Debating Myself

My second senior thesis is finished. This paper, written in German, was much more of a challenge in some ways than the Politics and Government thesis. Having chosen specifically to write two senior theses instead of simply writing one larger thesis on a topic that overlaps both subjects, I had a hard time finding my way to a topic of interest to me involving Germany.

My main problem was finding available resources in German to conduct strong academic research from. In the end I chose as similar road as my POLS thesis–namely reanalyzing an existing case-study.

I am interested in theories of federalism, generally, and the European Union as a sort of interesting new experiment in multi-level governance. However, looking specifically at environmental policy within Germany and the EU is ironic, because it is perhaps the type of politics that interests me the least. Luckily I was able to focus my paper on the theoretical implications of the division of power between Germany, the EU and the German Länder in the realm of environmental policy, and avoid tedious discussions of allowable levels of pollutants in rivers and streams.

Mainly, it is just really hard to write a substantial research paper in a foreign language you have studied for only four years–and I am probably most proud of my thesis not for its clear and original analysis (of which it has much less than my POLS thesis) but for my use of the German language. Since coming back to Germany I think my mastery of written German has probably increased significantly due to the outstanding support of my German professor (Professor Lorely French) and the insane amount of papers I had to write in German this year.

Oddly, I wrote more pages/papers in German this academic year than in English. Crazy.

For comparison’s sake, here are the vital stats on my German thesis:

• Pages: 43
• Words: 10,773
• Footnotes: 30
• Words (with footnotes): 11, 476
• Sources Cited: ??
• Sources Consulted: 83
• Appendixes: 0

And, I’m done. If anyone out there is fluent in German and interested, please feel free to read the attached PDF below. For those of you not fluent in German here is an English description of the theme of the paper:

The Federal Republic of Germany is a founding member of the European integration project and a strong supporter of the European Union. Yet the rapidly increasing centralization of European policy in the form of mandates from the EU is particularly complicated for Germany due to its federal structure. The sixteen German states, or Länder, have become increasingly active in the politics of integration in the last twenty years in an attempt to protect their traditional constitutional sovereignty. The Länder have been particularly active, sometimes against the wishes of the federal German government. The struggle against European environmental standards exemplifies how integration can be burdensome and costly for the Länder to implement. This study analyzes the different strategies employed by the Länder in defending their sovereignty.

“Purely Administrative Entities”? The Role of the German Länder in the European Union (PDF)

Champions of the new left in South America (of the Chavez kind) are about to be faced with what seems to be a stark rebuke of leftist policies and Chavez-esque populism. Evo Morales, the populist President of Bolivia and self-appointed champion of indigenous people and the poor, is facing the apparent disintegration of Bolivia.

Residents of Santa Cruz are expected to have approved a state-wide referendum declaring autonomy from the Bolivian central government last Sunday. According to the Washington Post:

Five more of the country’s nine states — including all of those in the eastern lowlands that produce most of the country’s income — are considering similar referendums in coming months.

For those keeping count it could add up to 6 of the country’s 9 states declaring autonomy from the Morales-dominated central government.

Notably, the autonomy referendum does not declare independence. Leaders of the autonomy movement:

simply want more local control over taxes, the courts, property titles and police forces. An autonomous Santa Cruz would remain a part of Bolivia, and its institutions would still be connected to those of the national government.

This will certainly hinder Morales’ plans for a constitutional revision, but they were already in dire shape having been rather undemocratic (this is a favorite move of South American leaders, and even the distinctly un-Chavez leader, Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, is rumored to be mulling a constitutional revision).

What is interesting to note here is that the issue of devolving power to regional autonomies appears to be an acultural and practically universal phenomenon. From the disintegration of Yugoslavia, to pressures for regional autonomy in Spain, to the long-standing Quebec separatist movement—the nation-state is under significant pressure around the globe.

In this case Bolivia is fitting into a seemingly normal pattern, as the pressure for devolution has divided up along ethnic/culture lines. States with lower populations of indigenous people are feeling threatened by the pro-indigenous policies of Morales, which some have even viewed as racist, and are attempting to separate and avoid conflict. The indigenous people, for their part, feel that Morales is finally representing their interests after a long period of repression and see the autonomy movement as a direct threat.

As one indigenous supporter of Morales put it to the Washington Post:

“They will be killing us — the indigenous — with this statute,” said Alejandro Antezana, who opposes autonomy. “We are going to fight to the death if we have to. We are not going to let them set up their ballot boxes this Sunday, even if that will lead us to confrontation and bloodshed. We have too much to lose.”

In general, if nation-states can’t learn to strike a balance between assimilating and integrating their diverse populations while allowing them to retain their cultural identity, they will always trend toward instability and devolution. The United States has been remarkable in this regard, absorbing millions upon millions of immigrants from diverse places around the globe. Of course, for the United States the assimilation process is lightened because by and large most immigrants choose to immigrate to the United States.

The indigenous population of Bolivia did not choose to immigrate there, or choose to let the Spanish conquistadors in. In that regard perhaps it is more fair to compare the US indigenous populations with those in Bolivia–and of course the US went the route of devolution there by granting Native American tribes significant autonomy (in exchange, of course, for taking all of their land and decimating their population…)

Mixing cultures and ethnic groups under one national government will always prove to be problematic. Bolivia, where the oppressed indigenous peoples finally have power at the national level, is proving that simply giving indigenous peoples power for awhile to run the government also can’t be seen as a solution. Some kind of power sharing, coalition forming, and compromise is needed to ensure stability and a sense of unity.

Unfortunately those words are a lot easier to write than to turn into practical politics.

UPDATE 1: The referendum passed by a margin of 85% in Santa Cruz. This blog post details a lot about the referendum and the electoral process throughout the day.

For those of you wondering about what has happened in the Zimbabwe election since I last posted on the topic about a month ago, here is the answer:

Not much

The results of the presidential election have yet to be announced, though it seems the government is making a gesture toward releasing them by the end of the week.

International pressure is mounting, but it seems like Mugabe has some big time countries protecting his regime. Of course China has massive investment interests in Zimbabwe and would probably like the regime to stay stable, while South Africa is fighting a proxy political battle over Zimbabwe pitting President Thabo Mbeki against his political rival Jacob Zuma, who is a staunch supporter of the Zimbabwe opposition (and recently elected head of the African National Congress). The fear here is a win for the opposition in Zimbabwe could lead to a larger win for the opposition in South Africa.

All of this is occurring amidst election violence that some have said is like “a war zone”. In all twenty people are verified to have died from election-related violence, and the Economist ran a story this week saying that the toll may be much higher according some doctors in the country.

It certainly seems like Mugabe lost the election and is trying desperately to hold on to power. Honestly, I’m not sure they’ll be able to force him out–the UN is virtually powerless due to China’s position, and Africa remains largely divided on the issue, so the African Union can be of little help as well.

Mugabe may be able to draw on all of this external support to make up for the lack of internal support he enjoys. We’ll see how it plays out.

Now I know I’m a little late to the whole Olympic Tibet controversy game, but I hope what I have to say is still worth saying.

What sparked me to write this post initially is this article by Yahoo! Sports’ own Dan Wetzel about the Beijing Olympics. Now I will be the first to admit that I am not a fan of Wetzel–he is too preachy and too political for a sports columnist. If you want to make a political statement in a sports column then do it without a) insulting your readers’ intelligence and b) try to be classy about it. Wetzel should look at Sports Illustrated’s premier NFL analyst Peter King for a career full of examples of this.

But I think I took offense to Wetzel’s column less for its preachy tone (though that remains in abundance) and more for its blatant misrepresentation of the facts and crude assumptions. Wetzel is clearly pandering to his audience based on the assumption that they share some latent xenophobic feelings.

If Wetzel wrote this article for a high school newspaper his editor could have told him that his first paragraph makes one of the (unfortunately) most overused historical comparisons of the 20th and 21st century.

As the news pours out of China about the latest round of murdered monks and slaughtered nuns, as crowds around the world protest the Olympic torch, the prevailing wisdom now is that the Beijing Olympics are looking like, if we’re lucky, merely a redo of the 1936 Berlin Games. And that’s only in the unlikely event the bloodshed ends.

Does Wetzel really want to compare the internal strife in Tibet to the systematic destruction of an entire race, the complete destruction of an entire continent, and the near extermination of an entire of generation of men?

I would like to say that Wetzel is just using this paragraph as a hook to discuss the issue of Tibet more rationally, but unlike Wetzel I am compelled to be accurate and fair in my writing (unless I state otherwise). Wetzel’s article really degrades into anti-Chinese tirade and a rant against those corporate lapdogs the International Olympic Committee.

Wetzel makes a number of specious claims I won’t bother attacking here, what I want to respond to is his general thesis that the IOC “sold out” to the promise of making billions in China. Seriously,

No, this was a straight sellout, not a gamble. The IOC willingly purchased the unholy bill of goods China was peddling so its sponsoring corporations could, in turn, sell stuff to the Chinese people.

Wetzel is sadly short of history. I need only a mention a few Olympic games here to remind him that the Olympics has often been used to exactly the aim Wetzel doubts: “caus[ing] China to reverse course on human rights, democracy, freedom and the environment.” [For the better.]

Indeed, the 1988 games in Seoul, South Korea marked a turning point to that country, which now possesses the 12th largest economy in the world and is a fountain of stability and democracy in east Asia. Those 1988 games were boycotted by several nations and occurred although South Korea was (and still is) officially at war with North Korea.

Wetzel would probably had criticized those games too. After all, the games were probably enabled by “workers they then cheated out of wages and health care to build substandard Olympic facilities lacking small items like emergency exits and fire sprinklers.”

Hmm. Perhaps Wetzel should peek back at the history of the United States. The US hosted the Olympics three times before African-Americans even began to fully feel the benefits of citizenship in this country (1904, 1932 summer and winter, and 1960). No doubt American workers in 1904 faced perhaps worse labor standards than their Chinese compatriots today (there was, back then, no American consumer complete with hang-ups about sweatshop labor to try to please). From 1920-1940 it is estimated that up to 1,000 African Americans may have been lynched in the United States as the direct result of racism, hatred and bigotry. So clearly the United States had its fair share of violent internal strife and oppressed ethnic groups going on while it was permitted to host the games as well.

While Wetzel decries the death of “between 30 and 148″ people in Tibet he turns a blind eye to his own country’s history of prejudice and bigotry? Moreover, Wetzel pretends to understand the complexity of Chinese-Tibetan relations to suggest that Tibet should in fact be free. Would Wetzel welcome Chinese scrutiny, then, about the United States’ continuing treatment of Native-Americans and the reservation system that traps some tribes into a cycle of abject poverty and dependence on government handouts? Would Wetzel listen to Chinese commentators’ suggestions that perhaps we should grant the Native American’s full autonomy and statehood as reparations for the near extermination of an entire people?

Maybe it is unfair to make this comparison, but it is fair to say that he is overly critical of a situation that is much more complex than anyone with only one side (the Western side) of the story could fairly judge.

Wetzel does not really care about the plight of those in Tibet. Make no mistake, this is a rant against the corporatization of the games. The last sentence of his column makes this position strikingly clear:

What do a hundred dead monks matter anyway when there are so many Big Macs to move?

Wetzel sees the strife as occurring solely for the sale of corporate goods, but this is a false assumption and a terrible generalization to make. The idea harkens back to the example of South Korea I gave earlier–bringing world attention to Beijing will bring about a change in China by welcoming it to the world community, bringing international attention, and forcing it to consider the international consequences of its actions.

Besides is it fair for Wetzel, who will probably see his income spike from columns discussing a myriad of aspects of the Olympic games ad nauseum, to really criticize the games being corporatized? Isn’t that how he gets paid? Put your money where your mouth is and boycott the games yourself–don’t watch, don’t write about it, and don’t support it.

But of course that won’t happen. Wetzel doesn’t really believe, or if he does, he doesn’t care enough to do more than complain about it in a public forum using a dangerously xenophobic conception of China as his background.

I have a great fear that these games will be hijacked by an anti-Chinese political sentiment that has been growing in the United States for awhile now. Instead of focusing on the positive aspects of international attention in China, Wetzel panders to the latent anti-Chinese sentiment that is largely fueled by fear, ignorance and the lack of exposure to Chinese people and culture.

Sure, China has its problems, but so has every great nation that underwent the kind of dramatic industrial revolution currently occurring in China. Only by moving past the rhetoric of fear, ignorance and xenophobia can we ever hope to make a positive out of the strife currently occurring in Tibet. Resorting to yellow journalism to scare up readership will never be part of the solution and can only serve to perpetuate stereotypes and ideas that preclude meaningful engagement and peaceful resolutions in China.

China is hoping for the opposite–a kind of positive media attention that will change people’s minds about China. It will be interesting to see what prevails.

UPDATE: Here is a great letter from a Chinese-American to Mr. Wetzel.

Even Tsvangirai is a bit surprised.

Just a quick note and update on the post below about Zimbabwe’s elections. Despite rampant vote fixing the opposition party has won, forcing Robert Mugabe into a historical runoff election.

Mugabe lost by four points to opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai 47-43. The third candidate, Simba Makoni, who in all likelihood siphoned votes off from Tsvangirai in the first round will not participate in the runoff. This clears the way for an easier campaign for Tsvangirai.

Yet it remains to be seen if the runoff election will be free enough and fair enough to allow an opposition victory.

Zimbabwe’s 84 year old dictator Robert Mugabe will someday no doubt be the subject of a book titled “How Not to Run A Country” or alternatively “How to Squander, Exploit, and Destroy a Nation”.

In his tenure as Zimbabwe’s “President” Mugabe has seen inflation skyrocket to an unimaginable and unbelievable 100,000%. The US dollar, even in its current feeble state, is worth around 30,000 Zimbabwe dollars–but you won’t be able to trade it for that price because the rate gets worse every single day.

Even if you forget that Mugabe also destroyed 400,000 homes in a crackdown on black market trading and zoning violations, the opposition should be able to phone this election in and still win by a landslide. Right? Right?!?

Wrong. In the Parliament the ruling party, Mugabe’s Zanu PF, is still managing a slim lead as election results are released. Although the opposition has declared itself the winner in the presidential vote, the results are not being released. For up to the minute results check out this blog set up by the Zimbabwe Guardian based in London.

Obviously this isn’t a fair election. Some curious factors that only add to that suspicion:

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Parliament finally convened on Monday after an election on February 18

So the more I read about this missile strike in Pakistan, the less sense it makes to me. It seems completely ill-timed and appears to have been carried out with little regard at all to the political situation in Pakistan post-election. According to the Financial Times, this is the latest guess about what has happened:

At least fourteen people were killed in a remote Pakistani region along the Afghan border in a missile strike on Sunday believed to have been carried out by a pilotless drone operated by the CIA… “The target was a cluster of homes where Arabs and their Pakistani friends had assembled” said one Pakistani official.

Witnesses said a drone dropped seven missiles on the sprawling, mud-brick compound about three miles outside Wana, the main town in South Waziristan.

The timing seems a bit off though, considering Parliament was set to convene the next day (and did so):

Pakistan’s Parliament meets today [the day after the missile strike] for the first time since three opposition parties agreed to form a coalition government after defeating supporters of President Pervez Musharraf in general elections a month ago. Lawmakers will be sworn in and will choose a speaker and deputy speaker for the 342-member National Assembly, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

But, more importantly, the fact that previous such missile strikes have caused a bit of instability on their own (again from the Financial Times):

In the past, Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban have responded to drone attacks with suicide bombings across the country.

This new threat to instability, in the form of a retaliatory terror campaign conducted after the airstrikes, comes on the heels of violent campaign season, some of which it seems is clear the CIA was responding to (AP):

Just Saturday, a bomb exploded at an Islamabad restaurant popular with foreigners, killing a Turkish woman and wounding 12 people, including four FBI personnel… Saturday’s attack was the first in Pakistan’s quiet capital in several months, and the first targeting foreigners here in more than a year.

Public sentiment in Pakistan for such retaliation by the US military is thin at best:

Pakistanis have also expressed anger over U.S. attacks on militants in the country’s lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border, which often have tacit approval from Musharraf’s government.

So why anger the Pakistanis more? The Pakistani election should be seen as a victory for democratic reform in the region having resulted in the relatively peaceful ousting of a military dictator from the government–hopefully:

The PPP, the party led by Benazir Bhutto before her assassination in December, is forming a coalition with the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz, the party led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and the Awami National Party. Sharif has vowed to challenge Musharraf’s rule while Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s widower and the PPP leader, hasn’t ruled out working with the president.

Of course the US has long been close allies with Musharraf and perhaps the new coalition government will be more anti-American and less supportive of US-led efforts in the war on terror in the region. Yet it is hard to see how peppering the Pakistani countryside with seven missiles from a CIA drone could do anything to increase support from the fledgling Pakistani government, and it seems really clear that it is going to spur further anti-American sentiment in the country.

I’m all for fighting the real war on terror and striking at terrorist camps wherever they may be. I may even be receptive to the idea that state sovereignty is largely mythical along borders in the Middle East and pursuing potential terrorist operatives trumps concerns about violating state sovereignty. I even believe it in the best interest of the Pakistanis to let the US fight the brunt of this battle for them, after all it was pro-Taliban elements who struck on Monday (the day of Parliament’s first session):

A bomb blast at a police building in northwestern Pakistan Monday killed three officers and wounded five, state media reported. Several wounded people were rushed to hospital after the attack near the main town of Mingora in the volatile Swat valley where Pakistan’s military has been fighting pro-Taliban militants, police officer Karamat Shah said.

So the question is: why mess with the volatile situation right now? Were the targets such a high priority that the larger political concerns were put aside? Or was this just a revenge operation? I sympathize deeply with the loss of FBI agents killed in the line of duty–they were serving their country in one of the most important ways–but the timing of justice here may wind up getting more Americans and Pakistanis killed in the long-run and threatening the peaceful transition of power in Pakistan.

The strike occurred in northwest Pakistan. Image courtesy of http://www.wordtravels.com/

Many say that we are fighting the war in Iraq at the cost of fighting the “real war on terror” in Afghanistan. If that is true, then what do we make out of the US war on terror being conducted in… Pakistan?

That’s right, apparently the US has launched air strikes in Pakistan–including a strike today killing 18 in a tribal village.

Is it really a good idea to mess with the sovereignty of an already highly unstable and tenuous regional ally?

More on this as it develops.

A major diplomatic breakdown is occurring right now in South America.

Chavez (left) hugs Uribe. Shouldn't Uribe have been worried here?

This story has been relegated to the back burner behind the upcoming Democratic primary on Tuesday, among other stories, but it merits some attention here. I will just list some bullet point facts from various sources to give a sense of what is going on, then we’ll move into some brief, and some [being honest] premature analysis, of the situation:

• Colombia’s military ventured one mile into Ecuadoran territory on Saturday to kill a top FARC rebel commander, Raul Reyes.
• Thousands of Ecuadoran and Venezuelan troops have been ordered to Colombia’s border to show outrage at this incursion.
• Hugo Chavez has expelled the Colombian diplomatic mission from Venezuela.

Is this really a region on the brink of war? No, and several well researched news stories point out the following reasons the conflict is unlikely to escalate militarily:

• Trade—Colombian trade with Venezuela is worth $5 billion a year. Trade to Ecuador tops $2 billion a year, including vital foodstuffs. Colombia also supplies 10 percent of Ecuador’s electricity needs. (Follow the link for some great analysis of economic implications from Bloomberg News)
• Legitimacy of the Raid—Colombia did not raid Ecuador for resources, but to capture (or kill) a top rebel commander. What they found, contained in three encrypted computer discs, was worth well over its weight in gold.
  • “One document, apparently written in February, suggests Venezuela recently gave the rebels $300 million, while another suggests the rebels were shopping for 50 kilos of uranium…”
• Political concerns—This article from Time Magazine does a good job of going through the political implications of any border conflict among the three nations. Most importantly:
  • Colombia can’t afford another front in its perpetual battle against the FARC rebels
  • Chavez can’t afford an unpopular war when he is seeking a constitutional referendum
    • Venezuelan oil industry couldn’t handle the uncertainty a conflict would bring
  • International pressure on both Uribe and Chavez to be civilized
  • The perceived, and perhaps real, military superiority of the veteran Colombian army that has been engaged and active for the past several years against the FARC rebels

So why should we care about a little sabre rattling in South America? For one thing it is of particular interest to the US for a several reasons.

• US dependency on oil—Venezuela crude oil supplies remain important to US energy policy
• Colombia as a key US ally in Latin America
• The US role in training and assisting the Colombian military in its fight against FARC rebels and wider role in the “War on Drugs”
• The role of US intelligence services in the raid into Ecuador
• The longstanding clash between Hugo Chavez and the United States, particularly US President Bush

Chavez holds up his battle plans.

Any conflict, even a minor border skirmish, would pit a major US ally in the region (Colombia) against the fledgling alliance of a major US agitator (Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela). For now the evidence seems to be clearly pointing toward another case of Chavez’s showcase brinkmanship, and in all likelihood tensions should be reduced and relations normalized within the next couple of weeks. However, the taste of this clash may linger (especially the cutting of diplomatic ties, even if only briefly).

The divide between the US friendly Latin American countries and Chavez friendly Latin American countries may have just grown deeper still. The effects of this will be felt for awhile, and is something to monitor considering the persistent US interests in the region outlined above.

North Korea has baffled American diplomats and politicians consistently for at least the last twenty years. Now a nuclear state, the question of Korea is even more important for the next President to provide some real solutions on. Hawks want to topple the regime and see a reunification of North and South Korea as the best solution for stability and security in East Asia. Doves want to use international pressure (particularly the 6-party talks) to coerce (convince, persuade?) North Korea into giving up its nuclear program and perhaps even opening a meaningful dialog with the West. Unfortunately, these competing tensions in US foreign policy have led to a 3 steps forward, 2 steps back development in US relations with Korea.

A little less lonely these days?

A few major events have taken place on the peninsula in the past month that indicate a need for Korea to be put on the national radar again. First, the issue that doesn’t involve Gershwin, classical music, or a cultural exchange—a perceived liberalization in Korean economic policy (which may in fact be music to the sound of capitalist reformers outside of Korea, and those hiding themselves within). North Korea, long known to hold major reserves of coal and precious metals, has begun selling its reserves to other countries—drastically increasing its meager foreign trade in a response to looming economic crisis. First let me throw some numbers at you from this excellent Washington Post article on the subject (incidentally, buried on page A19):

• $1.4 billion—total North Korean exports in 2006
• $11 billion—value of recent trade projects undertaken jointly between North and South Korea
• $2 trillion—estimated value of North Korean mineral reserves

Why are these figures significant? Well, not only is North Korea exporting goods and engaging in foreign trade, but also this:

They say that Kim’s government is increasingly willing to lease mines to outside companies and to negotiate joint ventures with foreign governments.

If talking is the first step toward warmer relations between two countries (or a single country and the entire world… and it is) then here is that big first step. The fact that Kim Jong Il’s brutal dictatorship (and make no mistake it is brutal—starving millions of its own people in the early 1990s) is increasingly engaging in trade dialog with neighbor states and allowing foreign countries to lease mines means that slowly the Western, or perhaps just capitalist, culture and way of doing business are going to creep in. A brutal dictatorship may be able to control every aspect of the daily lives of its people, but even Kim Jong Il’s regime can’t force its citizens to unlearn what they have already learned. The trickle of information exchange that these economic efforts bring with them is a start toward an irreversible path of liberalization.

Or is it? In the same article Andrei Lankov, an expert on the North and occasional visitor, states:

More important are Kim’s conflicted feelings about mining, said Lankov… “He sees the money now,” Lankov said. “But he believes that by reforming, he would be committing suicide. So he wants mining done under strict control of North Korean managers.”

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Microsoft was recently slapped with a record fine for failing to comply with a 2004 ruling in an anti-trust case. PaidContent.org has a good summary of the European Commission’s decision, which found that Microsoft still was charging too much for licensing of its server data to enable competitors’ products to be compatible. (Another sticking point was the bundling of the IE with the Windows OS.)

The Economist’s Free Exchange blog gives a good description of the rocky history between Microsoft and the EU:

In 2004, the European Commission used its awesome trade regulation powers to fine the software firm €497m, followed by a further €280m in 2006. Now, the commission has fined Microsoft €899m ($1.4b, £681m) for failure to comply with an earlier 2004 ruling, centred on its bundling of Explorer internet software with its Windows operating system.

Clearly Microsoft is a successful and financially stable company (stable enough to attempt to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion) but as the Economist points out, this fine is larger than Sweden’s net contribution to the EU budget in 2006. Microsoft has continually faced much stiffer resistance to its business practices in Europe than in the United States—and certainly this latest setback does not bode well for Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo! either.

Certainly bloggers over at the Guardian feel that Microsoft got what was coming to it—there is a great discussion in the comments section of this blog debating the evils of Microsoft. I’m not sure I agree. Microsoft’s market dominance perhaps stifles the development of operating systems, but no one seems to complain that if I were to purchase a MacBook (until recently) I only had one choice of operating system on that platform as well. Microsoft has, in fact, been facing stiff competition from cost-free open-source competitors in the form of various incarnations of Linux. It seems to me that the punishment does not fit the crime—and certainly bundling XP with IE seems a rather minor affair in an era when browsers are obtainable in a matter of seconds.

After puzzling this for some time, I began to think, what if Microsoft struck back at the EU? A blogger at 22Hundred.net had this to say:

To Microsoft I say this…..pull out of Europe! Not completely obviously but give the EU exactly what they want. Remove IE, Windows Media and all other additional software from XP now, after all it’s only going to be supported for a few more months anyway. Then let the people who have just bought their shiny new OS try to use the damn thing without the bundled applications and ensure that the OEM’s do not bundle software to make up for it. It’s time to make the EU suffer.

My girlfriend and I were having a similar discussion, but she wasn’t as concessionary. Imagine if Microsoft pulled out completely. European consumers would be furious at the European Commission, because love it or hate it the Microsoft monopoly means that all of their computers can talk to each other. Most consumers are familiar with Windows and switching to Linux or Mac would be difficult, costly, and inefficient. Server farms running on Windows Exchange and other software would not be able to upgrade to Vista. Even the lack of Office support and service alone could bring the massive bureaucracies of the EU and its member-states to a halt.

Of course public opinion would prevent Microsoft from doing anything like that. But, if any corporation is tough enough to take on an overzealous regulatory regime like that of the EU, Microsoft is. I’m not saying it would (or should)… but it is an interesting thought experiment.

Perhaps a safer solution comes from the Economist:

Perhaps Bill Gates should cut his losses and buy a small EU nation state (Malta is nice at this time of year), keep paying the same money, but this time ask for voting rights at EU summits.

He could rename it something catchy too—like Zune Island.

Apparently this video is tearing up the YouTube charts. It doesn’t seem like these two ‘rioters’ have very political motives.

I especially like the gleeful smiles on their faces as they leave the first store. Are they really that upset about Kosovo, or more excited about their apparent 5-finger discount? In a bit of e-justice they are being widely flamed on YouTube and authorities are planning on arresting them for looting.

I am having a hard time understanding the logic behind this one. Kosovo secedes from Serbia. US and other countries support secession. Serbs in Belgrade riot and burn the US embassy in Belgrade killing one unidentified person. Huh?

I understand the outrage over losing a part of your country–and it is unlikely military force is a solution the Serbs can employ in regaining it–but why attack the US embassy? How will that accomplish the goal of getting Kosovo back–or, if Serbs are ready to be more progressive, how will it establish a new reputation for Serbia as respectful of international law? But, I guess ethnic tensions are still high in the region and that is what this misplaced aggression is really exhibiting.

Maybe Serbs were politically aware enough not to burn the embassies of EU countries because they still think Serbia has a good chance at accession. I don’t quite think mass chaos over a long planned secession is really going to help the Serbian government make its case strongly–nor will assaulting the sovereign territory of a strong European ally.

The next few weeks will be very telling for the entire Balkan peninsula. Are the Balkan countries willing to embrace diplomacy and peace, or will the situation devolve back to violence, bloodshed and war crimes?