(Footnote out of the way first: * As opposed to doin' the Foggy Mountain Breakdown, by Earl Scruggs - and folks, that link there actually takes you to a webpage showing the guitar fingerings for playing this timeless bluegrass classic!)

Prospects for a "Yes" vote on the proposed EU Constitutional Treaty are under pressure these days not only in France but also here in the Netherlands. Well, at least "Yes" is currently ahead of "No" by only about ten percentage points in the polls, which is taken to be a worrying sign. So cabinet ministers are swinging into action to tout the Constitution, including Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner who, as reported in the newspaper Trouw (registration required) has warned against the danger of war if the Constitution is not adopted.

War? Yes, war: Because without the more authoritative and more effective EU institutions that the Constitution will supposedly bring into being, Europe's inherent "irritation, suspicion, and distrust" threatens to escalate out of control. Just like happened in the mid-1990s in the Balkans: "Yugoslavia was more integrated than the [European] Union is now, but bad will and the inability to stifle hidden irritations and rivalry led in a short time to war." More...

"Ratzinger? The name sounds familiar," I said to myself when I heard word about the Roman Catholic supremo who henceforth is to be known as Benedict XVI. And in fact this weblog had a discussion only last August of an interview the then-Cardinal gave with the conservative French newspaper Le Figaro. To my amazement, I discovered that I actually agreed with much of what he said then.

Ludomani - there's your Danish word for the day, meaning "compulsive gambling." Plagues to society are one of my fascinations, and so will often be encountered on these pages, but make that plagues to rich societies. Europe is after all my self-appointed beat. So don't expect to come to EuroSavant and find anything about the mysterious Marburg virus stalking Angola, for example. Instead, take a situation where national payment systems evolve to the point where you can send money almost anywhere, almost instantly; and where you can receive anywhere, on your mobile telephone, attractive, easy-to-look-at data. Two "goods," right?, which must characterize a nation riding modern technology's leading edge. Unfortunately, as the Danes are now finding out, what all this must also mean, sooner or later, is an explosion of high-tech gambling - and ludomani. More...

Germany is an interesting country (among other reasons) because, although it is a liberal democracy, there are still certain things you're not allowed to be or say. You're not allowed to be a Communist or Nazi, for example; both these parties are outlawed. You're not allowed to publish Hitler's Mein Kampf.

However, there is an important exception where you can at least say whatever you like - if you happen to be a member of parliament (either the houses of the federal parliemant - the Bundestag or Bundesrat or of any of the state parliaments), and you're speaking either on the floor of that parliament or in one of its committees. In those places, it seems about the worst that can happen in response to something impolitic you might say is that part (or, I guess, all) of your audience may decide to walk out on you.

This happened recently in the parliament of Saxony - a German federal state, or Bundesstaat, in what used to be Communist East Germany, whose capital is Dresden. That is, a number of Saxon lawmakers left the parliamentary assembly last January, in response to some remarks on the floor by Holger Apfel, fraction-leader there for the NPD. The Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany - sorry, you'll have to find the link to their website yourself if interested) carries the "right-extremist" label, at least from one credible source, and that is Munich's Süddeutsche Zeitung. That paper recently reported on this incident, which was touched off by Apfel's characterization of the destruction of Dresden in February, 1945, by allied bombers as a "bomb-holocaust," and of the Allies as "mass murderers" (No Charges Against NPD-Chief Due to "Bomb-Holocaust"). More...

As with most other weblogs, EuroSavant has had in the past certain topics to which it regularly returns. I'd like to keep that up, even though at least one of these, the "Poles In Iraq" series (last entry here, which deals appropriately enough with the prospect of withdrawal of Polish troops) has pretty much expired. But there remains the still-riveting tale of the EU Constitutional Treaty, now about to embark on the phase during which it is supposed to be ratified by all 25 EU member-states.

The key work to understanding what this "constitution" is all about, and so to make up my own mind whether I'm for it or not, is I think Peter Norman's The Accidental Constitution: The Story of the European Convention, from EuroComment, which I previewed here. (Then I had long-running problems getting ahold of it, but those are finally solved.) I hope to report to you about this book shortly. In the meantime, though, the only EU head of state who has made it clear that he is against ratification - Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, of course - recently turned up the volume on his anti-constitution agitation, as the French leading daily Le Monde reports (The Czech President, the Ultraliberal Václav Klaus, Campaigns for a "No"). More...

Just freshly back into the weblogging fold - if only on a week-by-week basis - ¿and I'm already dictating what sort of news should be covered more and what sort less? The sheer noive! (That "¿" was taken from the Spanish to let you know up-front that a question was coming. Thoughtful of me, ¿eh, amigos?) OK, so coverage of the late, great pope and/or his earthly remains belongs in the latter category; what should be in the former?

Consider that Thursday of last week saw the release of the report of the the commission on intelligence, assigned to evaluate culpability in light of the US intelligence community's utter failure (together with most of its foreign partners) to correctly evaluate the extent of Iraq's holdings of weapons of mass destruction. But by that point the pope was already seriously ailing - and then he died two days later, and the world's journalists began their own professional pilgrimage to Rome! Is George W. Bush a lucky son-of-a-gun, or what?

But actually, the requirement would have gone beyond simple coverage of the face-value of the commission's report, for that report focused on the supposed mistakes of the various intelligence agencies, the CIA at the forefront, and largely exonerated Bush administration officials from the charge of having tried to influence what the intelligence community reported to it over Iraq. So it's a tall order: coverage that can discuss the report, yet disregard its more blatant presentations of sheer horsefeathers. (On the other hand, you might ordinarily consider the task simple, comparable to simply pointing out the obvious fact that the emperor is wearing no clothes.) Fortunately, there are journalists in the world up to the task, and newspapers willing to publish them, as in this case is Dorrit Saietz (who's preferred by-line is simply "DS") and her employer, the Danish commentary newspaper Information (Political Spies). More...

Allow a rare personal note here, which at least will be of interest to those of my readers still around who happen to wonder what really has been preoccupying the EuroSavant the last couple of months, keeping him mostly away from his keyboard.

The answer is on this page. Hint: search for "Amsterdam." It's probably inevitable that I'll inflict more about this on you at a later point; in any event, it is quite an all-absorbing side-project, and is likely to become so again.

Poor Charles and Camilla: their wedding plans have been beset by one problem after another. First of all, the Queen let it be made known that she did not intend to be there for the second marriage of her own eldest son. That ruled out access to every couple's dream wedding-venue - Windsor Castle, naturally - and recourse instead to a garden-variety local town hall. The shine on the event had also quickly faded among the British public, who were noticeably slow to go after the usual commemorative souvenirs brought out for sale for a royal wedding - you know, teapots, coffee cups, dishtowels, that sort of thing.

Now, however, such souvenirs are flying off the shelves. It's not so much because of the English reconsidering their attitudes towards the marriage of Prince Charels and Camilla Parker-Bowles, as it is due to another mishap on their path to the altar, reports Marianne Fajstrup in the Danish Berlingske Tidende (Wedding Souvenirs with the Wrong Date Hoarded). That darn Pope John Paul II, as sainted a guy as he was otherwise - I know, EuroSavant promised just yesterday not to cover him again - had to up and die on such a schedule that pencilled his funeral in for this upcoming Friday, just the day when the Prince of Wales was intending to tie the knot again. More...

I'm back - perhaps in a bid for small-screen immortality? But be advised that this is going to be a day-to-day decision - or, more likely, even week-to-week.

The timing is a bit strange, since I re-emerge onto the blogging scene, eyes blinking, into the blinding light of the story dominating world news: the Pope's death, of course. Assenting to "go with the flow" for now, in fact turning into a glutton for punishment, I immediately resort to what is sure to be "all Pope news, all the time": the Polish press. Continuing to take things to the limit, why not head straight to the leading Polish daily (long-time EuroSavant readers - if there are any left - will know immediately whereof I speak): Gazeta Wyborcza. More...

There's a somewhat strange meme (really mini-meme) slowly starting to make the rounds of the world's press: Bono (that's right, U2's lead singer) as candidate to replace World Bank president James Wolfensohn after his scheduled departure this upcoming May. American readers may be more familiar with this concept than most, since I understand that Treasury Secretary John Snow advanced something like that idea recently on the ABC television network.

The thought didn't start with Snow, however, as Ruurd Ubels makes clear in coverage of the issue in the Netherlands' Nederlands Dagblad. (That's the openly "Christian" - meaning Reformed Protestant - Dutch newspaper.) More...

Time for a quick "day-after" survey of French press coverage of the Iraqi elections.

As usual, "day-after" is sometimes too early when it comes to significant, multi-dimensioned world events, as journalists and editors get all caught up with the reporting and don't yet have time to sit back and think about what it all really meant. If you want an example of what I'm talking about here, and can read French yourself, I refer you to Le Monde's editorial this morning, The Iraqi Wager. Spotlight on young French-Iraqi student; for her and her mother, being able to vote for the first time is truly a moving experience. (And this in what Le Monde explicitly labels its "editorial," written collectively by the editors.) Yes yes, and you know, Iraq has truly never had elections. These first were admittedly imperfect: Sunni underrepresentation, the threat of violence. Still, they were at least a relative success, and hopefully Iraqis can look forward to much less imperfect elections next December. Right, moving on . . .

Libération is a bit better in analyzing what author Jean-Pierre Perrin terms in his piece's title The Lessons of a Confessionalized Election. More...

The proverbial fly-on-the-wall managed to give his report of the interesting discussions that took place last week in Davos, during the annual World Economic Forum gathering of the world's movers-and-shakers that comes to a close tomorrow. That "fly" was one of the publishers of Germany's Die Zeit, Dr. Josef Joffe, and the star of the show (actually, a private dinner) was the Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi (whose name in German is apparently spelled "Charazi"). Joffe found that if he closed his eyes (and of course made allowance for the accent) he could just as well have been listening to George W. Bush or Condi Rice, as he writes in American-Iranian Unison.

The subject was tomorrow's long-awaited (long-feared?) Iraqi general elections. And Kharazi was delighted about them. Not only that, but he was also glad to give the Bush administration props (strictly within what he thought was the limited scope of a private dinner party, you understand) for its grim determination that they were going to happen on 30 January 2005, and not a day later. Postponing them in any way, according to him, would have been a victory for the Baathists and the terrorists. More...

OK, OK, we're back to serious again, although we remain in Denmark. The main serious thing that is happening there currently is that there's an election campaign going on, heading for a vote scheduled for February 8. Here is CNN's coverage if you want a little background; basically the incumbent premier, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is currently doing well in the polls, is required to hold a general election sometime this year, and so would to prefer to do so now.

But I don't expect you to care. Shoot, I don't care myself. If you send your web-browser to EuroSavant expecting at all to read Danish election coverage on any sort of regular basis, well, then you clearly misunderstand the wildly-scattershot quality that is central to this weblog's self-conception. (Look, I've got eight languages to cover - don't forget to include English! - and a focus that, if it even merits that name, shifts abruptly and unpredictably with my very whim.)

No, we don't care about the upcoming election to the Danish Folketing (that's their unicameral parliament) per se; what we might care about is the remarkable or even silly things that the pressures of such an election campaign might move Danish political parties and/or politicians to utter. And we have a prize specimen here today, from Politiken: Danish People's Party Wants to Forbid Other Languages. More...

Ah great, a short-but-spicy piece to get us back into the blogging swing of things! From the Danish press this time: Berlingske Tidende has a notable account (taken from the Danish press agency, Ritzau) about standards of after-the-sale service provided in the Danish retail sector.

The article is actually entitled Flasher by Video Mobile Telephone, and tells the tale of a 40-year-old salesman in a mobile telephone store in Hillerod (a suburb of Copenhagen) who has confessed to the authorities to more than one hundred violations of public decency. Women who came to his store to purchase a mobile telephone with video capabilities could usually look forward to seeing him again, for he would take advantage of the telephone number information he had about them to take the initiative and call them. The problem was not so much that they were seeing him again, but that they were seeing him again in their new video phones naked. And he just wouldn't stand there, either; he tended to, shall we say, use the occasion to handle his merchandise, by which I really mean "manhandle," I guess.

This is Denmark, though, after all, and the accused was released on his own recognizance after interrogation. (I do hope they remembered to relieve him of his mobile telephone!) Still, as the article sternly ends, he can certainly "look forward to legal consequences."

UPDATE: Another day passes, and the Berlingske Tidende editors are still interested in this story. Only they still haven't quite reached the point where they'll assign one of their own reporters to it; the account contained in this update ("Over 100 Women Exposed to Mobile-Flasher") they credit to the Frederiksborg Amts Avis which, with all respect, really seems to be basically your run-of-the-mill pissant local-news newspaper. (No, EuroSavant will certainly not add it to the site's Danish newspaper coverage list.)

Be that as it may . . . any further juicy details? Not really. The article recounts how around 100 women have complained about those specific performances by the suspect in their video mobile phone screens that they never expected to see, while the actual total of victims is reckoned to be considerably higher because of the natural reluctance in such a case to report the harassment. But the original Ritzau article essentially also said that. This new article does add details about how tough it was to track the offender down, since he was using an unregistered calling-card, so that investigators had to put together evidence about where the various calls had been placed to pin down the perpetrator.

Administrative entry here, as much as we try to keep them few-and-far-between. Over the past month-and-a-half or so I've really been plagued by comment spam. You can read some background here about what this has all been about - what it is these nasty people are trying to gain by this behavior - together with my past warning here that I would have to turn comments to this weblog off every so often to ward away this plague. Like when I went to bed: things really got old the first couple times I failed to do that and so woke up and logged-on to find unbelievable amounts of comments to delete in the early-morning hours.

The problem here was the possibility, or even the likelihood, that readers would want to leave legitimate comments but would find that not possible, with the comments feature temporarily turned off. Those comments would quite likely then be lost, rather than saved for a later time when comments might be turned on. (I know that I, for one, wouldn't bother to try again later to contribute if I was stymied the first time.) Well, I've upgraded the software now, and it seems that it once again is possible to leave comments on while still avoiding comment spam (knock wood).

Just wanted you to know. We now resume our regularly-scheduled (hah!) blog . . .

It has already been well-publicized that President Bush's first foreign trip of his second term in office will be at the end of next month, an excursion to Europe. He'll be starting off in Brussels, to try to start mending fences with those of America's NATO allies who became somewhat estranged over the disagreement concerning the United States' determination in spring of 2003 to Iraq with its "Coalition of the Willing." That "Coalition," you'll recall, included nations (most notably Britain) which some think should have shown rather more solidarity on the question with their other EU brethren.

But the President's engagement was supposed to have been preceded by an appearance by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the yearly Munich Security Conference (this year on 12-13 February). Now Rumsfeld has sent word that he won't be coming, reports Munich's Süddeutsche Zeitung (Rumsfeld Cancels Participation at Security Conference). More...

I've been away for a little while, lacking access to a reliable computer, and while I wasn't looking it looks like the debate on immigration in France has taken an interesting new turn with the injection of the heavily-loaded word "quotas." That happened last week Thursday, in a statement from the prominent French politician (and presumed future presidential candidate of the Right) Nicolas Sarkozy. But for all his presence in the current French political scene, these days Sarkozy has no policy-making role (he is instead president of the governing right-wing party, the UMP). When someone who does have such a role takes up the same chant, that's when you know things are starting to get serious - especially when that someone is none other than the Interior Minister, and Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin let a meeting of legislators from the UMP party know earlier this week that his ministry has started work on a legislative proposal along the lines that Sarkozy had previously discussed, as reported in Le Monde (Dominique de Villepin Comes to Terms With the Idea of Quotas). The next element in this time-line looks to be a report his ministry will submit at the end of next month "containing its propositions on how to determine France's needs for foreign workers." More...

Traipsing through the Polish press lately, I found an interesting piece of commentary in Rzeczpospolita on The Spoiling of the Nobel Prize for Literature, by Waldemar Zyszkiewicz, a member of the Polish Writers' Association. (You can read a history of that Association - in Polish - by following the link. It looks like yes, it was your standard Communist state writer's union during most of the post-war period, but that its members offered quite a bit of resistance - and suffered quite a few arrests - during the Solidarity/martial law period of the 1980s.) You might recall my posting of not so long ago in which I commented on the Nobel Prize for Literature, as a contrast to the Nobel Peace Prize which was my principle object of discussion. It seems I was too optimistic even in my evaluation of the Literature Prize; according to Zyszkiewicz, the rot also set in there some time ago. More...