Interesting world map

In order to spend a weekend and visit some friends I travelled with some other friends to Milan five years ago. I believed the trip pictures were in the hard drive of that old laptop from which I still need to rescue stuff, but luckily I had save them in one of the DVDs that I seldome made in my rare attacks of lucidity. I’ve spent a nice time watching them and I may publish some at any moment. The first thing I’ll drop is an advertising billboard (or may be not, as I never quite knew what it was advertising) that we came across at Linate airport. It was a very beautiful world map and I couldn’t resist the temptation to take it with me, in my camera.

Western hemisphere

Eastern hemisphere

It was quite large due to the hurry to get out of the airport, the lugagge , the passport control and stuff I didn’t manage to take a whole picture of it. I first thought I would just drop these two with maximum definition, but it is maybe more interesting to go into details:

Europe

In Europe we have a nice collection of clichés. Sure I don’t know all of them but, for instance, I can see a bull saying hola! in Spain (and Portugal?). Also a guitar and some wine; a shoe probably for the zapateado and a cathedral that looks like Barcelona’s Holy Family, but placed rather in Santiago. Italy, ciao bella, is inescapably a boot. We also have the English bobby and the Irish shamrock, a Balkanic ballerina, a cook which is maybe from Croatia and a Turkish or Greek waiter. Most of my dear Estern Europe is woodlands in Germany there are sausages, beer and a horse! Scandinavia is a place of wood, skates, deer, sleighs, viking helmets and liquors and in the Russian motherland we can see the Kremlin, matrioshkas, icons and space shuttles from Baikonur. And the decorated eggs called pisanky. Last but not least, the Caucasus is a place of tractors and mountains.

Asia

I don’t know so much about Asia and I expect to be missing even more, but I can see that Russia says до свидания to say farewell to Europe and then a quite empty Siberia is filled with pictures from which the Russians extract petrol barrels and gas. Then the Chinese Great Wall, an important defence element whose main mission is to have hundreds of restaurants named after itself. China is reduced to a water buffalo and the spiky Himalayan mountains; a rice bowl and a the multi-colour terracotta army. The Indian subcontinent is represented with images of  The Book of the Jungle: elephants and snakes, frankincense and a holy man.  In Indochina, a big-bellied Buddha and a Balinese dancer, mountains that could be Krabi islands. Korea is a dragon and Japan is a geisha ¿is it possible that a football player, a memento of that World Cup, sits between them?

?

Africa

Africa is the craddle of mankind. If we start in the Maghreb we find some mountaints that must be the Atlas, palm trees, camels, heaps of sand and the pyramids of Egypt. A little farther away in Palestine is where God lives and that’s why his eye is showing up. In the Gulf of Guinea, masks and djembes and also a football, probably because the best teems in the continent (Ghana, Ivory Coast) belong to the area.  Southwards the wildlife including giraffes, zebras, elephants, lions… and the Madagascan lemur.

America

America is the most mixed continent. Canada shows up a a huge nature reserve. The United States are the largest arrival country and the iconic one par excellence. The skyscrapers in its Big Apple, its Route 66, baseball, Californian paradise. Mexico looks just like holidays and sombreros and farther South we’ve got pre-Columbian pyramids, many palm-trees, some Amazonian Indian, the Corcovado Christ, o futebol, and the imposing Andes.

Australia

In Oceanía everything is commonplace: kangaroos, boomerangs, crocodiles, koalas, dreamlines, rugby and the typical hat. I can see a bit of green Kiwi sheep. I never understood whether the continent is Australia or Oceania. I will have to study better both continents and what they contain.

If anybody detects an object that I may have omitted (I simply couldn’t write about them all) with an interesting name or story, I thank you in advance for the comment.

Fourteen funny things I saw in Cologne

This is the approximate translation of a previous post: Catorce cosas curiosas que vi en Colonia, originally written in Spanish.

I passed by Cologne in April 2009. I came from Hannover, arriving in town one night in which I just could admire the enormity of its cathedral, which can be found next to the train station. I devoted the next day to go around the most typical places of the city. It was a hot, humid day that made me give up the idea of ascending up to the belfry of the cathedral tower. Luckily the following day (in which I had to go to Duesseldorf) showed up shiny and clear: clearly favourable to the expected ascension.

Köln, 13 April 2009. Armed with my camera I saw a series of funny things that I list in strictly chronological order:

1. Achtung

One of the better-known words among those who don’t speak the German language. We can find it here, in a sign advising of the danger implicit to tramways. Certainly, tramways are more difficult to be seen -and therefore more dangerous- when one walks looking down. Thus its placement seems appropriate.

Achtung

2. Grünfeld

A bar named after a chess opening. It also has a grafitto representing a chess knight on its wall. Nothing special, but I need help to reach the magical number fourteen.

Grünfeld Bar

3. Fists-and-ear statue.

I simply cannot imagine what this statue is representing. It may be struggle as much as deafness or the idea that listening to others makes us stronger. None of the things that came to my mind seems to make total sense. There was litter inside the ear, butts mainly, but I do not thing it was an ashtray at all.

Fisted ear

4. Ice-cream on the attic

A favourite of the tourist photos. I have one myself, I just don’t show it out of embarrasment. It is in Pisa-tower style, the ice-cream seems to have landed on my head.

The ice-cream fell on the building

5. The littel piece in front of the cathedral

The cathedral of Cologne is a spectacular monstrosity. Certainly it goes first on the list of things worth seeing in the city. It just does not fit in this list. We can make some room among the funny things for the piece in front of the Dom. It is said that the piece is identical to the one on top of each of the towers, 140 metres over the ground level. One can hardly imagine the effort to put it up there. Formidable, in every sense.

Cologne Cathedral

6. Pixelled stained-glass window.

Inside the cathedral this curious stained-glass window can be found. It looks like a tribute to the geek world. I’ve always been fascinated by the colours of stained-glass windows and this one is no exception in spite of its low definition.

Pixelled window

7. The fish lantern

In the old town, die Altstadt (actually not so old as not much of the city survivied WWII) there is an area of narrow streets and restaurants. In one of them I found this lantern, with a whale as ornament.

Cologne, old town

8. Soccer latrine

This urinary was in an Italian restaurant’s gents’, goal included. There’s a pinkish football and even if I’m telling too much I muss confess that you can move the ball, but it is impossible to score.

Sport everywhere

9. Urban ground, Philarmonic ceiling.

The auditorium in which the Philarmonic plays is under ground, specifically under a square next to the railways and close to the cathedral. Apparently, people’s steps disturb the acustics, so whenever there is a concert or an audition, some gentlemen prevent pedestrians from stepping over the musicians.

It is all explained in here

Acoustics law's agents. Cathedral on the background.

10. Space invaders.

A friendly alien on a post beside the railways. It must be one of those guerrilla art stunts.

Alien

11. Love locks

This one is a meme which has been expanding lately. I think I read that the city of Florence is going to fine the dummies which make it look ugly with this junk. The happy couple places a lock with their names or initials in a public bridge and then they throw the key away or eat it or keep it until the point of oxidation. The iconic train bridge is the selected place in Cologne.

Sentimental junk

The locks are on the fence that separates the pedestrian walk from the railways

12. Building in inverted-L shape

Futuristic architecture has arrived everywhere, but buildings this size and kind are still curious to see. As I just watched them in the distance, I’m not sure whether their reason is to preserve the space on the ground or to provide it with shade and shelter against the rain.

The double inverted L.

13. Elephant

Germans love antiques markets. Coins, stamps and old postcards can be traded in this Flohmarkt (literally “flea market”) and similar ones. Also some funnier items, such as this elephant. I can’t imagine its price or what it is good for.

Bogus elephant

14. Books as stairs

In an underground pass, advertising for a bookshop chain. The idea is that the stairs represent the book spines. A beautiful and funny metaphor, as each book is a new step in life.

Just about rising on the stairs of knowledge

Wroclaw, 20 February 2010

This is the approximate translation of a previous post: “Breslavia, 20 de febrero de 2010“, originally written in Spanish.

Some weeks ago, the tragedy of the Polish presidential plane crashing in Smolensk made me think about Katyn again, and also about that war and the idea of Poland and Polish identity. Some time ago the similarity between Poland and Korea occurred to me and how strange it is that both countries have survived sandwiched by such large empires or cultures. To be honest the simil is nothing but the typical nationalist deformation of history but it is not exempt of interest. Poland between Germany (Austria-Prussia) and Russia; Korea between China and Japan.

Tower of St Elizabeth church, Wrocław

Actually, there are ways to imagine Poland inside the Russian Empire as Catalonia is inside Spain today. They would have been Catholic Slavs, one more nationality withing the Great Russian Motherland. Even more in a 19th century in which Eastern Europe was all about cultural and ethnic diversity. However, the story is what it was and if 19th century was the century of nationalisms, the wars of the 20th century and the population movements in its aftermath would consolidate them. The stones of our Breslau-Wrocław know well.

House at the Rynek, St. Elizabeth on the background

When I first read about Katyn I denied the facts. The Nazis had to be the perpetrators. I even believed , for a long time, that the pact Molotov-von Ribbentrop was a necessary wrong for the expansion of socialism. The story of the Polish-Russian relations is a complex one. It’s true that Stalinism assessinated more that twenty thousand Poles at Katyn, but the Soviet Union also won a country for Poland, or for a certain Poland, or to grab what today is Western Ukraine. Anyway, without the participation of the USSR Wrocław would still be a German city.

Rynek (Wrocław)

The exiled Polish Government in London (whose last president also died in Kaczynsky’s plane) was prepared to return to the 1939 borders. However, the new Polish communist government wanted and should annexionate Silesia and Pomerania. They needed that space to fit the “repatriated” from the Kresy. They called the conquered territories “recovered”, based on the borders of the territories of the Piast dinasty in the 12th century. Hardly a word in a Slavic language had been heard West of in the last two centuries. The population of the whole of the Lower Silesia and Oppeln (Polish: Opole) was German and mixed in Upper Silesia. That fact contributed to the expulsion of almost all of the Lower Silesians whereas in Oppeln and Upper Silesia some Polonizable were left. That’s the origin of the German minority that still exists in Poland, that sometimes defines itslef as “Silesian” and had to go through a process of Degermanization during the four decades of Communist regime.

Salt Square, Wrocław

The denazaification policies were also policies of degermanization. Wrocław’s last German school closed in 1963. Nowadays advertising for bilingual schools can be seen around. It is complicated to find vestiges of German culture. Old signs, memorials. In most places cemeteries graves were destroyed. Some old plaques can be found at St Elizabeth. Searching this legacy is as much of an interesting passtime as the photographic safari of dwarfs and gnomes.

Alexander Fedro's statue in the Rynek

The Rynek is a good place to start the passtime. For example, the statue of the writer Alexander Fedro is in the same pace as the previous occupiers’ Kaiser Wilhelm. Under the City Hall, which nowadys is a Ratusz and it was a Rathaus in the past, there is a famous restaurant, one of the oldest in Europe, as we were told. It is Świdnica’s cellar (Piwnica Świdnica), called in German Sweidnitz Keller, named after the city which rivalled Breslau in days of yore.

Piwnica Swidnica

Not everything is about nacionalization. That’s maybe a process which is exhausted by its own success. Other processes are at work today: multiculturalism, globalization. A walk around the Rynek gives us the chance to see fast-food and sushi restaurants, and a salsa den named -in Spanish- La Casa de la Música. This is globalization working at its best. It first arrives to capital cities and then to cities with airports. Border areas are the first ones to receive the influx of funds and cultural influences.

Wrocław's City Hall. East facade.

That’s how pizzerias, hotel chains, rent-a-car companies and dealers of cars and foreign brands which fight for a niche in the market fill the landscape and the vocabulary with strangely spelled words. All of it mixed with the local roots and the history of the place. In the North side of the Rynek there is a bar called pod Zlotym Jeleniem (the golden deer) and the Schubert jeweller’s, some antiques shops, the aforementioned Casa de la Música and a Taverna Española (with a v, but in Spanish the word must be written with a b: Taberna).

Rynek, North side

Then we left the Rynek towards the Northwest and passed by one of the most damaged areas of the city during the war. That’s why the houses have been substituted by Soviet-style concrete blocks. It is easy to criticize their ugliness, but it is likely that they saved the lives of many in years in which life allowed for very few embellishments. Wita Stwosza, close to the church of St Mary Magdalene.

Wita Stwosza, Wrocław

Following that street you can reach a Gallery Dominikanska, where one can see a Germanic invasion through commercial brands and shop chains. A functional building, converted into a capitalist temple. Twenty years back, one of these would have seemed impossible. We head to another temple, this one about the identity of the country and the city, which is also very intersesting in order to understand how it has been built: the Panorama Racławice.

Panorama Racławice

The Panorama Racławice is a masterpiece worth seeing. Actually is a picture. Several canvasses in circular sucession giving form to the landscape in which the Battle of Racławice was fought. This battle saw Russian and Polish troops facing each other in 1794. The space between the platform from which the observers admire the work of art and the picture itself is covered by earth, vegetation, war spoils and other atrezzo elements that highlight the feeling of authenticity.

Miniature model of the Battle of Racławice

So far, nothing special except artistic greatness. The point is that the picture used to be exhibited in de city of Lvov (Polish: Lwów), now in the Ukraine, but pertaining to Poland before WWII. Apparently, most of those who repopulated Wrocław during and after the expulsion of the Germans came from Lwóv and around and they brought along their masterpiece. The problem was that the piece represented the victory of the 18th-century Poles against the Russians, then their enemies, but allied in the communist block one and a half centuries later. The panorama could not be exhibited for more than forty years. In the socialist Republic of Poland, Polish nationalism was a key element of political direction as far as it was anti-German, but it could never appear as anti-Russian. For the sake of the relations with the Soviet Union, proletarian internationalism and panslavic brotherhood could be taken out of the Marxist resources library. Hence the big lie of Katyn and others which live to this day.

Section of the wall that evoked the cold that the contending sides in the Festung Breslau episode suffered 65 years before.

I have the impression that Poles look at their history with a certain victimism and from outside it. Today it is very easy to criticize the Soviet Union and boast about anticommunism. It is hard to find a communist Pole or an openly francoist Spaniard, but it would be very difficult to explain how those regimes could last forty years which such a meagre social base. I admit that the sample of the people I talk to must be quite biased, as I have never ever found and Italian who admitted having voted for Berlusconi. In general, Poles have spoken to me about Communists using the past tense and the third person in plural, as if they were aliens. Regarding Russia, in spite of the slight improvement after the joint commemoration of Katyn y and the tragedy of Smolesk, the love-hate relationship between both Slavic brothers is a thorny one. I’d guess the Lower Silesians know the USSR won the war and this Silesian country for them.

I had never seen so much snow

From outside the building of Panorama the Cathedral can be seen, across the Oder (Polish: Odra). Before being there I had seen some short footage filmed in the city in en 1938 which starts with the same take. The fact that it was filmed in colour, infrequent in the 1930s, called my attention. Some sights of the city can be seen. A German military officer and his son go to the Polish border, that back then was quite far away.

Wrocław Cathedral, in front of the frozen Oder

Citing Goethe, Singer or Zymborska may be more appropriate but when I think in this city, the extermination of its Jews and the Jews of all of Central and Eastern Europe, or when I think in that German Breslau which does not exist anymore and other exteinct universes I understood Machado’s “yo amo los mundos sutiles, ingrávidos y gentiles como pompas de jabón” (I love the subtle worlds / weightless and charming / worlds like soap-bubbles).

Ducks and swans on the frozen Oder (and view of the cathedral from Piaskowy Most, bridge of Piasków)

Then we went to see the cathedral. A walk among the bridges. This is the oldest area of the city in which the first pre-historic settlements happened. I stopped to observe the cross in whose base the image of Saint John Nepomucene being thrown to the Moldau in Prague was sculpted. Then I had the occasion to see a similar image in Świdnica. Saint John’s cult was very popular in Bohemia and Silesia. Saint Hedwig (Polish: Jadwiga) is the local female saint.

Hala Targowa market in Piasków street

A brief stopover in Hala Targowa market, which is a market as any other. More attractive outside than inside, where its looks can’t escape the concrete ugliness. In front of it, quite old, ramshackle tramways still pass by.

Szewska st(university area). Maybe 20 years ago everything was just as grey.

Then we head to the university, where the Aula Leopoldina can be visited. We didn’t like it as we found it to baroque and overelaborate, even if its style causes a certain impression. There is an interesting exhibition on the Nobel prizes who were part of the institution. It is said that Wrocław is the Easternmost city of Poland, as its post-war population comes from the Ukrainian border. The Universitas Wroclawiensis has been called University of Lwów in Wrocław, as its after-the-war organizers came from there. There are several other exhibitions. The meridian 17 goes through the building and it is marked on the floor. The best ending for the visit is the city views from the attic.

University building. The cathedral on the background.

The morning flew away after all this. We went for lunch to the Świdnica cellar, inside the City Hall. Some special pierogys helped us to get warm. Then we had time for some gnome photographs and to go down the Świdnica street (before equally called Schweidnitzstrasse) to do the walk around the wall, close to the Hotel Metropol, and then return to the city centre and Rynek through the Salt Square.

House of many windows

February in Wrocław and me being unfair, thinking of cold and war and the past of the city that was.

Greek thoughts (09-11-2001)

“And now today, after the euphoria of the ’90s has faded and a new modesty sets in among the Europeans, it falls again to Greece to challenge the mandarins of the European Union and to ask what lies ahead for the continent“

Democracy’s Cradle, Rocking the World (New York Times)

alfanje:  I think History has very little predictive value but I am curious about your thoughts.

demi: Hola alfanje, I think History provides common (reference) elements and the basis for prediction. Do you mean my thoughts on the present situation?

alfanje:  Hola. I meant your thoughts on the article. I guess you could write a book on the present situation… and I would read that one too!!!

demi: alfanje, I am neither a historical analyst nor an economist. However, I’m a European citizen and mostly a pro-European one. I’ve had lived in several European countries where people really embraced me, plus I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to exercise my rights (and/or obligations) as a European citizen. I believe that the E.U., at this point of history, should evolve into a full fiscal union, with emphasis on the social dimension and the environment. In Greece, for many years now,the political system sucks (products of patronage driven system and corruption). Most politicians lack governing ability and they just push their way through for office (with very few exceptions); moreover, people are fed up with the ineffective economic austerity measures in the name of reducing public debt and deficit. As a result, we’ve lost our dignity worldwide. Cause of hard working Greeks? Where is (sustainable) development ?What about human rights? Where is the face of social Europe? The Greek media only speaks of Germany and its Chancellor-less France-what about the rest of EU&eurozone countries? Are they invisible? What happened to the so-called equality of member states? What is the kind of Europe that we really want?

Let’s assume that the Treaty of Versailles, the post-2nd world war compensations due by Germany etc. have become history, and, as you said,”has very little predictive value”. But, we are supposed to make a step forward (peacefully) in a common effort, under a common roof-to which now we-PIGS-pay our “mortgage”, really expensive, and, yet, no one seems to set aside their own interest. As a pro-European I consider that a real concern. Moreover, Greece is following requirements, and ironically endorses redistributive policies, at the expense of the poorest, to the benefit of the richest. I hope that the case of Greece would function as a kind of awakening for the E.U. of something greater than this, for all E.U.citizens, in order to become competitive facing the rest of emerging market economies. Also, I think that E.U. should focus on its democratic deficit, as well as inform Europeans-in depth- about its scope, and their rights and obligations. What are your thoughts?

alfanje: Thanks demi for all your ideas. I mainly read a lot of stuff criticizing Greece from outside and that’s why I am very interested in your opinion. I am quite pessimistic about the EU and its future, but I think that’s secondary now as there will no be politics about deepening the union for a while, only economics (i.e. survival).

The PIIGS didnt fare well. They were historically poorer, but Poland was even poorer and they kind of managed (maybe the only ones). For sure the people will pay. And sadly it will be the ones at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. I don’t live in Spain so that I don’t have to foot the bill in the form of unemployment.
Yes, there is only Germany and France, and nobody else has a saying in the Eurozone, the rest of the governments don’t have power even at home, not to say outwards. (Papandreu is out today, Berlusconi next week and Zapatero in the end of the month). The good thing for the PIIGS is that Germany is somehow on the same boat so they cannot totally rock it out of greed.

There was never a clear path towards the fiscal union. Some trusted the idea that trade would level the different economies, which hasn’t happened in 20 years. Whenever thresholds were demanded as for the euro some countries tricked the accounts, but the rest were equally guilty as they knew well what was going on.

I live in a tax haven on the edge of the Atlantic with a tradition of lack of European solidarity and I realise how difficult it is to persuade people to perseverate on the goal of a closer union. Now every country has to deal with a lot inside and nobody has time, patience and resources for anybody else. So my impression is that the key for the future PIIGS is more in the reforms (not only economic) they internally can agree on than in any money Ms Merkel can lend.

——-

Then we watched this sad TV report about the current situation in Greece (RTVE, in Spanish)

History of Cairo

2011

2005

Last Saturday I spent quite some time at a bookshop where I the chance to browse, very intensively, through the pages of Cairo: Histories of a City by Nezar AlSayyad. I am not very knowledgeable on the subject of the history of the city I learned to love, but I did read before Andrew Beattie’s Cairo: a cultural history before. It was in 2006, in order to get some background prior to our Egyptian holiday. So, at least I can claim I have some basic idea about the several historical phases Cairo has gone through and their relation with the current urban landscape the traveller can find. There’s people saying it is an unbearable city, come on, the capital of the Arab world.

I read a couple of chapters and had an overview of AlSayyed’s book and not being an academic myself and even if I didn’t find it tourist-oriented at all I enjoyed the experience, also because of the nice photographs and maps that are included. Definitely it is a book to be taken into account by anyobody who has an interest in things Egyptian and who has liked The Mother of the World. If I had to recommend one of the books I would choose both, but I would give AlSayyad’s to whoever wants to do serious reading and Beattie’s to the person who wants to know more about the capital of Egypt before or after a trip around the area.

Brigadista

Brigadista

Some months ago I read Brigadista: An Irishman’s Fight Against Fascism, the memoirs of Bob Doyle the last surviving Irish veteran of the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. Bob Doyle died in February 2009 after a long life dedicated to political struggle. He was active until the very end. I remember seeing posters advertising a lecture in which he would take part in 2007.

As he reached the Internet era you can find loads of online information about him. Still the book is worth a read, as there are not so many points of contact between the history of Spain and that of Ireland.

Due to my natural disorder I keep in my desktop a file with some notes I have taken when I started to read the book. At present the book is missing, or maybe I took it to Spain. Pasting them here may be a good way to keep them safe and it may encourage somebody to start reading the book.

I knew how to read an write, that God made the world, that Jesus Christ was killed at the desire of the Jews whom now I hated, and I knew what the last word of the catechism was and what it meant, ‘Amen – as it is meant to be.’ I later became bitter about my education. I knew nothing other than the story of Brian Boru, the King of Munster, and that Daniel O’Connell was the great Catholic liberator. Most of the time we had religion, Irish and Catholic nationalism. The nuns were severe of sadistic. (p.20)

The Evening Mail was the middleclass unionist paper. In those days, unionists weren’t just the Ulster loyalists who want to keep their link with Britain, they were the ones here in the South who’d lost the War of Independence only a decade before, who wanted all of Ireland under the British crown. (p.24)

Living in the slums as I did, the struggle over the question of the border became of secondary importance, as it did for the more socially and politically conscious and progressive elements in the leadership of IRA. This difference of priorities caused a build-up of opposition within the Republican movement which led to the Athlone Conference in 1934 and the split that followed. (p.39)

I was in a group of fifteen volunteers from Britain and Ireland, including the young writer Laurie Lee, who had entered Spain on his own on the night of 5-6 December. We left Figueras for Albacete on 11 December with Jack Tomkins of London, who found that some of [us] had no political knowledge whatsoever; one or two in fact could not discriminate between Franco and the Government and one person was a true Red, White and Blue – England right or wrong! (p. 54)

This had been my first experience of the destruction of churches that I had read so much about in the papers back in Ireland. But according to the press, particularly the Irish papers, when the Fascists attacked churches that we occupied, they were defending the faith fighting for the holy crusade declared by the Cardenal Primate of Spain, Gomá y Tomás. (60)

Bob Doyle (March 2007)

Una línea en tu currículum / Adding a line to your cv

Me asignan nuevas funciones. Me enmarronan. ¡Qué se le va a hacer!, uno no escoge casi nunca. Al fin y al cabo vendo tiempo así que tampoco me voy a estresar . Lo que no entiendo es el argumento en la venta de humo. Y lo he oido en más ocasiones “Supone más experiencia y lo puedes añadir a tu currículum”. Sí claro. Le dan ganas a uno de decir “vamos a ver, mendrugo, si yo pensara que alguna de las tonterías que hacemos aquí me va a suponer algún tipo de ventaja a la hora de encontrar un empleo nuevo, hace tiempo que las habría detallado en mi currículum, tanto si las hago yo mismo como si no”. El currículum, como el concepto mismo de experiencia, está absolutamente sobrevalorado.

I’ve been assigned new responsibilities. Screwed up. What can I do? the decision is never up to me. At the end of the day, time is what I sell  so I will not freak out. What I quite don’t get is the reasoning behind the fireworks. I’ve heard it quite a few times “This means more experience  and you can add a line to your cv”. Yeah, sure. You feel like saying “look at me, you prick, if I had ever thought that any of the rubbish we do here will imply an advantage in terms of finding a better job, I would have detailed it n my cv long ago, no matter if I’m doing them myself or not.” The cv, like the very concept of “experience” is totally overrated.

Russia 1989-2004

EAST AND WEST RELATIONS

Essay: “How has Russia changed and adapted since 1989? What are the consequences of these changes? Who are the protagonists?”

I decided to write this essay while I was watching again on TV the images of the massacre in Beslan. Chechnya has been the bloodiest political conflict in the new Russia of the nineties. Certainly, this is something very difficult to imagine some years back, beyond the iron curtain. So I will try to explain what has happened in Russia since 1989, which have been the changes and their protagonists, and why Russia reached were it is now. Chechnya is a part of the story, but not all of it. There will be communists and the birth of new old nations, alcohol and mafia, powerful tycoons that made a fortune from scratch, terrorism and nuclear weapons. All the elements that are needed to create a good thriller. But it is better, for it is real.

There are three men that can be chosen undoubtedly as the main characters of this drama. Of course there are a lot of important actors on such a huge stage as Russia is, but a good way to structure the last 15 years is to focus on these three man: the last Secretary General of the USSR and its only President: Mikhail Gorbachev, and the two Presidents Russia has had so far: Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. Ruling in Russia has been very personalistic since the Czarism. Perhaps strong personal leadership is the only way to hold together such a large territory. Let’s see what they change in the Russia they inherited from the past.

1989-1991. Collapse of the Soviet Bloc and emergence of the new Russia.

Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed Secretary General of the USSR in 1985. After the dead of Brezhnev in 1983, there were two ephemeral Secretaries: Andropov and Chernenko, the two of them selected from the ranks of the old guard. Gorbachev was young and dynamic and soon he started to implement reforms so that a declining regime that had been established in 1917 could survive. He had not live the times of the Revolution or the War as and adult. By 1989 his reforms, which we know in the West by the totalizing name of “perestroika” (sometimes we also use “glasnost”) had arrived at a point of no return. We will remember 1989 for the picture of people going across the Berlin Wall and this fact was possible thanks to the reforms initiated a few years before by Gorbachev in the USSR, which extended through the Eastern Europe countries.

Along with Gorbachev, a new generation of leaders arose. Some of them wanted to follow the pace of the Secretary General. Some wanted more changes and they wanted them to happen faster. Among those, Boris Yeltsin got to be the most notorious, leading the Russian Soviet Federation into the new Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union he was the President of Russia during the nineties, a very important decade for Russia.

Gorbachev’s goal was not the change but the reform. He was the catalyst for the change, but in a moment the events bypassed him. As Ferguson says it “the reform in the Soviet Union and Russia was driven in part by necessity, but also by a revolution-from-above”[1].

Gorbachev’s reforms were seen as too slow by a significant part of the population of the USSR. However, the signals he sent were received by the Western world with hope. This is due to the fact that the foreign and home policies were driven by the same impulse, but affected the actors differently. This explains how popular Gorbachev was abroad and how unpopular within the USSR.

In foreign policy we can say that Gorbachev virtually ended the Cold War, by reducing the tension in Europe through disarmament and reduction of military forces. This made possible the expansion of NATO during the following decade. The changes in the Soviet system and the wave that followed it in Eastern Europe (and Gorbachev did a lot so that the Communist Parties in other countries could reform as well) allowed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. His role in the foreign affairs, by using diplomacy and international organizations (especially the UN) as a means to get support from abroad was also important. He also improved relations with several countries (such as China) and was crucial in reducing tension in the Middle East area by allowing the immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel, and retiring support to anti-Israeli organizations.

But by 1991 his time was over. The August 1991 coup was the last try of a regime that was agonizing. Some military wanted it to come back to the old Soviet days, but the majority of the population was against them. Yeltsin, already President of the Russian Federation, emerged as the leader Russia needed, and Gorbachev’s return to power was just symbolic as the Soviet Union was falling apart.

1991-1999. Yeltsin’s decade.

On the 25^th December 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev announced on TV the end of the Soviet Union. This entity, created in 1922 had ceased to exist. A weak Confederation of Independent States was just born, but Russia inherited most of the power of the Soviet Union. A Russia that still had to solve some important territorial problems, led by the man who had been elected President by the 57% of the Russians in the first free elections ever (June 1991), and against the ruling Communist Party and its nomenklatura.

With Gorbachev, the old Communist Party and USSR out of the political stage we entered a new era in which the inheritance of the Soviet Union had to be divided among the new republics. The independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (proclaimed in September 1991) was accepted and there were talks about what to do with the ex-Soviet territories. Basically Russia took the biggest part of the legacy, the nuclear arsenal, the seat in the Security Council and the embassies abroad. Some tensions arose, though, such as those with Ukraine abut the Crimean peninsula or the Black Sea fleet, but the process went orderly taking into account what it could be expected.

Within Russia, people expected a lot from the President. Yeltsin wanted a rapid transition to a market economy. So soon the reforms started. He managed to be granted special powers to deal personally with the scenario, but between 1991 and 1993, important discrepancies arose between the President and the Parliament, all of which ended with the open rebellion of the latter and the bombardment of the Parliamentary seat. After that fact, a new Constitution was approved. One which was overtly presidentialist and some analysts have compared to the French political system.

Which were Yeltsin’s reforms? In the political field he started which symbolic things as new flag and anthem or the change or Soviet place names into the traditional ones. Then, on 31^st March 1992 the Federation Treaty was signed by all the autonomous republics but Chechnya and Tatarstan. Tatarsan would join later, but the problems with Chechnya had just started to appear. This was the prelude of the two Wars of Chechnya.

During 1992 the divorce between Yeltsin and the Congress of People’s Deputies started. The main reform of the political architecture of Russia will arrive in December 1993 with the new Constitution. In the meantime, Yeltsin started to modify the economy of the country towards the liberalization and stability. He started an ambitious programme of privatizations in which a group of a few, latter known as “the oligarchs” (notoriously Berezovsky, Khodorovsky) will become rich in a matter of months.

On 2^nd January 1992, Yeltsin ordered the liberalization of foreign trade, prices, and currency. The first result of these policies was hyperinflation. Suddenly, the Russians started to deal with inequality and poverty. Some began to feel some nostalgia of the old good Soviet times, which brought to the political scenario to a new Communist Party. The privatisation started in October, and it was a giant’s step towards converting Russia into a market economy. It made rich a few, but left unhappy to many.

In the month of March of 1993, Congress of People’s Deputies passed legislation to limit presidential powers, but Yeltsin took more powers, that were validated by a referendum on 25^th April. The gap between the Congress and Yeltsin was growing and it reached its maximum in September, when Presidential troops entered the building of the Parliament to dissolve it.

On 12^th December there were elections to choose the new Duma and a referendum to ratify the Constitution. The new constitution allowed Yeltsin to remain in power until 1996, which he did. The years between 1993 and 1996 were starred by the consolidation of the new system, the clashes of power, the difficult adaptation to the market economy and the First War in Chechnya that started in December 1994. Also the state of the health of Yeltsin was an important issue in the agenda. He suffered two heart attacks in 1995, and an orderly succession was not guaranteed.

In December 1995 the new Communist Party of the Russian Federation, led by Gennady Zyuganov won the elections to the state Duma. It was a surprise to the analysts that Communism in Russia was still alive and had chances to get the power again.

One of the important milestones of Russian transition to democracy arrived in 1996, where elections to the Presidency were hold. Yeltsin arrived as a man of weakened health. His popularity was at a minimum, but I obtained the support of the media and thanks to a pact with the General Lebed (the third candidate) he could reverse the situation and beat Zyuganov in the second round. The reforms that Yeltsin and his team had been implemented since the early nineties suffered a critical test in 1998. In August, the Prime Minister Kirienko announces rouble devaluation, the market paralyzed by liquidity shortages, the price of the shares plunged and Russia defaulted foreign loans.

The political fallout of Yeltsin started after the crisis. He had to fire all his government, with the Duma refusing his candidate. 1999 was a an unstable year that ended with the resignation of the President.

1999-2004 Putin leads Russia towards the future.

An ailing Yeltsin’s abdicated on the last day of the century, his power was inherited by his young Prime Minister: He had been appointing Prime Minister in August, replacing Stepashin who only stayed in office for four months. Stepashin replaced Primakov who was the compromise solution to get out of the economic crisis.

Vladimir Putin, the former spy, a man who does not smoke or drink alcohol took the power from an alcoholic Boris Yeltsin whose time was gone. Its image was very good, and he arrived to the Presidency with time to prepare the elections.

There is almost general consensus on the issue that Putin’s first term has been successful, even if it can be also remembered by disasters such as the Kursk submarine, the assault to the theatre in Moscow or the killings in Chechnya.

Putin declared a “tyranny of law” (Ferguson 2004) to attack the mafia, the oligarchs and the bureaucratic corruption, he is moving Russian army into professionalism and was adamant in continuing the war in Chechnya, but being very careful not to upset other countries which its way of doing so, so that they do not move from their position and consider the conflict “an internal issue”.

The foreign policy of Russia has seen some moves under Putin, such as the approach to the United States on the “global war on terror” after September 11^th 2001 and also important discrepancies about the war on Iraq in 2003. Russia has improved its relations to the European Union and has held similar positions as the German’s or French’s. Its strategic partnership with the European Union, its principal business partner is going to be crucial in the future.

At home Putin challenged the power of the regional governors, divided the country in seven federal districts and reset the vertical of power in Russia. Even if territorial tensions have been reduced, there is always a problem in Chechnya waiting to be solved and this is not going to be smooth.

In the aftermath of the crisis if 1998, the situation of the Russian economy started to improve in 2000 and it is going very well. It is still very dependent on exports of gas and oil, but the GDP’s growth has been spectacular. It’s difficult to say there are problems around the corner, when the barrel of oil is around 50 US$, but there is still a huge part of the population on the verge of poverty and they cannot feel the improvements of the economy. Russia’s growth has being fast and large in the Putin’s years, though.

The reform of the judiciary and administrative system has not been as much of an achievement as those obtained by Putin on other fields. Also, fight against corruption which is an endemic problem in Russia since the Soviet times is not showing much improvement. A change of attitude towards the oligarchs can be perceived, being the imprisonment of Khodorovsky an outstanding example of how the alliance of the Kremlin with the factual powers it is not necessary as in Yeltsin’s times and that Putin does not want anybody to rule the country for him.

All of this made him comfortably the elections of March 2004, getting a 70% of the votes. Although, it is debatable that Russia is an authentic democracy, if nobody else can get over the 10%, and international observers are not quite happy with the way in which the process developed.

Conclusion.

How has Russia changed and adapted since 1989? Russia has being trying to become a democracy and an economy market. If this is already a reality, on the way of happening or a fabrication depends on who looks. Certainly, government in Russia shows evidence of authoritarianism and there are plenty of defects in this democracy, as in any other. For some experts Russia can be only compared to medium-income democracies, such as Mexico or Brazil and if we use that frame, then is doing as it should be expected. So, the problem of little glasnost and the oligarchic (or governmental) control of the media is about what it should be. (Sheifler 2004).

The market economy status is about to be granted, as Russia will probably enter the WTO organization in 2005. Of course it is an economy very tightly controlled by the State (as some of  Putin’s interventions show), but some of the countries that were successful in becoming competitive economies, such as the Asian Dragons, used the same formula to improve their position in the world economy. Still, there is a lot of work left, so to reduce the poverty and inequality in the new Russia.

There are a lot of consequences of the changes Russia has experienced. The end of the Cold War or the “end of the history” as some foresaid was the first one. The political map of Europe changed notoriously between 1989 and 1993. New countries arose and Russia had to adapt to its new role. Some of them (the Baltic republics) left quickly to not return. Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus are more or less in the area of influence of Russia. The Central European countries ran to apply for membership of EU and NATO.

The main protagonist of the changes has been the Russian people, who for the first time in its history could speak up. Even if there have been a lot of clashes and points of view, even if we are in front of a limited form of democracy, Russian people can decide their future more than in any time in the past. Politicians have also played a very important role and, of course, the leaders of the country were protagonists of the change, and there has been a lot of “a revolution-from-above”. Nations and identities were also important during the nineties and will keep being in the future. An actor that has lost a lot of its power is the Army, which is undergoing reforms and does not have a say anymore in Russian politics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CASHABACK, David Risky Strategies? Putin’s Federal Reforms and the Accommodation of Difference in Russia London School of Economics and Political Science, UK Issue 3/2003, available at http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/Cashaback_Autonomy_final.pdf

FERGUSON, R. James “The impact of Soviet and Russian Reforms 1989-2004”, available in http://www.international-relations.com/wbeu/EU-Lec5-2004.doc

NIKOVOV, Nikolai. Vladimir Putin’s successful first term. In Ria Novosty (10/02/2004), available in http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~filippov/courses/L32_4432/Nikonov.pdf

SHARPE, M.E. Globalisation and Russia. Russian Politics and Law, vol. 41, no. 5, September–October 2003, pp. 5–41.

SHEIFLER, Andrei and TREISMAN, Daniel. “A normal country” in Foreign Affairs (March/April 2004).

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[1] FERGUSON, R. James (2004) “The impact of Soviet and Russian Reforms 1989-2004”

Mencken quotes

More than ten years ago I read the first selection of the works of H.L.Mencken in Spanish and his cynical wit has been and inspiration since. I collected this few quotes from somewhere, and I am happy that I came across them in an old backup CD.

I´ve made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark. In New York Post (18-9-1945).

Every autobiography… becomes and absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a chryptogram. Minority Report (1956)

It is not quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry. Notebooks (1956).

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore. Minority Report (1956).

The fact that I have no remedy for the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake. Minority Report (1956).

Conscience: the inner voice which warns us that somebody may be looking. A little book in C major (1916).

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. A little book in C major (1916).

If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country he would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer´s expense. (of Harry Truman´s success in the 1948 presidential campaign). in Baltimore Sun 7-11-1948.

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. Prejudices (1922).

No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me- has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. In Chicago Tribune (19-9-1926).

Injustice is relatively easy to bear. What stings is justice. Prejucices, Third series (1922).

A man seldom puts his authentic self into a letter. He writes it to amuse a friend or to get rid of a social obligation, which is to say, a nuisance. Minority Report (1956).

Under democracy one party always devotes its energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed and are right. Minority Report (1956).

The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake. Minority Report (1956).

Why Brazilian football players have no surnames?

A colleague sent today this link to an article in Slate. It tries to explain why the Brazilian football players (they say soccer players, as they are Yanks) are known by their first names or their nicknames instead of by the surnames. In my opinion the explanation by this Nick Shultz is totally failed. He puts into the equation obscure reasonings about the slavery and illiteracy and the most obvious reasons are left out. Let’s go with a few simple hypotheses:

• In the Iberian Peninsula and the Iberoamerican countries (the ones in which Spanish and Portuguese are spoken) people have two surnames, with most of the people having also more than one given name, which makes it too long…. so a first name or a nickaname is preferred.

• There are a few Spanish surnames (García, González, Fernández) and Portuguese (Costa, Silva, Rodrigues) that are so popular that you cannot identify anybody by using those, as there are so many people sharing those. The concentration of surnames tends to by a lot higher than in similar cultures as the Italian.

• Specific to football. Many players were given their nicknames by journalists, who indeed prefer a shorter form to broadcast the games…. indeed that also applies to the coach who is shouting to the players from the bench.

When I was working for an airline I learnt a few things about naming conventions: You shouldn’t say Christian name as Christians are a minority in the world. If you ask a Chinese person about his name he will say something different if you ask First Name-Last Name or Given Name-Family Name. Arabs may include a kunya.

I always have to explain that I have two surnames, not one separated by a dash. My email address at work has that and I hate it, but some of my Spanish colleagues are known by their second surnames instead of by the one they use, just because the person who gives the addresses in the IT department thought that taking the last name was the right thing.

I hate ethnocentrism, even if it comes from ignorance, because they should ask you instead of assuming.