Is the ‘Race’ Race Finally Over?
It’s been an interesting month at Biber, the hip Viennese magazine for second-generation migrants. The April cover feature, “Mischlinge: Erkennst du den Mix?” – a kind of match-the-faces-to-the-races quiz – stirred critiques from the major Vienna newspapers followed by a long trail of impassioned comments on social media platforms. Mischling is a tricky word to [...]
Stronach’s Test in Tyrol
There was one consolation for Frank Stronach in the regional elections in Tyrol on 28 April: His namesake East Tyrolean village of Iselberg-Stronach supported his “Team Stronach” with 17%, or 49 votes of its 617 inhabitants. With the first exit polls published at 17:00, it was clear that the remarkable result – Frank’s party came [...]
Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself
In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, fear mongering was rampant.The news coverage was sensationalised and empathy selectively applied. It was a media race to racism, immediate and disturbingly familiar. Everyone wanted to be the first to report on the identity, nationality and ethnicity of the culprits. But surely, reality was bad enough. The [...]
PM Boyko Borisov Jumps from a Galloping Horse
Sometimes history rides on the fastest horse, and the landscape changes quicker than you can imagine. In early February, Bulgarians received unexpected, shockingly high electricity bills. Scattered protests erupted, then on Sunday, 17 February, about 100,000 gathered in the centre of Sofia and other big cities. The next day, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov nudged out [...]
Rolling the Dice in Cyprus
The task was never going to be an easy one: impose losses worth about €5.8 -billion on lenders to the Cypriot government and depositors with the country’s banks. And now that effort has led Europe to its latest impasse. In marathon negotiations, the Cypriot government, under the supervision of the troika (the European Commission, the [...]
Not all that glitters is gold
Walking through Alsergrund on a quiet weekday afternoon, I was stopped by an overexcited man who grabbed my hand and laid a gold band ring in my palm. He talked rapidly in terrible German, hardly bothering to hide his shortcomings in the language and instead lapsing almost entirely into another, unintelligible to me. The gist [...]
Mother Nature’s popsicles
Watching out a tram window one evening, I saw a mother reach up to a bus shelter roof and break off a huge icicle, which she handed to her young daughter. The little girl promptly stuck it in her mouth and began to eat it like a popsicle. I found myself a little horrified. Granted, [...]
Collateral Damage of the EU Rescue
The eurozone is now in its sixth year of crisis – and of efforts by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the international community to end it. Policymakers are becoming ensnared in a creeping interventionism that, as British Prime Minister David Cameron has put it, may alter the eurozone “beyond recognition” and violates Europe’s basic [...]
Should Germany Exit the Euro?
Last summer, financier George Soros urged Germany to agree to the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism, calling on the country to “lead or leave.” Now he says that Germany should exit the euro if it continues to block the introduction of eurobonds. Soros is playing with fire. Leaving the eurozone is precisely what the [...]
CommentaryMay 11, 2013No CommentRead More