America can now relax; a Dutch court has decided not to throw President Bush in the clink.
THE HAGUE (AFP) - A court in The Hague turned down a demand by a dozen plaintiffs who wanted to force the Dutch government to arrest US President George W. Bush when he visits the Netherlands Saturday, the judgement made public said. ...
The plaintiffs, mostly left-wing organisations and activists [...curiously unnamed in this AFP report. —ed.], accused Bush of “numerous grave violations of the Geneva Conventions”. They also said the president is responsible for the deaths of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq and Washington’s refusal to recognize the International Criminal Court (ICC), the world’s first permanent war crimes court.
Friday, May 06, 2005
N.J. Beach Town Repeals 30-Year Speedo Ban
CAPE MAY, N.J. - Come on in, Speedo wearers, the water's fine: Your skimpy little swimsuits are legal now. For more than 30 years, this quaint little Victorian-themed resort at the southern tip of New Jersey said no to "skintight, formfitting or bikini type" bathing attire on males over the age of 12.
For an ocean resort that once required men and women to swim at different times of day, wearing heavy woolen, cover-everything swimsuits, it made sense to modernize.
"It's a beach town, for God's sake," said Police Chief Diane Sorantino. The town also agreed to lift a rule that stopped bare-chested men from strolling along the beachfront promenade.
Not that everyone's cheering. It's often the older guys - the ones with beer guts, or wrinkly skin, or unsightly tufts of hair - who wear the tiny swimsuits.
"The people you want to see in the Speedos, you don't," said Maggie Creighton, 19, who works in a downtown lingerie store.
Locals who share the beaches with tourists said that despite the ban, the itsy bitsy suits have been a common sight in summer, even though most surf shops and beachwear retailers here don't sell them.
"A lot of people do come in and say `Do you carry Speedos?' said Becky Fitzgerald, sales clerk at Della's General Store. "It's the 40- to 50-year-old group who ask. And it's funny, their bodies aren't the shape for Speedos."
The swimsuit ban was enacted in the 1960s in response to complaints about gay men who wore the suits on the beach, according to former mayor Robert Elwell, who writes a Cape May history column for a local newspaper.
But the ban was rarely if ever enforced, according to the city, which voted to amend its beach regulations last week.
City Administrator Luciano Corea Jr. said the skimpy swimsuit ban was largely unknown. There was no push to eliminate it, but doing so made sense, he said.
"We had no complaints, and we've never issued a summons for it, to my knowledge," said Corea. "Technically, we could've left it on the books. It was never enforced anyway."
Vince Grimm, executive director of GABLES of Cape May County, a gay advocacy organization, said the ban was outdated and holds no particular significance for gays.
"We're no different than anyone else. If they (the suits) are in style, we wear them," said Grimm.
Charlotte Beheler, owner of Sports `n Stuff, which sells Speedos for $25.95, said they're not among her top sellers.
She doesn't expect any big boom in sales this summer - or an explosion of skin on the beaches. Neither does Speedo, which says the men's brief-style suits make up only 1 percent of the Los Angeles-based company's sales.
"I could see that people may buy more, but I don't think it'll be a huge dramatic change," said Speedo marketing manager Lesley Benko.
Still, some people will be watching the beaches this year just to see who's wearing what.
"I haven't been to the beach in years, but now I'm thinking I'll go down there this year," said Joann Quinn, of North Cape May. "The beach ought to be interesting this year."
For an ocean resort that once required men and women to swim at different times of day, wearing heavy woolen, cover-everything swimsuits, it made sense to modernize.
"It's a beach town, for God's sake," said Police Chief Diane Sorantino. The town also agreed to lift a rule that stopped bare-chested men from strolling along the beachfront promenade.
Not that everyone's cheering. It's often the older guys - the ones with beer guts, or wrinkly skin, or unsightly tufts of hair - who wear the tiny swimsuits.
"The people you want to see in the Speedos, you don't," said Maggie Creighton, 19, who works in a downtown lingerie store.
Locals who share the beaches with tourists said that despite the ban, the itsy bitsy suits have been a common sight in summer, even though most surf shops and beachwear retailers here don't sell them.
"A lot of people do come in and say `Do you carry Speedos?' said Becky Fitzgerald, sales clerk at Della's General Store. "It's the 40- to 50-year-old group who ask. And it's funny, their bodies aren't the shape for Speedos."
The swimsuit ban was enacted in the 1960s in response to complaints about gay men who wore the suits on the beach, according to former mayor Robert Elwell, who writes a Cape May history column for a local newspaper.
But the ban was rarely if ever enforced, according to the city, which voted to amend its beach regulations last week.
City Administrator Luciano Corea Jr. said the skimpy swimsuit ban was largely unknown. There was no push to eliminate it, but doing so made sense, he said.
"We had no complaints, and we've never issued a summons for it, to my knowledge," said Corea. "Technically, we could've left it on the books. It was never enforced anyway."
Vince Grimm, executive director of GABLES of Cape May County, a gay advocacy organization, said the ban was outdated and holds no particular significance for gays.
"We're no different than anyone else. If they (the suits) are in style, we wear them," said Grimm.
Charlotte Beheler, owner of Sports `n Stuff, which sells Speedos for $25.95, said they're not among her top sellers.
She doesn't expect any big boom in sales this summer - or an explosion of skin on the beaches. Neither does Speedo, which says the men's brief-style suits make up only 1 percent of the Los Angeles-based company's sales.
"I could see that people may buy more, but I don't think it'll be a huge dramatic change," said Speedo marketing manager Lesley Benko.
Still, some people will be watching the beaches this year just to see who's wearing what.
"I haven't been to the beach in years, but now I'm thinking I'll go down there this year," said Joann Quinn, of North Cape May. "The beach ought to be interesting this year."
Time Travel
Time Travelers to Meet in Not Too Distant Future
By PAM BELLUCK
Published: May 6, 2005
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 5 - Suppose it is the future - maybe a thousand years from now. There is no static cling, diapers change themselves, and everyone who is anyone summers on Mars. "The odds of a time traveler showing up are between one in a million and one in a trillion," says Amal Dorai, who conceived the convention.
David Nelson demonstrated the motorized couch in his M.I.T. dorm, which also features the "pizza button." What's more, it is possible to travel back in time, to any place, any era. Where would people go? Would they zoom to a 2005 Saturday night for chips and burgers in a college courtyard, eager to schmooze with computer science majors possessing way too many brain cells? Why not, say some students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who have organized what they call the first convention for time travelers.
Actually, they contend that theirs is the only time traveler convention the world needs, because people from the future can travel to it anytime they want.
"I would hope they would come with the idea of showing us that time travel is possible," said Amal Dorai, 22, the graduate student who thought up the convention, which is to be this Saturday on the M.I.T. campus. "Maybe they could leave something with us. It is possible they might look slightly different, the shape of the head, the body proportions."
The event is potluck and alcohol-free - present-day humans are bringing things like brownies. But Mr. Dorai's Web site asks that future-folk bring something to prove they are really ahead of our time: "Things like a cure for AIDS or cancer, a solution for global poverty or a cold fusion reactor would be particularly convincing as well as greatly appreciated."
He would also welcome people from only a few days in the future, far enough to, say, give him a few stock market tips.
By PAM BELLUCK
Published: May 6, 2005
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 5 - Suppose it is the future - maybe a thousand years from now. There is no static cling, diapers change themselves, and everyone who is anyone summers on Mars. "The odds of a time traveler showing up are between one in a million and one in a trillion," says Amal Dorai, who conceived the convention.
David Nelson demonstrated the motorized couch in his M.I.T. dorm, which also features the "pizza button." What's more, it is possible to travel back in time, to any place, any era. Where would people go? Would they zoom to a 2005 Saturday night for chips and burgers in a college courtyard, eager to schmooze with computer science majors possessing way too many brain cells? Why not, say some students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who have organized what they call the first convention for time travelers.
Actually, they contend that theirs is the only time traveler convention the world needs, because people from the future can travel to it anytime they want.
"I would hope they would come with the idea of showing us that time travel is possible," said Amal Dorai, 22, the graduate student who thought up the convention, which is to be this Saturday on the M.I.T. campus. "Maybe they could leave something with us. It is possible they might look slightly different, the shape of the head, the body proportions."
The event is potluck and alcohol-free - present-day humans are bringing things like brownies. But Mr. Dorai's Web site asks that future-folk bring something to prove they are really ahead of our time: "Things like a cure for AIDS or cancer, a solution for global poverty or a cold fusion reactor would be particularly convincing as well as greatly appreciated."
He would also welcome people from only a few days in the future, far enough to, say, give him a few stock market tips.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Carl's Germany update-
Friends,
I include some articles about the latest craze in Germany, anti-capitalism. Anti-Americanism helped Schroeder stay in office last time and ahead of upcoming regional elections he´s just as desperate. This will, and in my eyes should, infuritate some of you. Others may beg to differ. But it is worth sinking your teeth into. Some of the opposition, sniffing vacuous but fertile good ol' populism, embraces parts of this nonsense. But in general, they are keeping sane. Don´t know what to think yet...the rhetoric is escalating and getting kinda weird. I mean, comparing investors to locusts and the ones who said that to Nazis, is simply madness. And all this in the run-up to 60th anniversary of VE Day on Sunday. Then I will heading to the Bundestag, to listen to what will hopefully be a sober and calming speech by President Koehler.
Carl
-----
John Vinocur always has good stuff in the IHT, this is background on a troubled place.
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/05/02/news/politicus.php
i am one of those quick-to-theorize types i guess...
then more specifically:
Schroeder Aide Steps Up Broadside On Unbridled Capitalism
DOW JONES NEWSWIRESApril 27, 2005 11:21 a.m.
BERLIN (AP)--A senior aide to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder Wednesday stepped up the governing party's criticism of unbridled capitalism, which has become a centerpiece of campaigning for key state elections next month, declaring that "the state must set limits." Schroeder's Social Democrats have taken a rhetorical swing left as they try to hold off a strong conservative opposition challenge May 22 in the industrial western state of North Rhine-Westphalia - Germany's most populous and for decades a stronghold of the center-left party.
That has drawn a sharp response from German industry, which has accused Schroeder's party of endangering already shaky business confidence as it struggles with poll ratings undermined by a jobless rate of 12.5%.
Social Democratic Chairman Franz Muentefering , who launched the debate two weeks ago in a speech declaring that "international profit maximization strategies endanger our democracy in the long term," was unapologetic in an interview Wednesday with Germany's biggest-selling daily. "Business is there for people, not the other way round," he told Bild. "Anyone who thought that business could do everything better if only people would let it must see that this is wrong." "The state must set limits," he added. "And it must be in a position to enforce adherence to them." The interview came as Schroeder's Cabinet approved a plan designed to curb cheap labor from new, lower-wage members of the European Union by requiring foreign companies who have workers in Germany to pay them German wages. Germany's main employers association said the plan was counterproductive. "If it is implemented in this way, more jobs will be forced abroad or into the shadow economy or cut altogether," it said in a statement. In a separate interview with the weekly Die Zeit, Muentefering urged industry to create more jobs and charged that some companies are relocating jobs abroad "simply for profit." "It is indecent when one leaves in the lurch the place that made one great - in some cases rich - and where employees have their home," he was quoted as saying. He stopped short, however, of a suggestion last week by a regional Social Democratic leader that Germans boycott companies that lay off workers. Amid a steady flow of dismal economic news, the conservative opposition contends that the government is merely seeking to deflect attention from its own failings. This week, a closely watched survey showed German business confidence sinking to a 19-month low and the country's leading economists halved their 2005 growth forecast for Germany. Despite Schroeder's efforts to boost the economy by trimming the welfare state and implementing limited labor-market reforms, the economists argued that "no coherent concept designed to tackle the growth problem is visible. "This misery is homemade," said Volker Kauder, the general secretary of the opposition Christian Democrats. "Instead of putting the blame on others, this government should finally get to work itself." The Federation of German Industry said this week that Muentefering 's words were just adding to the problems. Schroeder's party "is doing everything it can at the moment to gamble away completely with class-war slogans confidence in business, which is in any case dwindling," said the organization's head, Juergen Thumann.
Europe Inc. Gets An About-FaceFrom Politicians
By MARCUS WALKER Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALApril 20, 2005; Page A14
FRANKFURT -- Gerhard Schroeder used to present himself as a business-friendly centrist politician, but mass unemployment and impending defeat in a key regional election are pushing the German chancellor and his Social Democratic party into a more old-fashioned policy: Blame the bosses. Across much of Europe, politicians are retreating to antibusiness rhetoric, portraying free markets and international competition as threats to the social fabric. That is bad news for the prospects for further economic restructuring in Continental Europe, where many economists blame stagnation and unemployment on overregulation, rigid labor markets and unaffordable welfare states. "Reform is out of fashion in Germany," said Thorstein Polleit, an economist at investment bank Barclays Capital in Frankfurt. "We are heading for a year of political standstill," until national elections next year. Senior figures from Mr. Schroeder's SPD party are lining up to lambast German business, which they accuse of greed in laying off German workers and moving production to low-wage countries. Yesterday, the party's deputy head, Ute Vogt, encouraged consumers to boycott the products of companies that lay off large numbers of staff. Monday, the chancellor said he supported a speech last week by SPD Chairman Franz Muentefering , which argued that "the growing power of capital" needed curtailing. Mr. Muentefering said corporate "short-term profit-seeking" was in danger of undermining people's faith in democracy, by treating workers as dispensable commodities. The quest to blame business for the weak economy is picking up just as data show growth running out of steam. German economic sentiment nosedived in April, according to the ZEW survey of financial analysts, while industrial output across the 12-nation euro currency area fell 0.5% in February. The euro-zone economy is forecast to expand only 1.6% this year, despite the fast expansion of the global economy, and many economists predict Germany will expand 1% or even less. In France, too, leaders are treading carefully on economic restructuring for fear of a public backlash. Polls suggest a majority of French voters, partly driven by economic discontent, will reject the European Union's proposed constitution in a May referendum. France's conservative government is struggling to persuade voters that the EU won't import raw Anglo-American-style capitalism to the country.
Meanwhile, failure to deliver a promised revitalization of the Italian economy, including tax cuts, has hit the popularity of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose governing coalition nearly collapsed Monday after it suffered heavy defeats in recent regional elections. Economists warn that Italy also is likely to make little headway on economic restructuring before new elections are held. In his speech, SPD boss Mr. Muentefering attacked "certain financial groups" for cutting workers despite rising profits as part of a strategy to compete abroad -- a thinly veiled reference to Deutsche Bank AG, Germany's biggest bank and erstwhile flagship for national economic strength. In February, Deutsche Bank provoked union anger for announcing 6,400 job cuts on the same day as it published an 87% increase in annual profit to €2.5 billion ($3.25 billion). The bank's chief executive, Josef Ackermann, argued that greater efficiency was needed to keep up with global players -- a logic that has made Mr. Ackermann a target for German critics of globalization. Chancellor Schroeder's problem is how to win back lost voters by next year. The ruling coalition is widely expected to lose a bellwether regional election next month in the country's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, traditionally an SPD stronghold. The government's market-oriented changes in recent years, including lowering business taxes while cutting welfare benefits, have alienated traditional working-class supporters, but haven't gone far enough to lift the economy out of the doldrums
Carl Bergquist
temporary address:
Koertestrasse 30, QU
10967 Berlin
Germany
I include some articles about the latest craze in Germany, anti-capitalism. Anti-Americanism helped Schroeder stay in office last time and ahead of upcoming regional elections he´s just as desperate. This will, and in my eyes should, infuritate some of you. Others may beg to differ. But it is worth sinking your teeth into. Some of the opposition, sniffing vacuous but fertile good ol' populism, embraces parts of this nonsense. But in general, they are keeping sane. Don´t know what to think yet...the rhetoric is escalating and getting kinda weird. I mean, comparing investors to locusts and the ones who said that to Nazis, is simply madness. And all this in the run-up to 60th anniversary of VE Day on Sunday. Then I will heading to the Bundestag, to listen to what will hopefully be a sober and calming speech by President Koehler.
Carl
-----
John Vinocur always has good stuff in the IHT, this is background on a troubled place.
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/05/02/news/politicus.php
i am one of those quick-to-theorize types i guess...
then more specifically:
Schroeder Aide Steps Up Broadside On Unbridled Capitalism
DOW JONES NEWSWIRESApril 27, 2005 11:21 a.m.
BERLIN (AP)--A senior aide to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder Wednesday stepped up the governing party's criticism of unbridled capitalism, which has become a centerpiece of campaigning for key state elections next month, declaring that "the state must set limits." Schroeder's Social Democrats have taken a rhetorical swing left as they try to hold off a strong conservative opposition challenge May 22 in the industrial western state of North Rhine-Westphalia - Germany's most populous and for decades a stronghold of the center-left party.
That has drawn a sharp response from German industry, which has accused Schroeder's party of endangering already shaky business confidence as it struggles with poll ratings undermined by a jobless rate of 12.5%.
Social Democratic Chairman Franz Muentefering , who launched the debate two weeks ago in a speech declaring that "international profit maximization strategies endanger our democracy in the long term," was unapologetic in an interview Wednesday with Germany's biggest-selling daily. "Business is there for people, not the other way round," he told Bild. "Anyone who thought that business could do everything better if only people would let it must see that this is wrong." "The state must set limits," he added. "And it must be in a position to enforce adherence to them." The interview came as Schroeder's Cabinet approved a plan designed to curb cheap labor from new, lower-wage members of the European Union by requiring foreign companies who have workers in Germany to pay them German wages. Germany's main employers association said the plan was counterproductive. "If it is implemented in this way, more jobs will be forced abroad or into the shadow economy or cut altogether," it said in a statement. In a separate interview with the weekly Die Zeit, Muentefering urged industry to create more jobs and charged that some companies are relocating jobs abroad "simply for profit." "It is indecent when one leaves in the lurch the place that made one great - in some cases rich - and where employees have their home," he was quoted as saying. He stopped short, however, of a suggestion last week by a regional Social Democratic leader that Germans boycott companies that lay off workers. Amid a steady flow of dismal economic news, the conservative opposition contends that the government is merely seeking to deflect attention from its own failings. This week, a closely watched survey showed German business confidence sinking to a 19-month low and the country's leading economists halved their 2005 growth forecast for Germany. Despite Schroeder's efforts to boost the economy by trimming the welfare state and implementing limited labor-market reforms, the economists argued that "no coherent concept designed to tackle the growth problem is visible. "This misery is homemade," said Volker Kauder, the general secretary of the opposition Christian Democrats. "Instead of putting the blame on others, this government should finally get to work itself." The Federation of German Industry said this week that Muentefering 's words were just adding to the problems. Schroeder's party "is doing everything it can at the moment to gamble away completely with class-war slogans confidence in business, which is in any case dwindling," said the organization's head, Juergen Thumann.
Europe Inc. Gets An About-FaceFrom Politicians
By MARCUS WALKER Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALApril 20, 2005; Page A14
FRANKFURT -- Gerhard Schroeder used to present himself as a business-friendly centrist politician, but mass unemployment and impending defeat in a key regional election are pushing the German chancellor and his Social Democratic party into a more old-fashioned policy: Blame the bosses. Across much of Europe, politicians are retreating to antibusiness rhetoric, portraying free markets and international competition as threats to the social fabric. That is bad news for the prospects for further economic restructuring in Continental Europe, where many economists blame stagnation and unemployment on overregulation, rigid labor markets and unaffordable welfare states. "Reform is out of fashion in Germany," said Thorstein Polleit, an economist at investment bank Barclays Capital in Frankfurt. "We are heading for a year of political standstill," until national elections next year. Senior figures from Mr. Schroeder's SPD party are lining up to lambast German business, which they accuse of greed in laying off German workers and moving production to low-wage countries. Yesterday, the party's deputy head, Ute Vogt, encouraged consumers to boycott the products of companies that lay off large numbers of staff. Monday, the chancellor said he supported a speech last week by SPD Chairman Franz Muentefering , which argued that "the growing power of capital" needed curtailing. Mr. Muentefering said corporate "short-term profit-seeking" was in danger of undermining people's faith in democracy, by treating workers as dispensable commodities. The quest to blame business for the weak economy is picking up just as data show growth running out of steam. German economic sentiment nosedived in April, according to the ZEW survey of financial analysts, while industrial output across the 12-nation euro currency area fell 0.5% in February. The euro-zone economy is forecast to expand only 1.6% this year, despite the fast expansion of the global economy, and many economists predict Germany will expand 1% or even less. In France, too, leaders are treading carefully on economic restructuring for fear of a public backlash. Polls suggest a majority of French voters, partly driven by economic discontent, will reject the European Union's proposed constitution in a May referendum. France's conservative government is struggling to persuade voters that the EU won't import raw Anglo-American-style capitalism to the country.
Meanwhile, failure to deliver a promised revitalization of the Italian economy, including tax cuts, has hit the popularity of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose governing coalition nearly collapsed Monday after it suffered heavy defeats in recent regional elections. Economists warn that Italy also is likely to make little headway on economic restructuring before new elections are held. In his speech, SPD boss Mr. Muentefering attacked "certain financial groups" for cutting workers despite rising profits as part of a strategy to compete abroad -- a thinly veiled reference to Deutsche Bank AG, Germany's biggest bank and erstwhile flagship for national economic strength. In February, Deutsche Bank provoked union anger for announcing 6,400 job cuts on the same day as it published an 87% increase in annual profit to €2.5 billion ($3.25 billion). The bank's chief executive, Josef Ackermann, argued that greater efficiency was needed to keep up with global players -- a logic that has made Mr. Ackermann a target for German critics of globalization. Chancellor Schroeder's problem is how to win back lost voters by next year. The ruling coalition is widely expected to lose a bellwether regional election next month in the country's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, traditionally an SPD stronghold. The government's market-oriented changes in recent years, including lowering business taxes while cutting welfare benefits, have alienated traditional working-class supporters, but haven't gone far enough to lift the economy out of the doldrums
Carl Bergquist
temporary address:
Koertestrasse 30, QU
10967 Berlin
Germany
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Asskicking is on the march
Al Qaeda Leader Caught
Abu Farraj al-Libbi, said to be al Qaeda's number three leader and a long-time associate of Osama bin Laden, has been captured in Pakistan, following a firefight near Peshawar. The arrest reportedly took place earlier this week.
President Bush called al-Libbi's apprehension a "critical victory in the war on terror," and praised Pakistan's President Musharraf. Of course, Musharraf had plenty of incentive to go after al-Libbi, who is believed to have masterminded two assassination attempts on Pakistan's President. Speculation about whether al-Libbi might lead authorities to bin Laden and Zawahiri is inevitable, but fruitless, at this point.
Abu Farraj al-Libbi, said to be al Qaeda's number three leader and a long-time associate of Osama bin Laden, has been captured in Pakistan, following a firefight near Peshawar. The arrest reportedly took place earlier this week.
President Bush called al-Libbi's apprehension a "critical victory in the war on terror," and praised Pakistan's President Musharraf. Of course, Musharraf had plenty of incentive to go after al-Libbi, who is believed to have masterminded two assassination attempts on Pakistan's President. Speculation about whether al-Libbi might lead authorities to bin Laden and Zawahiri is inevitable, but fruitless, at this point.
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On Francisco Franco
On Francisco Franco written by Charles Few Americans know much about Francisco Franco, leader of the winning side in the Spanish C...
