voters strengthened the NPD – primarily notorious usual non-voters – and voters will make them weak again, when the profiteers of popular anger have made sufficient fools of themselves
(Rough and ready translation, original is below the fold.)
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Something Positive About Beslan
Via Matthew Yglesias, the Oxbloggers pass along an appeal for donations to purchase urgently needed supplies and equipment for a hospital in Beslan. Especially for our readers in the UK, this is an opportunity for positive action.
Full text below the fold.
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D
This is the 500th entry at A Fistful of Euros. Onward to M.
That is all.
Seen the Sri Lankan National Men’s Handball Team?
According to Sri Lankan authorities (and as reported in the German newspaper whose web site could really be better organized), there isn’t one. That didn’t stop 23 men — or maybe 25, accounts vary — from organizing a three-week tour through Bavaria, getting German visas, traveling to Wittislingen (an apparently charming place of about 1000 inhabitants), training for competition against the locals and playing a game in what looked like Sri Lankan uniforms. After Wittislingen, they were supposed to play in Dasing, Landshut, Eggenfelden, Karlsfeld, Schlei?heim and Freising. But at the first game, something didn’t seem right. The team was terrible. According to one account, they even asked the referee no to apply the rules so stringently, or they might never score.
After the game, the team and its coaches went back to their quarters at a local orchestral hall. Then they went … somewhere. At first, the good people of Wittislingen thought the team had gone on one of their regular runs through the woods, part of their athletic regimen. But they didn’t come back. No one has seen any of them for days.
There was, by all accounts, a very polite letter thanking everyone for their hospitality and saying the team had gone to France. But who knows?
So. Anyone seen the Sri Lankan men’s handball team?
Update: According to the most recent press reports, they have likely gone to Italy, where there is apparently a reasonably large Sri Lankan community, most of whom work in the shadow economy.
Ivan, ho!
Hurricane Ivan is drawing a bead on the area where I grew up – Mobile, Alabama from age four to eight and Baton Rouge, Louisiana from eight until I went off to university. Mom’s headed north to cousins’ in Vicksburg, Mississippi. True to form, Dad, stepmom and co. are staying put.
Ninety miles inland, where Baton Rouge stands, is probably far enough that the storm will have weakened considerably, and I don’t expect too much damage.
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