Commentary

The June 6th NY Times Sunday travel section boasted a breezy article entitled “Ramallah Attracts a Cosmopolitan Crowd,” which felt more sinister than the usual come-to-once-dangerous-places-and-sip-groovy-drinks travel story. Michael Luongo focused on the hot new music, restored Art deco houses, and the idea that this city has become “a destination for thousands of young North Americans, Europeans and offspring of the Palestinian elite.”

Let me preface this: The Israeli actions that resulted in the deaths of activists on May 31 were wrong. However, so are the judgments and actions of many others, including well-intentioned activists who seem to act without any common sense.

At the moment of truth, the Israelis messed up – maybe they just didn’t care; but the blame for creating such a dangerous and volatile situation does not rest solely on their shoulders. Those intellectuals who like to say that you should never simplify an issue, that everything is complex, usually break their own rule when it involves Israel. The evil Israelis are at it again, an open-and-shut case.

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.”

Austrian immigration policy is a black box, deliberately kept that way by both the politicians and the media. Bad people get sent away and good people get to stay, it seems – at least according to members of both the upper and middle classes I’ve spoken to on my travels.

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.”

When Kosovo declared its independence in January 2008, Serbia and five of the 27 EU members along with some 89 other sovereign states refused to recognize it, sending the case to the International Court of Justice. Public hearings held last December in Hague are still inconclusive.

And now, the cause has been further complicated by the opposition of the Vatican.

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.

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.

While others may debate whether art is, or should be, political, Austrian Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek has never been in doubt. Through much of her work, she portrays the pathologies she saw in a post-war Austria suffocating under a conspiracy of silence, an inability to confront its role in the horrors of National Socialism.