Cries and Whispers in less than a minute

Novelist Elif Şafak-Euronews

Euronews — June 06, 2010 — Elif Şafak is Turkey's most popular female writer. She has also gained fame abroad, not only for her literary accomplishments but also because of the lawsuit brought against her in Turkey because, in one of her novels she refers to the mass killings of Armenians in 1915; that is in The Bastard of Istanbul. The suit was dropped. Euronews met up with Şafak in Lyon, France, where she was attending a book festival. We asked her about her impressions of Europe, her writing and culture.

Eyjafjallajökull

No, I don't know how to pronounce it either. However, I note that Wikipedia has a sound file,here, which is bit too quick to be helpful for my slow ears. Also, they note that "...the first fissure occurred at Fimmvörðuháls." Fimmvörðuháls! How can Icelanders understand each other with words like that, let alone give each other directions?

Euronews: 2 stories

"Eyes in the sky helping with major disasters"

The tragic earthquake in Haiti last month triggered a vast international rescue effort. And space played a vital role in saving lives. Observation satellites are helping by providing crucial information in the emergencies that follow major natural disasters....




Euronews interview with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan

Ingibjörg Egilsdóttir

Who is Ingibjörg Egilsdóttir? You may well ask. She's Miss Iceland for 2009. How do you pronounce her name? I don't know. In the unlikely event I ever meet her, it'll give me an excuse to ask her that. I wonder if her last name means "Eagle's daughter." I guess I could ask her that too.

Anyway, she's darn pretty, and posting her pic is also an excuse to use fun diacritical marks that don't generally appear in English. I hope you like her photo, and you appreciate my extraordinary restraint in avoiding seemingly obligatory jokes about snuggling for warmth cause she's from Iceland, etc.

ex-Innocents Abroad

from Helena Cobban, earlier today:

He[Avigdor Lieberman, who was recently appointed foreign minister-JV] also told Haaretz's Barak Ravid, "You won't get any 'Israbluff' with me."

He said he considered Israel was still bound by the Road Map provisions from 2003-- but stated very clearly that the Palestinians must fulfill their side of the Road Map before Israel needed to do anything.

Regarding Syria, he told Ravid: "we have already said that we will not agree to withdraw from the Golan Heights. Peace will only be in exchange for peace."

The positions articulated by Lieberman are very familiar-- they are in line not only with his own previous rhetoric but also with the positions articulated and pursued by B. Netanyahu's earlier government in Israel, 1996-99. No-one should be surprised, therefore, that Netanyahu has done nothing so far to disavow Lieberman's most recent statements.

The foreign ministry statements were made at a ceremony in which Lieberman took over power from Tzipi Livni, who as head of Kadima will now be in opposition to the Netanyahu government. Many senior members of Israel's diplomatic corps were there. Some were reported as visibly shaken when they heard the new line they will have to go out to the world to sell.

I have to say it does clarify matters to have Lieberman speaking with such apparent frankness about what Israel's real policy towards it neighbors will be. In one of the news reports--I forget which-- he was quoted as saying that actually his policy will be the same as that followed on the ground by the preceding government, despite its formal adherence to Annapolis. "How many settlements did they dismantle? How many roadblocks?" he asked.

Very good questions.

So now, what he is promising is a change from the policy of "pursue the colonization and control project on the ground while hiding it by participating in all kinds of meaningless negotiations", by ripping off all the camouflage of the 'negotiations'.

"No more 'Israbluff'", indeed

But on TV it's all Obama and the Missus wowing them at the G20 in Europe, the (chintzy) gift of an Ipod to the Queen, and how Obama supposedly took Hu and Sarkozy aside and made them "listen to reason". On the CBS news Bob Simon and Katie Couric described the G20 as world leaders "setting aside their personal differences"(!?!) and coming together, as if serious policy disputes are just a cover for those churlish Europeans and their unwillingness to quit their fussin' n' feudin'. During a speech Obama compared the G20 meeting of 20 nations to the days of FDR and Churchill getting together and hashing things out, suggesting that it was a lot simpler then, which of course it was, if you look back with US-patented pretendo-vision® and Stalin wasn't part of the picture.

All the same, I couldn't help but think that with his odd metaphor Obama stumbled on another, unintentional meaning-- that when Roosevelt and Churchill met it was the meeting of the superpower on the wane with the new, emerging superpower, and that even though Obama strains mightily to persuade people to compare him to FDR, in this case he's playing, well...let's just say you know Hu's playing him.

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

How can a mass murderer look like Santa Claus?

I guess he just can. Or he can impress you with his homespun ways and shrub-clearing skills. All kidding aside, I was impressed that the Europeans didn't feel obliged to share footage of Radovan Karadžić's arrest making him look ridiculous the way the so-called coalition forces in Iraq seemed to feel obligated to show us Saddam looking bewildered climbing out of his hole and having his teeth examined.

Admittedly I just assume this is the case, not having done an exhaustive search for news items about Karadžić. But I also assume that we here in the US would be made aware of it if it had happened, given our domestic media's appetite for that sort of thing, which is only stayed when it's a (still-current) ally of the US foreign policy establishment.

Michael Pacher's devil

at the Alte Pinakothek museum, Munich

Michael Pacher , 1498. I have seen this painting referred to as Saint Wolfgang and the Devil as well as Saint Augustine and the Devil. I'm inclined to believe it's Wolfgang, as the devil's butt would quit smirking if he was dealing with St. Augustine. What do you think?

Plus, Augustine was probably black, although a 15th c. European painter could be reasonably expected to paint him as a caucasian, as he might reasonably expect to get into hot water otherwise-- or so I imagine.

Zuboly!

via mighty skimble, who also digs this.

(Zuboly describe themselves thusly: "the band is called zuboly, they are Hungarian. they are using authentic instruments(?), and the they are desrcibing themselves as an "broken-ethno" band...." )

Something tells me that their name is missing some obscure diacritical mark which I've never heard of, but they strike me as the sorts who wouldn't mind too much. I gather the song is about homeopathy(?).

Monaco 1936-37

Ségolène n' Buddy

AFP foto

Ségolène Royal, on the left, and Buddy Sarkozy were the two top vote-getters in the first round of the French presidential election, as you probably already know. Ok, ok, I think his name is Nicholas. But he looks like his name should be Buddy, if you ask me. You can tell how much they like each other, too.