The NYT’s young Berlin bureau chief, Nicholas Kulish, sees a connection between Germany’s refusal to pony up stimulus funds in proporition to the U.S. with a red line guarding a “barefoot zone” beyond which no shoes my trod. Everyone strictly obeys the line and grown men freeze in place when they see it, demonstrating a [...]

The standard Olympic ranking method on American sites like TSN is uniformly by total medal count instead of gold, the Chinese preference, which has put the United States on top since the Beijing games began 12 days ago. Chinese sites like the portal 163 (中国 = China, 美国 = USA) prefer to count by gold [...]

It was worth swilling expensive beer and slow-mo bumping-and-grinding through security lines to get within 30 meters (that’s 30 yards) of the Großer Stern—the base of the Victory Column rather than an object “beside” the column as some of the wires had it last week. Just a few bodies from the security tent (almost there!) [...]

Confirmed today by Roger Cohen in the NYT in one of those increasingly popular and increasingly annoying “what he should say” op-eds. And! as previously speculated here, Obama will be holding forth a super symbolic speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate at the start of his European tour, which also features stops in Paris [...]

The saviour of the universe, Barack Obama, whose uncle helped liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp (not Auschwitz), is planning to visit Berlin after the Democratic National Convention, potentially in early September, according to reports in a bunch of German papers and word from demsinberlin.de. What wall he will stand before and what German sentence he [...]

Thanks to a tip from my collegue who pointed me to this Berliner Zeitung piece today, Der 51. Staat, and a little bit of googling, sure enough, if you’re an American holding a passport and proof that you’re living abroad, you can participate in Super Tuesday tonight—or at least the blue side of it—thanks to [...]

This graphic from DER SPIEGEL makes it pretty clear why German business groups have been chiding Angela Merkel about her ill-advised meeting with the Dalai Lama last month. Also clear is that German business groups don’t care that much about democracy or what people like to call human rights. Even Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier disagrees [...]

I seem to have forgotten the war of ideas against the communists that helped lead (push) the US into Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, etc. The Soviets were secular, by definition. But, still, it was their enforced atheism that scared a good many God-fearing Americans into supporting any anti-communist war. So, in an important way, [...]

I’d always guessed the Editor of The Economist would have to be quite the learned and clever lad. But not this clever. John Micklewait has written a snappy macrocosmic refresher (In God’s name + interview podcast) on religion’s resurgence in geopolitical influence, how it happened and why Modernity (science, learning and democracy) now finds itself [...]

Oh, man. This is the best clip I’ve seen in a while. American film director David Lynch is touring around his Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, which strongly promotes trancendental meditation as a solution to the world’s problems (negativity, mainly). I’ve been following the Foundation’s goings-on because, well, I think it’s a great [...]

Joschka Fischer, Germany’s foreign minister from 1998 to 2005 (and currently a visiting professor at Princeton University), has some posted some urgent words on the Guardian’s online soap box, comment is free, about the senseless violence going on in Sudan right now and the EU’s duty to action, to “get tough” with the perpetrators. He [...]

The bi-monthly (and as far as I know, pretty young) neolib mag Foreign Policy has quickly reached the top of my must-read global edification pile (right next to my global degradation pile). Thankfully, since it’s published every eight weeks I have enough time to digest it and not feel guilty for not fully consuming it [...]

This was posted today as a Warden Message on the website for the US Embassy in Germany: U.S. diplomatic and consular facilities in Germany are increasing their security posture. We are taking these steps in response to a heightened threat situation. The U.S. Embassy encourages Americans in Germany to increase their vigilance and take appropriate [...]

Chris, an American living in Paris, says on Americablog that he suspects this to be a diversion, like the Miami Seven two years ago, the administration crying wolf to bolster their raison d’etre. I’m inclined to agree. It’s too early to tell yet whether this is indeed an important indictment or just another diversion but [...]

Time to pop off that bottle of Champagne or Asti or Sekt, it’s partymachen time in the EU! Fifty years ago this Saturday leaders from France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries signed the Treaty of Rome, putting into motion the European Economic Community and the post-war dreams of a Europe unified in pursuit of [...]

That’s my subtitle (it’s actually “A Clash of Nations 1930-1945″). I have it from a reliable source (Pierre) that this is a fascinating and well-worth-it exhibit now going on at the German Historical Museum in the I. M. Pei annex. Six themes (art and politics; heads of state; individual and society; work and development; war; [...]

Most people, I would say, can’t be bothered to unpack just how tangled up the web of deceit and betrayal is in the Middle East and why it would be that the United States is doing a lot of the tangling. Well, Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker can, will, does. Since early 2005 he’s [...]

From a Greek radio station advert (ref: Mao Zedong, revered revolutionary leader of China, a la Gene Simmons, singer of the American glam rock band, Kiss) “Tuya’s Wedding” (Tu ya de hun shi), a film directed by Wang Quan’an, won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale), which ended on [...]

Ever since this symbolism-writ-large work (Beijing 2008) by Chinese-Canadian painter Liu Yi (刘溢) was exhibited last March in New York, it has been something of an online parlor game–who is who and what are they up to? The setting is clear as next year’s Olympic games with the world gathering around the table for a [...]

War veteran and Republican “moderate” presidential hopeful John McCain was in attendance at the 43rd annual Munich security conference this weekend where Vladimir Putin called out George Bush for making the world more dangerous. McCain made a statement afterwards to the effect that Russia would be ill-advised to “endanger” its partnership with the West, specifically [...]