Category Archives: Lighter side

Barroso Buzzword Bingo 2012

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For Der Spiegel he “head[s] the most powerful EU institution”. For Russian diplomats he is “basically a glorified international civil servant”. For us eurobloggers, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso is perhaps most of all an annual opportunity to play “buzzword bingo”: laying down 10 words/phrases you think he will use in his State of the (European) Union address and then shouting “Bingo!” on Twitter when he does.

Mine:

  1. Let’s be frank
  2. Genuine economic and monetary union
  3. Solidarity
  4. Competitiveness
  5. Macro-economic stability
  6. Innovation
  7. Jobs and growth
  8. SMEs
  9. Youth unemployment
  10. Fiscal consolidation

UPDATE 13/09/2012: As I watched the speech, I only got “let’s be frank [about this], “[a deep and] genuine economic and monetary union,” “solidarity” and “competitiveness”.  But I was only half-listening. Others that were mentioned: “innovation” and “SMEs”. That makes six out of ten. There was no “youth unemployment” (drat) but there was “massive levels of unemployment, especially among our young people.” You can get the text of Barroso’s speech here.

Will the prophet Putin be proven right?

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Vladimir Putin, peering into the future.

Last November, when the euro-shit really started to hit the fan, Vladimir Putin – with his habitual freedom of expression – predicted the European Central Bank would need to intervene to the tune of €1.5 trillion.

Mario Draghi, who became ECB president that month, went on to prove the Russian premier two-thirds right by injecting a mind-exploding €1 trillion in low-interest three-year loans to eurozone banks. Things have calmed down since the wily Italian bowed to the inevitable and did this little bit of steal QE.

Still, as Charlemagne points out, there is still plenty that can go wrong, which might prompt the ECB to prove Putin 100% right.

“Hidden Disaster”: The EU’s actually pretty good comic on its humanitarian work

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I hate the European Union’s PR efforts. Over-generalizing very slightly, they could be characterized as “universally shit”. The Commission in particular is guilty of funding high-budget bizarre and even incomprehensible videos, whether it be the two-part “Adventures of Euro-Clooney and the Innovation Crystal Ball”, the “Creepy One-For-All Soup” (succeeding in taking a decent, concrete initiative and making a magnificent turd of it) or the “Attack of the Flying Sci-Fi-Future-Creating Paperwork”.

If you only saw this of the Commission, you would be forgiven for believing the organization was entirely made up of spendthrift, utterly out of touch megalomaniacal bureaucrats with psychotic penchants for magical thinking. For the record, and knowing quite a few people in the Commission, I don’t think this is the case but clearly some people in DG COMM need to be seriously reprimanded and perhaps have their heads checked by professionals.

Actually a pretty good EU-funded comic book.

Having said all this, I also feel I should praise the Commission when it does something reasonably well. I discovered this comic book in the Commission’s information center and it is good in the sense that, if I had a child, I would give it to her to read. She would come out of it more informed about the world, might be inspired to volunteer for humanitarian work, and might even find the 40-page story entertaining (I need a youngster to confirm).

A .pdf is available in five languages here and you can see some more of the Belgian author’s work here. Belgium incidentally has a long history of comic book-writing, its artists producing many of Europe’s most famous series including Tintin, The Smurfs and Lucky Luke.

Flying over the disaster-struck mountainous country of Borduvia.

The book stars Zana, a field expert for the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid department (more commonly known as “ECHO”) as she attempts to bring relief to the flood-stricken people of “Borduvia”. Though the latter looks suspiciously like Af-Pak, the disclaimer assures us it is “a wholly fictitious story” in which “[a]ny resemblance to real people is entirely coincidental”. Good to know.

The plot is very straightforward and there is only the very bare bones of an “intrigue”, if it can be called that. However, the story carries you along and the scenes depicted are striking and evocative including panoramic views of Brussels, helicopters swooping over devastated villages and even our protagonists discovering the stench of bodies buried beneath tons of rubble.

Integrated into this, mostly seamlessly, are explanations of how ECHO and the Commission more generally work: ECHO’s division into regional “operational desks”, Zana’s drafting of situational reports for headquarters (“sitreps”) and even the outsourcing of the EU’s humanitarian work to NGOs (eg: the Red Cross or Oxfam getting money from the Commission for a specific EU project). The latter point is fairly important for understanding in general what the Commission does and does not do.

The reader also gets a sense of the challenges posed by a humanitarian crisis in a Third World country. This includes the poverty, logistical problems and lack of infrastructure, the control (in this case) of certain disaster-hit areas by armed rebels, trouble with semi-literate soldiers, the need to talk checkpoints guards into letting you past..

The book is what I would call effective propaganda in the most positive sense. The heroine can be readily identified with and one gets an impression of ECHO – with its own lingo, Brussels-based “Crisis Room” and concrete action in the disaster area – as a genuinely useful and even “sexy” organization which a young person might aspire to find meaningful work in.

How close this book is to the reality is beside the point. I suspect however that ECHO’s work is similar to the bittersweet mix of genuine idealism and political compromise that Samantha Power wrote about so well in Chasing the Flame, her book on the life and work of the Brazilian UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello who died in Iraq in 2003. In any event, young people should, on occasion, be inspired and educated by their elders. For that I’ll tip my hat to whoever produced Hidden Disaster and will give a copy to some of my very young cousins when I have the chance.

UK’s electoral reform, explained by progressive leaders

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While not as entertaining as when explained to cats, the Guardian nonetheless has perhaps the most “authoritative” defense of the alternative vote system. It is signed by Labour shadow business secretary John Denham, Lib Dem energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne, leader of the Green Party Caroline Lucas.

I have long thought the British system – like the American – is thoroughly dysfunctional and undemocratic, robbing much of the electorate of their voice and depriving the government of much-needed legitimacy.

A summary of the article’s arguments, which I think on the whole are rather persuasive:

  • “You cannot build a fair society on an unfair politics. Britain consistently votes as a center-left country and yet the Conservatives have dominated our politics for two-thirds of the time since 1900. Only on two occasions in that long century – 1900 and 1931 – have the Tories won a majority of votes.”
  • Margaret Thatcher’s “radical” reformist government twice had over 54% of people vote against her but she kept massive majorities. The electoral system, incidentally, had no incentive for her not to completely wreck Scotland and the north.
  • The “wasted vote” produces apathy. There is no point being a Conservative in Scotland or the north and no point being a progressive in much of the south. (The same problem is compounded in the United States by state-wide FPTP elections. There is no point voting outside a swing state (and, for that matter, no point being black in a Southern state).
  • This artificial polarization is “a recipe not for a parliament that holds up a mirror the nation, so that we can debate and resolve our differences, but one that deepens divisions and resentments.”
  • “Back in 1950, [...] 85% of MPs won more than half of the vote in their constituency. Today, two thirds of MPs have more people voting against them than for them.”
  • Foreigners: Few new democracies today adopt the British system, Australia adopted AV 80 years ago and New Zealand has adopted the German system. What a lonely “Mother of Parliaments”!
  • The Tories oppose AV as the current system gives them overwhelming parliamentary majorities with minority public support.
  • The racist British National Party opposes AV as they would be unable to get any majorities under this system. (An interesting, although possibly problematic, feature of AV is indeed being able to “censure” a candidate by all “mainstream” voters ranking him last.)

Erdoğan accuses French MP of being French

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When asked by French MP Muriel Marland-Militello about freedom of religion in Turkey, the Turkish Prime Minister responded that “I believe this friend is French? She is also ‘French’ to Turkey.” Being “French” about something is a colloquial Turkish expression meaning ignorant or confused. The joke did not go down well.

And unfortunately for Erdoğan, Marland-Militello is actually of Turkish-Armenian origin… The Turkish daily Hürriyet goes into details with the title “She is not that French, actually”.

Even Der Spiegel can’t help the raunchy innuendo

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At least when comes to covering Silvio Berlusconi’s now-delayed trial on his infamous “bunga bunga” parties with then 17-year old nightclub dancer Ruby Rubacuori. Lest you not got the not-so-subtle jibe at the Italian prime minister’s virility with the article’s headline, “Berlusconi’s Prostitution Scandal Adjourned after Seven Minutes,” it is also helpfully subtitled “Legalis Interruptus”.

I approve.

Berlusconi insists he didn’t have sex with Ruby despite paying her some 7,000 euros. Der Spiegel does its best to keep a straight face when it notes that “Berlusconi’s defense team insists that the parties merely involved dinner, movies, karaoke and Scrabble [emphasis added].”

Must have been some game of Scrabble!

Sarkozy’s bare-chested war counsel

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Nothing inspires less confidence in the bases of France’s war against Libya than this photo of Bernard-Henri Lévy about to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy. It is in this state that France’s most media-savvy “philosopher” discussed the high politics of war and peace with Sarkozy, apparently persuading him to bomb Libya.

BHL then went on television (2:30) to say that France would probably be bombing Libya, albeit with his shirt done up. Apparently four-buttons down was not solemn enough attire for a philosopher to announce a war. This role had followed  some theatrics in Benghazi itself, looking rather haggard, but getting media attention to himself and the cause.

French diplomacy has previously gotten in trouble for excess of flesh. Boris Boillon – Sarkozy’s new ambassador to Tunisia and previously ambassador to Iraq – immediately got into some hot water for undiplomatic comments he made to the local media and Marine Le Pen digging up this pic from a dating site.

Lévy and Sarkozy both being creatures of the mass media – the French talk of hypermédiatisation, people, or bling (anything crassly rich and famous tends to get an pseudo-English term imported for the occasion) - their collaboration grants an unsavory air to the whole affair. One is left with the impression that the entire crusade was started on a whim, primarily as a publicity stunt. (The circumstantial evidence – Sarkozy’s famously erratic temperament, perpetual scandals and chronically flagging poll numbers  - doesn’t help either.)

PS: Presseurop has a nice little roundup of the splits among French intellectuals on the war.

EU’s new wish-fulfilment video: Commission’s endless paperwork creates scifi Utopia

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We all remember the adventures of Euro-Clooney and other assorted metrosexual Europeans in the “Innovation Union”. The good people at DG Communication have decided to top that with this video which I am almost at a loss to qualify. I can only suppose that this is what a competent video producer imagines to be a bureaucrat’s wet dream. Watch for yourself.

Done? Good.

Our frustrated Europeans are stuck in traffic, face flight delays or have to deal with late arrivals of cargo. But never fear, the Eurocracy is here! It has helpfully produced a White Paper on Transport whose endless pages fly out of the window – our Europeans gazing at the flocks of paperwork with joy and wonder – before magically turning into futuristic trains, airports and cars. And so, our Europeans were saved from wasting time due to congestion and delays. And everyone was happy. The end.

Well, if Commission officials have that kind of power and effectiveness, their job satisfaction must be off the scales.

The reason for this little indulgence in unadulterated fantasy is the recent publication of the Commission’s White Paper on Transport. Pleasantly short at 30 pages, it is your typical, run-of-the-mill, lowest common denominator non-paper, a flaccid compromise between the various conflicting and/or status quo business and governmental interests.

While it has some misleading headline-grabbing points, including a goal for no conventionally-fuelled cars in cities by 2050 (e.g. only electric, natural gas and hybrids), it is painfully thin on commitments. A very ambitious target to reduce carbon emissions in transport is quietly pushed as far into the future as possible, that is a 60% reduction by 2050 compared to 1990. Meanwhile no reduction relative to 1990 is projected even up to 2030! Environmental NGOs predictably panned the document.

The European Commission is not the Soviet Gosplan. It can’t dictate what people should do or create anything with a snap of its fingers. It can coordinate, legislate, encourage but for the most part this means just producing lots of paper and wind (hence the unselfconsciously ironic hilariousness of the video).

Ultimately the Commission, in and of itself, cannot make these things a reality and it shouldn’t pretend to. It leads to confused responsibility. The EU has a limited budget, a few tens of billions of Euros legitimately going to transport, but not much else. It is ultimately business, national governments and even regional authorities which might be able to set us on the right track (and if things go to hell in transport, we should mostly blame them). I would wish the EU could be more understated.

PS: And thanks to one particularly helpful comment on YouTube I now know what the Venus Project is.

France’s Man in Baghdad Plays James Bond

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I was very tempted to entitle this post “Sarkozy’s Little Arabs” for two guests that appeared at the same time on the popular French talk show Le Grande Journal. The first was Amine Benalia-Brouch, a Frenchman of Algerian-Portuguese heritage. A member of Sarkozy’s political party the UMP, he achieved minor fame when at a party event a fellow member said “He’s our little Arab,” to which Minister of the Interior Brice Hortefeux responded “All the better. You always need one. When there’s one, it’s OK. It’s when there are lots that there are problems.” Benalia-Brouch initially issued a video defending Hortefeux’s comments (out of context, etc). Later he reneged, left Sarkozy’s party, claimed to be under pressure (vague threats regarding the Interior Ministry) and is now peddling a book on his experience. Ho-hum… Hortefeux was eventually found guilty in court of “racial insults” but did not have to resign from his ministry.

The second is Boris Boillon, France’s man in Baghdad. Le Grand Journal presents extracts from a documentary entitled “Ambassadeur de choc” (apparently not a contradiction in terms, sadly I can’t find the full video). In the doc, we indeed witness scenes of an ambassador “between James Bond and Rambo”:

  • Boillon closing off the fortress-like French Embassy in “the most dangerous country in the world,” guarded by 30 gendarmes and elite GIGN.
  • Boillon being credited with freeing the Bulgarian nurses in Libya in 2007.
  • Boillon wielding an assault rifle in case, in his words, “of a force majeure“.
  • Boillon speaking in Arabic in front of the cameras, the documentary informing us he was raised in Algeria and is a star with Iraqi media.
  • Boillon doing pull-ups and jogging, 45 minutes of which for him is ”simply vital”.

On the show itself, the handsome – if almost a little too baby-faced for 40 – Boillon seemed a bit star-struck. His talking points and bons mots initially came out a little awkwardly. He soon found his stride though expounding on French businesses helping Iraq rebuild, on the fact that the French and American presences are complementary not competitive, or on France’s reputation for scientific excellence in the country (perhaps due to historic sales of nuclear power stations and Mirage fighters in the 1970s and 1980s, inevitably to be later destroyed by the Israelis and/or American-led coalitions).

He calls himself ”a pure Sarko product” who shares the Great Leader’s qualities, which he defines as “energy” and “the ability to see things as half full”. Indeed, when asked about Iraq’s rough shape and France’s relatively minor role, he responded (presumably memorized) that  ”the bigger the field, the bigger the field of possibilities.” He also has Sarkozy’s goofy habit, which the President has since given up, of wearing sunglasses all year round, including indoors (“the trademark of the Elysée,” Boillon says).

The air of confident suaveness and elegant gravitas does seem rather put on and was greatly undermined when he was asked whether Sarkozy’s nickname for him really was “my little Arab”. Boillon responded that yes, “among other things, but it’s just affectionate.”

All this, while perfectly interesting, is very strange. It’s not normal for ambassadors to be portrayed as a real-life supermen. Nor is there usually any reason for a French ambassador to spend time appearing on French television or radio. But then, he is one of those ”young wolves” plucked by Sarkozy and put into positions of responsibility ahead of the normal rules of promotion. The “foundation” of his position is thus fundamentally different, disregarding seniority and the esteem of his diplomatic peers, more dependent on Sarkozy’s whims and fortune, and, perhaps, a wider notoriety. Is Sarkozy’s “little Arab” being prepared for another role through these appearances? Perhaps, but Boillon should be careful. Sarkozy’s other idiosyncratic media-friendly picks – Kouchner, Dati, Amara.. – haven’t always faired well.

Other stuff:

  • Boillon appearing before the Sénat. Not a particularly good public speaker here, mainly deals with his role as ambassador for French big business (AirFrance, Total, Lafarge…) and the limited risks of doing business in Iraq, but also on creating rule of law, etc.
  • Boillon appearing on the RTL radio station, much more effective. Arguing for greater involvement in the vast, terroristic so-called “arc of crisis” from Af-Pak to the Sahel (!), praising a genuine U.S. withdrawal from Iraq (sounding like an U.S. government spokesperson in fact..), describing the first big reception at the French embassy celebrating July 14th (“Bastille Day”) since 1990 with some700 guests.