I used to think charging for toilets, and having up to two attendants sitting outside washroom facilities and collect coins in a little tray, ceremoniously spraying a whiff of air fresher in toilet stalls after each use, was an act relegated to developing countries with severe under-employment problems.  I was wrong.

On the European Continent, it is the rule rather than exception to have paid toilets.  Whether it’s in McDonald’s, department stores, highway rest stations, or sometime even museums, I always go forth with change in my pocket.

The newer automated paying toilet turnpike system adopted along the Germany highway is at least without attendants, generally well-lit, well-stocked and sanitary.  You also get a coupon back for the amount you inserted to get inside the washroom, which can be used in the chain of highway rest stop restaurants and shops.  So not all’s wasted.

In shopping areas and fast food outlets, I find it harder to justify installing paid bathrooms at 20 to 60 cents per use.  Why penny-pinch the customers that are buying things and keeping your business afloat?

However, the idea of keeping customer happy in Europe is still stuck at a level where YOU, and not THEM, are expected to pay for customer service.  The consumerist drive is still under check by relatively expensive goods and inconvenient shopping environments – expensive parking, spread out shopping areas, and a general indifference to the idea of comfort when shopping.

PS. Apparently Paris is also subjected to a pay-for-use public toilet system, with some places literally robbing the tourists on one whole euro per use.

The Roma issue in Europe is complicated and very sensitive to all involved.  Lately, those in richer parts of Europe, such as France and Italy, are turning what is fundamentally a social problem into a rhetoric that is increasingly becoming all about criminality and domestic security.

It is no surprise that this is making the news at a time when Sarkozy and Berlusconi’s supports are at all-time lows.  Those countries are mired in a plethora of economic and social problems, least of which has anything to do with Roma.

But as any visitors to those countries well know, the roaming Roma are the ones that can potentially escalate your leisurely strolls in the windy streets and busy subways of Paris and Rome from one of annoyance, to paranoia and fear.  And any long-term residents of the countries know about the unsightly camps, poverty, abuse, and organized crimes that plague those communities.

Compare the issue of Roma immigration and integration, which has been a thorn in Europe’s eye for over 600 years, to ongoing discussions over Muslim immigration and integration Western Europe, which when you think about it, only surfaced no more than half a century ago, then the magnitude of the Roma problem looks really deep-rooted.

This is not the first time France has attempted to expel Roma from its borders.  But what is different now, are the bad examples the likes of France and Italy are setting Eastern Europe, where most of the Roma come from.  It is hard to maintain a position of moral superiority and lecture the new member state of the EU on human rights and due processes, when a founding member of the EU literally ships out an unwanted group of minorities, back to a country where they are even more despised and discriminated against – rightly or wrongly, has a lot to do with where you live and how you see the problem, but that’s for another day.

Back to France and the present time.  The question is amplified, because the construct and aspirations of the European Union ensure that such so-called “domestic affairs” are no longer domestic, but have consequences far beyond its borders.  The implications of Sarkozy’s calculated political machinations are now weighed with either worries or jubilation by government ministers and right-winged nationalists, in places like Sofia and Bucharest.  But that’s hardly Sarkozy’s problems at this very moment.

This is how the likes of Geert Wilders hijacks meaningful conversations on immigration and integration.  When a chasm the size of New Zealand’s newly torn fault line exists between what politically-correct politicians and media say, and what the Joe Schmo thinks, then these populist telling-it-as-it-is ideas begin to take hold.

What I’m getting from this Newsweek take on the Sarrazin non-sense sweeping Germany, is that one, Germany refuses to acknowledge its long-term negligence and mistakes made on immigration and integration policies.  As a result, Germany’s post-war repentance took on a wildly ignorant and politically correct tone which confused racial equality and tolerance with recognizing disadvantaged and left-behind communities for what they are, disadvantaged and increasingly left behind.

And two, politicians and media cannot effectively deal with this underclass of mostly immigrant citizens, and refuses to acknowledge what is in plain sight – that is, their low economic and social status.  I understand the nuances required in separating the underlying social problems from their attached communities, but that’s what politicians are paid to do.

So far, it looks to me as though they are only capable of doing one of two things.  One, blaming poor development in the Turkish/Arab communities in Germany (and Turkish/Moroccan communities in the Netherlands) on Islam.  Or two, pointing the finger on politicians on the other side of the table and calling them Hitler, and thereby exempting themselves from meaningful discussions on the wider social problems and policy mistakes made in the past, possibility by their own parties.

Many people have said that this is all but a distraction from the real economic and demographic challenges that Europe faces.  No doubt, Europe could very well harvest this “crisis” into an opportunity and benefit from the younger demographic profiles of their immigrant communities.

But I would say that when you have 10-20% percent of your population in a politically provoked, socially isolated, and economically unfulfilled state, those countries are out of balance.  In Brussels, Moroccan youths are (from reliable friends that live there) wreaking havoc in Arabic neighbourhoods – everything from petty theft and property vandalism to rioting against the police.

On the other hand, Belgium is also a country where most white-collar work places have no (not a little, but none whatsoever) people of colour, despite a good 15-20% of their compatriots being non-white.  It says something about the society when most native Belgians have never encountered a non-European co-worker, instead only interacting with the immigrant underclass through their jobs as office cleaners, grocers, and other lowly menial jobs.

But back to Sarrazin, is it then any surprise that most Germans support him and his views?

Who’s for it, and who’s against it.

Spain, Poland, Austria, and Belgium are backing the concept, France, UK, Germany and the Netherlands are against.

It seems that the more up-and-coming, politically and economically unstable ones are looking to the the EU for more centralized (and with luck, fair) power partitioning. Poland is still waiting on the doorsteps of the inner circle Europe, so you take good will where you can get it?  Austria’s still awaiting the verdict on its eastern European investments, Spain struggling with higher unemployment and general economic ruin, Belgium barely able to keep the country together.

Bigger states like France and Germany want to retain more sovereignty, and it would look both politically untenable and silly to hand over more power when both believe they control the institution anyway.  In the UK and Netherlands, the shift to the right has a distinct and not at all unsurprising anti-EU slant to it.

The nineteenth-century German politician Otto von Bismarck was hardly anyone’s idea of a nanny, but he constructed the world’s first nanny state for the sole purpose of making German citizens so codependent on the German Reich that they would never think of rebelling against it. By offering Germans a prototype of the modern welfare state, Bismarck’s goal was not improving the common man’s lot—it was his way of inducing the common man, when faced with personal difficulties, to expect the state to look after him, instead of relying on himself to deal with his own problems.

Ironically, Bismarck launched the first welfare state because he feared the influence of Karl Marx on the German working class. Marx opposed the welfare state precisely because he recognized that it would create a population codependent on the ruling elite in charge of the German Reich. It would tend to make them more docile and helpless, less self-reliant and rebellious. Today’s European socialists, along with America’s welfare statists, are not the descendants of Marx; they are the great-grandchildren of Bismarck.

A rather cynical take on the social psychology behind the construction of a welfare state nowadays.

But as paranoid as some Libertarians may sound, there exist throngs of well-meaning politicians and policy-makers with intentions to improve the general well-being of citizens, but inevitably cultivate a culture of dependence and co-dependence.  The spirit of independence might be the de facto norm in many lands, but the zeal to defend it is hardly universal.

After much progress made in Africa, its recent incursion into Greece, China is now also moving into Siberia. This is what birch and cedar forests with an open mine pit looks like.

China is here, there, and everywhere.  How long before the backlash begins?

Greek and Chinese companies on Tuesday signed 11 agreements worth hundreds of millions of euros in shipbuilding, telecoms and construction at a ceremony attended by the Chinese vice-premier.

Five Greek shipowners signed deals to build up to 15 bulk carriers at COSCO Shipyards, the construction arm of the Chinese state shipping company, which operates a container terminal at Athens port of Piraeus under a concession arrangement.

Three Greek olive oil traders also signed agreements with Chinese importers aimed at boosting sales of the country’s signature product in an almost untapped market.

The Chinese delegation was due to hold talks with Greek officials on several possible infrastructure investments, a Greek official said.

Projects under consideration include the construction of a €150m logistics centre near Athens and a railhead close to the COSCO terminal at Piraeus, as well as possible Chinese participation in an international airport to be built on the island of Crete.

It really depends on the end of the earth you are looking at Greece from.  Europe sees burdensome economic and political liabilities when it casts its glance south.  The Chinese sees a good place to put its money down.

Which is good news if you live in less developed areas of the world, where your quality of living, starting with more luxurious food, is about to get more plentiful, or even more affordable.  Not so good for those living in more developed parts, where costs will get pushed up simply because demand is higher and supply is most likely going to remain flat.

“As incomes rise, diets are expected to slowly diversify away from staple foods towards increased meats and processed foods,” it said. In turn, with increasing affluence and an expanding middle class, food consumption in developing countries would become less responsive to price and income changes.

In real terms, the report projected cereal prices to rise around 15-40 per cent relative to the 1997-2006 average, up from last year’s forecast of 10-20 per cent. Vegetable oils are expected to be more than 40 per cent higher, against last year’s forecast of a 30 per cent increase. Meat and dairy products will also be more expensive in the next decade, reversing last year’s forecast that pointed to lower prices.

This article blames mostly higher crude oil prices for the uncomfortable news. But the increasing tension between the developing and developed, and between the young and the old, will probably be the trend in the foreseeable future.

Consider this paradox. In the last decade, one of the dominant idea of European solidarity has encouraged people of Europe to believe they are Europeans before their respective nationalities.  But parallel to this thread of political movement, there have been more, and not less, emphasis on the importance language plays on the national fronts.

All the more ironic, then, that in the 21st century there would be such a push to tie language to citizenship and inclusion, particularly throughout Europe. According to a Harris poll in 2007, 86% of Germans, 83% of Britons, 61% of French and Italians and 50% of Spaniards believe that citizenship and language tests are necessary for new immigrants. Quite which Spanish language immigrants in Spain are supposed to speak is not entirely clear. Nonetheless, half the country wants them to speak it.

Often, the greater the geographic proximity in which these languages are spoken, the greater the tension. But where Flemish culture is concerned, the primary threat is not really French but American culture and the English language.

With austerity bills landing on the doorsteps of those countries, will language be the final straw that breaks the euro-camel’s back?

North Koreans have no access to Internet, nor outside TV or radio.  But despite censorship, information is getting through the Chinese and South Korean borders.

Slowly, however, information is seeping in. Traders return from China to report that people are richer and comparatively freer, and that South Koreans are supposedly even more so. Some of the traders have cellphones that are linked to the Chinese cellular network and can be surreptitiously borrowed for exorbitant fees.

Punishment for watching foreign films and television shows is stiff. The trader said a 35-year-old neighbor spent six months in a labor camp last year after he was caught watching “Twin Dragons,” a farcical Hong Kong action film starring Jackie Chan. Yet to the dismay of the former teacher, her 26-year-old son takes similar risks

At the same time, South Korea might be waging some form of psychological warfare against its northern hermit cousin/enemy.

After the country formally accused North Korea of launching the torpedo that sunk their warship Cheonan, South Korea has declared psychological warfare in retaliation. Their first missive into the hermit kingdom was a pop song.  Ended a six-year suspension against state-sanctioned propaganda, the South sent the message across the border through the airwaves. Before airing a rebuke from South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, the broadcast features K-pop girl group 4minute singing their song “HuH (Hit Your Heart).”

Out of curiosity, I looked up the group along with other big names in the S. Korean pop factory.  In the space of the last couple of decades, it is probably not implausible to say that South Korea is now challenging Japan in the quality and polished packaging of its pop exports.

Notice how incredibly quiet Iran has been in this whole flotilla fiasco? Surprising, considering its history of rhetoric and hysterics towards Israel, no?

As far as popularity is concerned, Turkey has scored major points with its Muslim allies in the region, and is undoubtedly reasserting its presence in the region.

Iran is getting edged out for three reasons.  One, its domestic politics is no doubt still in turmoil from last year’s mess.

Two, it doesn’t have the economic resources nor power to compete with Turkey.

And three, its relations with its neighbours is nowhere as good as as Turkey’s, making it difficult to make demands on a rival that’s more or less tuned it out.

The flotilla incident and Turkey’s role have catapulted its status in the Muslim world as the defender of Muslim rights. This most probably includes members of Hamas, whom Iran has been spending millions on in an effort to buy their support and loyalty.

Which other Muslim country has enough credibility, power and self-confidence to do what Turkey did? It promised to dispatch the flotilla and it went through with its promise.

The icing on the cake came when prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a very clear ultimatum to the Israeli government: free every single Turkish citizen, including those who assaulted your soldiers, otherwise our relations will suffer. Within three hours, Binyamin Netanyahu had accepted. Had this been an Arab country, including those that Israel has relations with, such as Jordan and Egypt, the Israelis would probably have stuck to their guns. The same for Iran.

But not Turkey. There is a new player in town and Israel takes it very seriously. Unlike Iran, Turkey has a powerful economy. Its GDP is the 18th largest in the world – one place above Iran. This is a major achievement for a country which is not a gas and oil exporter. It sits on the border of Europe and its relations with the EU and the US are astronomically better than those of its Iranian neighbour. Its power is expanding in the Caucasus, and relations are improving with its old foe and rival, Greece.

It’s the same in the Middle East, where Turkey, unlike Iran, enjoys good relations with Sunni-ruled countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, as well as among Iran’s friends Iraq and Syria. If current trends continue, Turkey could do what the Islamic Republic of Iran has been trying to do for the last 32 years: become the most powerful and credible political and military force in the Islamic world.

There’s a lot of political manipulation from Turkey here. The fact that the ship pressed on at all despite repeated calls to abandon course makes it a willful participant in this conflict.  But orchestrated or not, Turkey made the point it wanted to, based on many years of purposeful economic and political maneuvering.

Now it’s payoff time.

Constructed by Chairman Mao in 1969, a second underground Beijing, should a nuclear war kick off.  Luckily nobody pushed the button, and “second city” nowadays lies in ruins.

More pictures here.

So far, most of the discussion over the Eurozone crisis has centered on the lack of economic feasibility of such currency union in a a non-optimal currency zone.  But the more interesting question we could’ve been asking all along is: whether the union in its current incarnation – having been achieved with much hand-wringing and backdoor dealings, in fact signals a progress of democratic ideals, or a regression of such.  That’s to say, were the ideals of a singular economic and political union a misguided exercise to start off with, and has the pursuit of such impossibility led everyone involved in precisely the opposite direction?

Ambrose Evan-Pritchard seems to think the EU has gone too far, if not from inception, but certainly the hard line behaviour it has engaged in the past few years.

In my view, the EU elites overstepped the line by ignoring the rejection of the European Constitution by French and Dutch voters, then pushing it through under the guise of the Lisbon Treaty without a popular vote, except in Ireland, and when Ireland voted ‘No’, to ignore that too. The enterprise has become illegitimate – it is starting to exhibit the reflexes of tyranny.

Slipping into tyranny and illegitimacy aside, the EU leadership also seems to have learned little from their predecessors the last century. The singled-mindedness in deficit reduction may very well push the entire zone into deflation.  And while Germany still harbours a collective paranoia of its hyperinflationary days, few seem to recollect that reinforced deflation was the root of the problem.

This is the Gold Bloc fallacy of Continental Europe from 1931 to 1936, the policy that led to Bruning’s destruction of Weimar, Laval’s near destruction of the Third Republic in France with his deflation decrees. It was a precursor to Laval’s fateful role as the Nazi enforcer of Vichy. He was later executed by firing squad, vomitting from a botched suicide with cynanide.

End of the day, standing on the other side of the Channel, this is a sober question to chew on.

Fonctionnaires and EU finance ministers will pass judgement on the British (or Dutch, or Danish, or French) budgets before the elected bodies of these ancient and sovereign nations have seen the proposals. Did we not we not fight the English Civil War and kill a king over such a prerogative?

I can’t say it better than what’s already been said below.  Outrage over Arizona’s new law that mandates citizens to carry IDs at all time has been the way of life in Europe for years.

In America (and really in the Anglo-Saxon world in general) there is a very different attitude toward national identification than in Europe. There is no national ID card in the US. In fact, many have argued that to require people to get such an ID would be unconstitutional. Several states are even challenging a 2005 federal initiative that would just harmonise the way state driving licenses are designed. Because there is no national ID most Americans use their driving license as identification.

This is pretty true.  In Canada, you can pretty much get away with a driver’s license plus your social insurance number card for the majority of your bureaucratic dealings with the government.

Contrast that with the Netherlands.  As a side note, although I give the country a hard time, I hardly think that goes on in this country is any more paternalistic and Big Brother-like than any of its continental neighbours.

Exhibit one: I had to register with the local government as soon as I enter the country to notify them of my presence.  And should I move, they must be notified at all times.  For us, address changes are made out of a sense economic necessity and convenience (you want to get your tax returns, insurance papers, bills and home-order catalogues), not government dictation.

Exhibit two: In order to verify my partnership status with my boyfriend to renew my residence permit, I had to provide a not-married certificate from Canada.  It was simply inconceivable to the Dutch government that we had no such document in Canada, since marriage is a provincial matter and not legislated federally.  With much resignation, I handed over 30 euros to the Canadian embassy for a piece of paper with zero significance, which they handed over with a wink.  This piece of paper was then taken to a Dutch bureaucratic counter for a 10 euro stamp to validate its meaningless authenticity.

Exhibit three: Two uniformed policemen knocked on my door one day to check if a long-departed person previously registered under my current address is still in the country.  The fact that the police manually track down people to ensure they have left the country is crazy.  The comforting part of the story is that they were about two years too late.

Exhibit four: People love to whine here as they do anywhere.  But in my years here so far, I have yet to hear anyone complain about the mandatory ID-carrying rule in place, nor any grumbling over the new biometric passport system in place for its citizens.

There is one important distinction between the Arizona law and the European ID requirements though. In Europe all people are legally required to carry ID, not just foreigners. So the laws don’t specifically target foreigners or minorities. Now, as many minorities in continental Europe will tell you (and as is patently observable on the street), in practice it is usually only minorities who are ever randomly stopped on the street and asked for ID.

It is curious that despite the relatively elitist and supremely bureaucratic leadership structure of Europe (regardless of what international indexes says and what they claim through media outlets), Europeans in general remain ever so docile and trusting in its relationship with its governments, especially curious considering the long and painful history its people suffered through religious and ethnic discrimination and outright prosecution.

I have no explanation for the above-cited Anglo-Saxon adverseness to this sort of government oversight, except to conjecture the correlation has to do with the fact that the majority of English-speaking countries belong to the New World.  And self-selection meant that those that chose to make the trans-ocean move from wherever they were from to where they are now, did so because they were victims of some kind of discrimination back in their own country, whether they be political, economic, religious or ethnic.  As descendants of this collective mentality, we are generally weary of what we perceive to be government intervention and control as represented by those kind of ID-carrying requirements.

Ok, so lately things haven’t gone too well in the US and UK.  But despite the obvious curtailments of personal freedom after 9/11, we are at least keeping the debate alive.

This didn’t happen in Europe, did it?

Have you had the pleasure of witnessing, whether in real life or on TV, of European soccer (football) hooligan rants and violence?  To me, the sight of black riot vans, police armed with riot gear with horses and dogs is an essential part of the game.

A few days ago, local government officials in both Amsterdam and Rotterdam openly discussed whether they had the will to hold those expected games in April at all, citing fears of rabid fan clashes, and the exhaustive efforts involved in dispatching the police force.

During the last decade, the damage caused by rival team fans have been so large, that all over Europe, and more specifically here in the Netherlands, that a concerted and very public effort has been made by the government, police force, and football teams to contain and control crowd violence.

Nowadays, all those tagged as hooligans are registered with the police, whom must report their whereabouts at game times.  At game times, the clubs are responsible for transporting their fans either through shuttle buses or special trains, so as to avoid contact with the general public.  Additionally, cities have invested considerable amounts in constructing specific walkways/tunnels that lead fans directly from their mode of transportation to the arena, so as to avoid contact with fans from the home team (check out the video below, it is pretty insane).  The stadium is also blocked in sections so as to segregate fanatical supporters of each side from the general public.

But this game now underway between old-time rivals, Amsterdam Ajax and Rotterdam Feyenoord, which have caused large-scale damage, and even death, not too long ago, has the cities worried again.

Fears of large-scale hooliganism have been prompted by campaigns on the websites of hardcore Ajax fans, who are threatening “to flatten Rotterdam again”. The port city was bombed by the Germans in 1940, and a chilling picture of the flattened city centre has been posted to illustrate the threat. Calls to go rioting have also been posted on Feyenoord fansites.

It’s not just the Ajax fans that are causing concern. Feyenoord’s fans also include a group of hooligans who were involved in a mass fight with police at a beach party last year. Police fired shots which killed one of the rioters on the Hook of Holland beach, near Rotterdam, in August 2009. Some hooligans convicted for their part in the beach riot have already completed their sentences and are expected to attend the match.

As a pre-emptive strike against almost certain violent clashes, the Amsterdam club has returned a number of tickets available to its fans back to the national football association, in hopes of filling out the stadium with more neutral spectators.

To a bystander like me, identification with teams seem to incite the worst kind of rivalries along regional and national lines.  It’s also sustained, most likely, a large number of graduate social science thesis papers on social classes and identities.

Interesting how this kind of phenomenon can co-exists with the greater ideals of European enlargement, arguably sticking up a fat middle finger to the supposed triumphs of cosmopolitanism.