Vacation posting

[Notice: Light posting until July 12 or so.]  But I am posting today.  I arrived in Austria yesterdaz with my wife, who's from here.  Soon after we got here, we went out to the home of one of her brothers and celebrated a Sonnenwendfeier, or summer solstice celebration.

This was the first of these I had attended.  The first part is like a cookout, where you bake potatoes and cook sausages over the fire.  They had neighbors and neighbors' kids over, and the kids enjoyed playing with, and more or less in, the fire.  There was plenty of beer to drink and also Most, a homemade drink that's bascially alcololic apple cider, with the taste heavily on the apple and the content heavy on the alchohol.  So it can sneak up on you if you're not careful. 

Later on, you jump over the fire.  Or jump over the fire several times, if you feel inspired.  There was plenty of fuel available to keep the fire going for hours - paper, wood chips, tree branches.

But the highlight of the event is the burning of Hänsel and Gretel effigies.  One of the neighbors had constructed pretty impressive, adult-sized versions of the fairy-tale pair.  They left them standing near the fire for an hour or so before they were dumped in, too.

It was really fun.  Good Most and sausage, too.  I had heard about the jumping-the-fire ritual.  But burning Hänsel and Gretel in effigy was a new one on me. 

Although, I had always thought that there was supposed to be nekkid pagan dancing along with these things.  I didn't see any of that last night!  Or maybe we just left too early.

News without Fox

I know I have online access to many European news sources all the time.  But it is nice to be able to have time to just browse through some papers and read the articles that catch your eye.  No, that's not an argument against reading online news, I'm just admitting I'm occasionally old-fashioned and nostagic about these things.  It usually passes quickly.

But on the plane, I read through the Financial Times Deutschland, where there was a lot of news about the negotiations currently going on over the European Union consititution.  The big question right now is over how much weight majority decisions should have, and on which categories of issues.  Currently, major decisions can be vetoed by a single member, a procedure that is unworkable for a growing Union that is also moving toward closer political and economic integration.  The decision, which was apparently reached Friday night, was to require a 55% majority of countries that represent at least 65% of the population for EU decisions to override national preferences.  On issues relating to economic and currency policies and to internal functions and criminal laws, a majority representing 72% of the population would be necessary.

There's also a contest going on for the next head of the EU Commission, the person who will succeed Italy's Ramano Prodi in that position. Germany's social-democratic Gerhard Schröder and France's conservative president Jacques Chirac favor Belgian liberal Guy Verhofstadt for the post.  Britain's Labour government favored Jean-Claude Juncker, the former prime minister of Luxembourg.  In general, the conservative in the EU Parliament favored Juncker, while social-democrats and liberals favored Juncker.  But the partisan split was more complicated than that, because the envionmentalist Greens backed Juncker, as well.

The latest twist is that Juncker's repeated assertions that he would refuse the position if offered have finally convinced his backers that he's really not interested.  So now they are backing British EU Commissioner Chris Patten.  Patten, who was the last British governor in Hong Kong before the city was restored to full Chinese control, was once a favorite of American conservatives because of what they took to be his hard line against Communism in that situation.  Their admiration abruptlz cooled when Patten in his EU role was highly critical of the US-British drive for war in Iraq.

And I was intrigued by a piece on Germany's Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's push for a United Nations reform that would give Germany a permanent seat on the UN Security Council with veto power, like the five current permanent members: the US, Britain, France, Russia and China.  Britain and France are also backing that goal, interestingly enough because they all expect to have a European Union permanent Security Council seat instead of separate seats for member countries.  Brtain and France seem to be calculating that it will be easier to accept politically when they lose their individual permanent seats in favor of a single EU one, if Germany is also joining them in giving up a permanent seat when the time comes.

Part of the implication of this policy for Germany is that it implies a willingness bz Germany to take a greater part in UN military actions in the world than it has so far.  We see the immeidate implications of that in the Afghan War, where Germany remains committed to the NATO mission there (the US troops there are not acting as part of the NATO mission)´, despite the grim prospect for any kind of military-political success being achieved there.

NATO is currently providing internatioal forces to hold the capital city of Kabul and the northern citz of Kunduz, the latter fairly recently established.  German officials also propose extending the NATO force to addditional northern citz, Faisabad.  But as the Financial Times Deutschland put it (06/17/04), "So far, Germany has not found a partner nation for that undertaking."

This is part of Fischer's way of showing that Germany is serious for the long term about taking a more active part in international military operations, a willingness that is reflected in the push for a permanent Security Council seat, as well.

Not that it makes the slightest bit of difference in the Oxycontin world.  But for those not unhinged from reality, whether from chemical or other causes, it's a significant fact that our NATO partners are doing much more in the way of stability operations in Afghanistan than the US is.  Germany's "red-green" coalition government is pushing to expand those operations.

Finally, I see that Turkey doesn't seem to be too thrilled with President Bush's holding up Turkey as an example of what the US wants to see for governments in Islamic countries.  The Turkist parliamentary president, Bülent Arinc, noted that democracy and "laicism", i.e., separation of church and state, in American terms, are part of Turkey's constitution.  He also says, "Turkey is the only country that has combined Islamic tradition with modernization."  He sees Turkey as a possible example for other democratizing countries for those reasons.

But he rejects the notion of Turkeý as a "model."  He also stated clearly, "We donät have the intention to export our regime to other countries."  He said that US plans for promoting democratic reforms in the Middle East is not clearly defined: "It is unclear what is meant.  We're still groping in the dark."