Commentary

When Ghanaian football striker Asamoah Gyan scored the winning goal in the third minute of extra time against the U.S. last week, history was made. It’s not only Ghana, though, who desperately wants to see their team, the Black Stars, continue to make history in the 2010 World Cup; it’s most of Africa.

Having beat the U.S. 2 to 1 last Saturday night, Ghana, in their second World Cup appearance, is the only African team to have advanced to the 2010 quarterfinals – keeping the hopes of the entire host continent alive as high morale sweeps across the borders of Africa’s fifty-four nations.

After last weekend’s win, Accra exploded in celebration. “We’ve made everybody proud,” Gyan said, in an Associated Press article. “Not Ghana alone, but all of Africa.”

In launching its new innovation strategy, the EU has high hopes for helping European industry take back its technology edge and lay the foundations it will need to keep its economy competitive in the face of growing challenges from the Far East.

But even Martin Schuurmans, chairman of the newly-formed European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), admits it will be a tall order.

“Many of our competitors – China and the United Sates – are moving more quickly than we are,” he warns. “I am not pessimistic but we need to speed up, speed up, speed up.”

Eyjafjallajökull doesn’t only have a one-of-a-kind name but an attitude too. Its eruption on Apr.15 was memorable – and not because it was a powerful one – quite the opposite: Compared to other volcanoes, Iceland’s barely spewed and yet, managed to leave millions of people stranded at airports and crowded train stations for most of a week.

This meant several sleepless nights for airline owners and a colossal loss accumulating to more than $1.6 billion in revenue the cloud slowly vanished and everything went back to normal – with air traffic restored and more and more passengers reaching their destinations.

Although overshadowed by the Greek Debt Crisis and pressure on the Euro, the discussion of national smoking laws continues. However, the support for a possible intervention from Brussels has been dampened in Austria by falling restaurant profits as the financial crisis reaches consumers. As people start trimming their household budgets where ever they can, going out to eat becomes a kind of leading indicator of larger trends.

Hardly the best time to add another drag on the industry.

The world of traditional power politics was typically about whose military or economy would win. In today’s information age, politics is also about whose “story” wins.

National narratives are, indeed, a type of currency. Governments compete with each other and with other organizations to enhance their own credibility and weaken that of their opponents. Witness the contest between the government and protesters after the Iranian elections in June 2009, in which the Internet and Twitter played crucial roles, or the recent controversy between Google and China.

Since the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, European travelers and businesses have been swept up in the mass hysteria naturally expected to follow the cancellation of thousands of flights (for almost a week) and the loss of nearly 150 million euros daily by airline companies worldwide.

The recent suicide bombs in Moscow’s underground are a reminder of the pervasiveness and inexorable power of this crudely effective weapon. Every time these attacks occur, people try to figure out two things: Why do they do this? And how do we stop it? The political motivations are easy enough to grasp – anyone can understand Palestinian nationalism or one’s violent reaction to an American occupation – but why kill yourself? Stopping it is even more difficult without throwing society into a complete, unsustainable paralysis – and it would probably still happen anyway.

Are there limits to what EU supranationalism should dictate? How far should the EU be going vis-à-vis identity? While European integration is incredibly valuable and highly beneficial for the continent’s 400 million inhabitants, lines have to be drawn when “harmonizing” starts to dilute the cultural identity of its member states. On what level is someone “European” as opposed to “Austrian”? A controversial issue, not only on the EU level, but on national and social levels as well, is the future rights of smokers in European societies. Many argue that a smoking ban is just common sense – tobacco has a devastating effect on populations, and even secondhand smoke greatly increases one’s risk of lung cancer, heart disease, etc. Basically, it’s for the public health, stupid.

The Viennese want their Hausmeister back, according to a survey earlier this year by the Viennese Housing Service Wiener Wohnen, indicating that 75% of the city’s residents favored the return of the apartment house concierge.

Nearly 10 years ago, the Black-Blue Coalition (ÖVP/FPÖ) abolished the requirement for a facility maintenance service (Hausbesorgergesetz) hoping to take the shine off the reputation of the Social Democrats (SPÖ), the caretaker party. As ambitious as their intentions were, they did not succeed completely, as the change did not prohibit the private employment of building managers.