Among Paris’ many attractions there are also a lot that aren’t as well-known as the main ones. Like a journey on the old partially underground canals in the Bastille area of the city. It’s blogged about in NZZ.ch.
Author: JR
Otto von Habsburg – the end of an epoch
Otto von Habsburg, once crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian empire, has died aged 98 and must be said to have had a remarkable life that spanned almost the entire 20th century. He can be said to have carried both the heritage of the old Europe, the visions of a new Europe, and the history of a century that put so many marks on the world.
German Greens’ success in BW
From what it looks, the German Greens have won their first government premier position in the state elections of Baden-Württemberg. With 24.2 percent of the votes the Green Party managed to become bigger than their traditional ally SPD with 23.1 percent. This by all likelyhood means that the next premier in Baden-Württemberg will be the Greens’ Winfried Kretchmann in a Green-SPD minority coalition government. The Christian Democratic CDU which are traditionally strong in the region got 39.0 percent of the vote and are now losing their grip over the state government for the first time since 1953.
Even if the circumstances can be said to be unusually in favour of the Greens’ politics, with the local debate over Stuttgart 21 – the big rebuilding of the railway station in Stuttgart – as the main focus and the nuclear disaster in Japan as a backdrop, it could also very well be seen as a possible bigger shift in political preferences, especially in Germany where the Greens have gone on to becoming a big, established party besides the traditional left and right parties SPD and CDU/CSU and catering to voters that want something else than the traditional parties.
“Betrayed by our own data”
Die Zeit has a very interesting article – in English even – showing exactly how much you can do with data collection from today’s mobile phones.
For a technology-interested geographer like me, it’s both very intriguing and a bit scary at the same time.
The problems with nuclear power
As if the earthquake and the following tsunami were not enough, Japan got into another nightmare with its damaged and apparently out-of-control Fukushima nuclear power plant.
It can of course be argued over the logic in the reasoning to construct nuclear plants in a region that is on the absolute top of the list when it comes to earthquake risks. Japan have naturally not been unaware of the risks involved, but have apparently deemed that in order to provide the electrical energy needed to power the world’s second largest economy the risks were worth taking. It now seems that the safeguards even in such a hightech country have not been sufficient.
It is not the first time the safety of Japan’s nuclear programme has been questioned, or even the first time incidents have cast a shadow on the policies. But this is by far the worst such incident.
Twitter subpoenas: Highlighting the problem with globalized data
Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Althing – the parliament of Iceland – and a former Wikileaks supporter has apparently been informed by Twitter that the US Department of Justice has demanded that Twitter turns over the stored Twitter data they have regarding her account. This includes all actual tweets as well as some personal information about her. Not surprisingly, she is regarding the subpoena as a breach of privacy since she is not suspected of any crime. While Twitter have chosen to actually inform the targeted person of the existence of the subpoena, there seem to be a rising suspicion that other companies such as Google and Facebook are not as open toward their users. Which of course makes it an even worse privacy break since the persons are not even aware of that their personal information are eventually turned over to a third party, no matter that the third party happens to be a US governmental body.
The main problem here is not only the fact that personal user data aren’t as protected as the users in most case presume it to be, but also the fact that personal data belonging to persons not even in the legal jurisdiction of a country can be submitted to that country’s views of legality when it comes to data protection. In one way, if the process described in this case is deemed legal by US courts, it is perfectly legal. A sovereign state has the full right to have a bad legal protection when it comes to data – so long as it doesn’t go against any potential international treaties and agreement said state has signed of course. The problem however takes on a diffent dimension when personal data given up by persons not residing in or in any way having a connection to said state end up getting their personal information ceded to the authories in that state.
Now, of course there most likely is a clause in the user agreements for both Twitter, Facebook and Google that states something like that the user agrees to having their personal data stored and handled in the USA, and as such being under the jurisdiction of the US legal system. But the real question is how many of the millions of international users who are actually aware of this fact. Data protection and safety are tricky things, since they are so elusive in their geographical attachment.
Sources: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/08/us-twitter-hand-icelandic-wikileaks-messages, http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/08/wikileaks-calls-google-facebook-us-subpoenas?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
Hungary’s EU presidency marred by their new media law
As Hungary takes over the EU presidency for the first half of 2011, there remain a controversy over the country’s newly approved media law that will impose a rather strict government body control over both public and private media companies, as well as in theory also applying to the more informal modern forms of media outlets such as blogs. Exactly how this latter part would be feasible is on the other hand questionable. In any case such stringent overseeing by a government authority is bordering to state censorship and it is highly questionable if such a law is in correspondence with the European legal framework on the right to free speech.
Sources (selection of): http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.vice-president-communication-amd-blog.13823, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/01/07/hungary-media-law-endangers-press-freedom
Västra hamnen, Malmö, Sweden
This is just a test post.
Swedish parliament election
The Swedish parliamentary election resulted in a new mandate for the sitting center-right coalition government. The coalition did however lose their majority in the parliament and will continue govern as a minority government.
Polish presidential election
Bronislaw Komorowski, currently acting president of Poland after the death of president Kaczynski in a tragic plane crash in May, has been elected as president after winning the second round of voting by getting 53 percent of the votes cast. his opponent, the twin brother of the deceased president and the current opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski got 47 percent of the votes.
Mr Komorowski was the candidate of the governing Civic Platform party and has been the parliament speaker.