Alan Nothnagle's Open Salon Blog

The cat came back: Felix's incredible Berlin odyssey

Sat, 26 May 2012 06:05:51 -0400

Home at last: Felix the Cat

(Source: dpa)

FORTY-NINE YEARS AGO, President John F. Kennedy captured the world’s headlines with a speech in which he declared “Ich bin ein Berliner.” This week, a fuzzy tiger-striped tomcat is capturing headlines of his own, making his point not with mere words, but with deeds.

Unlike his famous presidential predecessor, six-year-old Felix is a native-born Berliner. No Ivy League schools for him: Felix learned his street smarts in the school of hard knocks. Despite numerous attempts to have him adopted into local families, he kept ending up back in Berlin’s municipal animal shelter. In the summer of 2010 he joined a contingent of other wayward wusses that the overflowing shelter dispatched to the city of Brunswick, some 150 miles to the west. There the gentle caretakers at the local animal center soon found a friendly foster home for Felix.

But Felix wasn’t impressed by his new surroundings. And who can blame him? After you’ve tasted Berlin, provincial Brunswick lacks a certain – well, flair. And so on New Year’s Eve, Felix made his break.

Last weekend, seventeen months later, who should turn up back at the Berlin animal shelter but Mister Felix himself? A warm-hearted citizen discovered the perfectly healthy kitty straying about the district of Hellersdorf, a short distance from the shelter, and turned him into the authorities. They instantly recognized their old friend by the chip implanted in his neck.

Felix's amazing cross-country journey

Felix's story is remarkable, although hardly unique. Persian puss Howie of Australia once braved 1,000 miles of Outback to return to his human home in Adelaide, where he turned up a year later. Since Howie was a housecat without any recognizable outdoor skills, and had been transferred across the country in a sealed container, his story defies explanation.

How did Felix manage the journey, which involves crossing the mighty Elbe and Havel rivers, a couple of canals, industrial sites, dense forests, countless highways and railroad lines, not to mention the deadly Berliner Ring autobahn surrounding the car-crazed capital? Did he merely mouse his way cross-country, navigating by the sun and gauging the earth's magnetic field, or did he discover a short cut? “We’ll probably never find out what happened during that year and a half,” says Beate Kaminski from the Berlin animal shelter. “Perhaps he stowed away the back of a truck or moving van. Only Felix knows for sure.”

The tabby’s sudden fame will probably make it easy to find a new home for him – presumably in Berlin this time. His keepers describe him as a remarkably cuddly kitty, and by no means a loner. But will he stay put or return to the shelter, the only true home he has ever known? “Felix is a free spirit,” Kaminski says.

We know only one thing for certain: Felix really is a Berliner.

For a brief TV feature on Felix (in German), click HERE.

Sources:

Braunschweiger Zeitung

Spiegel Online

Welt Online

Berliner Morgenpost

Kennedy and Felix: Two symbols of human - and feline - freedom.

What's ahead for Europe's Occupy movement? 1 The Netherlands

Mon, 14 May 2012 18:05:23 -0400

LAST NEW YEAR'S DAY I met up with my old acquaintance Niek* here in Berlin, where he regaled me with stories from the Occupy life in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities: House occupations, squatter camps, bank demonstrations, chaining himself to buildings and getting cut free by the police - the works. After a turbulent autumn and winter, which saw the occupation of a major Amsterdam square and demonstrations across the country, the movement has quieted down, both in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe. What's in store for the Occupy movement? Months later, I finally caught up with this elusive Dutch activist again for a brief online interview.

Niek, you've been working as a spokesman for Occupy Netherlands. How did your country's Occupy movement get started?

The first Occupy moment was on the 17th of September, extending to the 18th. Later we came back on the 15th of October. I wasn't with the people in the beginning, preparing it all. But there was a group of people I know that was preparing for this action.

What has the reaction from the established parties been like?

Some of the established parties showed up the first day already (the ones that liked the protest). But the VVD (the conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), for example, was pretty much against it from the beginning. Occupy doesn't want to identify itself with any political party. The main goal of Occupy is to make people aware of the political processes and the way things are done in the financial world. Occupy doesn't have leaders. Anyone can start an Occupy whenever or wherever he or she wants.

How is the response in the press and among the public at large?

In the beginning most of the newspapers were very positive about Occupy. After some weeks they started to talk more about the problems around the camps than about the big issues we are facing. Unfortunately, we also attracted homeless people, junkies, and quit a few eastern European people who caused some problems, mainly because of alcohol and drug abuse. By now all the small tents have gone and now we can concentrate more on actions and demos but also on colleges and getting in contact with other Occupy groups, both in the Netherlands and abroad.

The Beursplein squatter camp in front of the Amsterdam stock exchange

The international Occupy movement has been calling 2012 "a year of resistance.” What activities is the Dutch organization planning?

That all depends on the broader international picture. The main goal is still creating awareness. For example, we joined in in a big action with Dutch public transport workers against proposed budget cuts. We also had a demo last weekend against ACTA. At this moment people from Occupy are collecting stories from Greek people on how the situation in their country affects their lives and society. We're thinking of setting up a blog where we will put all the materials we can collect on this subject, stressing that what is happening in Greece now can also become a Dutch reality. We're seeking contact with other Occupy groups in the Netherlands to coordinate actions together. There are also groups who are concentrating on alternative lifestyles (e.g. permaculture, transition towns, substitutes for money etc.)

How closely are you networked with other Occupy groups in Europe and the US?

We do have some contacts with other occupies, but I would like to have more contact.

I have visited Belgium and Berlin to make some more contacts around Europe. We already had several meetings with other Occupies in the Netherlands. So we are hoping to bundle our strengths.

I don't like - seen on an Amsterdam street.

Far-right populist movements, not least Geert Wilders's quasi-fascist "Freedom Party," have been popping up all across Europe. Neo-Nazis have also begun infiltrating the successful German Pirate Party. Since your movement is also concerned with grassroots issues, how do you keep these people out of Occupy?

We don't keep people out of Occupy because anyone can start an Occupy. What we do is try to show that movements like the Freedom Party are only interested in creating fear and hatred against foreign people living and working in the Netherlands.

But as you can guess, we haven't attracted many people from far-right populist movements, luckily enough.

People are confused about what Occupy really wants. How would you describe your organization's vision of an ideal society? Would it be left-wing, right-wing, or something altogether new?

First of all it's not an organization and there are many ideas about how an ideal society should look. As I said before, lots of alternatives are being studied. But again, our main goal is creating awareness.

*Full name withheld by request.

Has Obama tipped the scales towards gay marriage in Europe?

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:05:31 -0400

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S RECENT statement of support for gay marriage in the United States is touching off an avalanche of advocacy for equal marriage rights throughout Europe as well. No, nobody died and made him emperor. But his high-level announcement might just expedite a continent-wide trend towards full marriage rights for gays and straights alike.

Obama has retained a great deal of his personal - if not political - appeal in Europe, and when he talks, people start talking. While his support may not make gay marriage more appealing per se to its opponents, it seems to be making public opposition to it less plausible. In Berlin today, Green politician Volker Beck challenged Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose Christian Democratic Union and her Free Democrat coalition partners have long been dragging their feet on gay marriage, to quit stallling and finally announce that “It’s okay to marry gay.” The current German law, which the Social Democrat/Green coalition pushed through in 2000, only allows for a “registered partnership” (a.k.a. “homo marriage”) without full marriage status and which still withholds tax privileges and adoption rights - although largely for practical rather than "moral" reasons.

Responding to Mr. Obama's comments, Green party boss Claudia Roth said it was "a scandal" that the CDU/FDP coalition had failed to legalize full gay marriage nearly twelve years after the passage of the partnership law. The Left Party, not normally a fan of the President, announced that Mr. Obama “has sent an internationally heard signal that the German Bundestag should also pay attention to.” The party’s spokesperson for gay and lesbian issues, Barbara Höll, said that “all deputies should vote in the Bundestag, independently of their party and coalition affiliations” so that homosexuals may “quickly” move towards full marriage. “Discrimination,” she added, “is no longer in keeping with our times.”

Ines Pohl, the lesbian editor of the left wing Tageszeitung, editorialized this morning: "Make no mistake: This is an historic day. With his commitment to gay marriage, Obama has made history once again."

But it isn't just the left that is cheering Obama's move. Despite his government’s hesitation in the matter, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle of the coalition Free Democrats, who sealed his own “homo marriage” with boyfriend Michael Mronz back in 2010, announced that Obama’s statement was a “a brave step” in the spirit of the German government’s policies and, yes, “it’s okay to marry gay.” Today, encouraged by Obama and her party colleague Westerwelle, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called for full equal marriage rights in Germany. "Every life model deserves respect," she said.

Foreign minister Guido Westerwelle and sports manager Michael Mronz

Obama’s gay marriage "coming out" captured the headlines in every major European newspaper and has set an unignorable precedent. In France, it may further tip the balance towards a rapid introduction of equal marriage rights. President Nicolas Sarkozy (something of an expert on the topic, with three straight marriages and two divorces under his belt) regularly nixed the idea, stating that “to my knowledge and the current state of scientific knowledge, it requires a man and a woman to have a child.”

Tone-deaf comments like this may have helped cost him the election. According to the newspaper La Libération, speaking out in favor of gay marriage could have "made his image a bit more human," but ultimately he feared "alienating part of the traditional right-wing electorate." He needn't have bothered. His socialist successor François Hollande took a different tack, promising during his campaign to “open the right to marriage and adoption to homosexual couples” by 2013. Hollande defeated Sarkozy in a runoff election on May 6. It appears that French voters had other issues on their minds besides the threat of gay marriage. Who could have imagined it?

Already in February, the communist mayor of Villejuif "married" a gay couple in deliberate violation of French law, which still defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. Alexis Cortijos, one of the grooms, told reporters that "it's a militant act. We wanted to show certain people from the Right that people want to start moving things forward." They now seem to be moving forward very quickly indeed.

Alongside Germany and France, Denmark, Luxembourg, and Finland are considering going beyond their existing registered partnership laws and allowing full gay civil marriage. As far as Britain is concerned, Obama is behind the times. In Edinburgh, the Scottish National Party has announced that it is “inclined” to permit gay marriage in the near future. In London, party leaders David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and Ed Milliband are actively seeking action on the issue. This spring, Prime Minister Cameron famously announced: "I don't support gay marriage despite being a conservative. I support gay marriage because I am a conservative." No, Cameron hasn't turned into a blushing liberal, but he does know that it's not good politics for the Conservatives to be permanently branded "the nasty party."

The Netherlands became the first country to legalize gay marriage in 2001. So far, Belgium, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Spain, and Portugal have legalized civil ceremonies. Several Central European countries, including Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, and Slovenia, permit certain kinds of registered partnerships.

Further east, countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Belorus, Bulgaria and Ukraine have constitutions defining marriage as existing solely between a man and a woman. While it will likely take more than a few words from Obama to change their way of doing business, it’s hard to imagine the social revolution the Dutch tipped off in 2001 halting forever at mere national borders. And regardless of what Republicans might think, it would take a lot more than the election of Mitt Romney, the likely candidate of America's own "nasty party," to stop the movement for universal human rights in the United States as well.

Pirates vs. artists: There go your royalties!

Tue, 15 May 2012 07:05:15 -0400

Berlin-bound - the Pirate Party

A BAND OF PIRATES sailed up the Rhine last Sunday. They proceeded to storm the state parliament building in Düsseldorf and effortlessly seized a respectable 7.8 percent of the seats. While that figure might not sound particularly impressive to American ears, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia the Pirate Party blew the struggling Left Party straight out of the water and ended up less than one percentage point behind the Free Democrats, which rule Germany in a coalition with Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. They also came in well ahead of the five percent of the vote necessary for parliamentary representation - a clause inserted into the constitution after World War II to keep out communists and Nazis (nobody back then foresaw a movement like the Pirates). After laying waste to Germany's North Sea and Baltic coast last weekend, where they won 8.2% in the Schleswig-Holstein state election, these latterday buccaneers have clearly set their sights on the Bundestag in Berlin (where they are already represented in the city-state parliament).

For a new and largely untested party, this was a remarkable feat. But aside from the rambuctious computer nerds and young, disaffected voters who make up the bulk of the Pirates' clientele, one group most certainly did not vote for them on Sunday: Visual artists, musicians, writers, and other creative persons who depend on copyright for their livelihood.

Unlike their counterparts off - say, the Horn of Africa - who are committed to plundering booty-laden freighters and tankers, Germany's sweetwater Pirates are aiming their cannons on copyright laws. And you have to admit they have a point. For example, did you know that you should theoretically pay royalties every time you sing "Happy Birthday"? (Movies containing the song regularly pay up.) And what about the software and computer platforms we have all come to depend on like the oxygen we breathe? And how about those Youtube videos that keep getting taken down due to alleged copyright infringement. I mean, that's all a drag, isn't it?

The Pirates think so. That's why they have committed themselves to trashing copyright as the rest of us know it. Specifically, the party's program calls for the following:

Since the copyability of digitally available works cannot be restricted in a technologically meaningful way, and since we must regard the blanket implementability of prohibitions in the private sphere as having failed, the opportunities for the general availability of works should be recognized and utilized. We believe that the non-commercial reproduction and utilization of works should be regarded as natural, and that, contrary to opposing claims by certain interest groups, they do not negatively impact the interests of most copyright holders.

Instead, the Pirates not only want to legalize but "actively promote" such private reproduction in order to make all information available to all people at all times and at all places on earth.

O brave new world!, as Shakespeare - and Aldous Huxley - might have put it. Well, what could be wrong with freedom for everyone and everything? A lot, if you ask creative artists.

On May 10, 100 German artists and authors published a manifesto in the weekly DIE ZEIT "against the theft of intellectual property." (An additional 6,000 artists and authors have added their signatures since.)

With concern and incomprehension, we authors and artists have been observing the public attacks on copyright law. Copyright is an historic achievement of civil freedom against feudal dependency, and it guarantees the material basis for individual intellectual activity.

The authors and artists go on to say that

Copyright law allows us as artists and authors to live from our work, and it protects all of us, also from globally active Internet companies, whose business model takes the disfranchisement of artists and authors in stride. The daily presence and the practicality of the Internet in our lives is no justification for theft and is no excuse for greed and stinginess.

"They're pissing in our faces" - author and musician Sven Regener

(Source: Wiki)

Speaking on the radio station Bayrischer Rundfunk, best selling novelist and musician Sven Regener put matters more bluntly:

They're acting as if we're creating art as a hobby. The whole song and dance that we are uncool because we're insisting on the fact that we created these works is basically the same thing as pissing in our faces and saying: "Your stuff is worthless. We want to have it for free." A society that treats its artists this way is worthless.

But the Pirates see the issue differently. Writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last week, Pirate Christopher Lauer argues that from the point of view of the Pirates, expecting their movement to ignore the copyright issue would be equivalent to expecting Christians to abandon the cross:

The search for a copyright law adjusted to the technological realities of the 21st century is the founding core and myth of the Pirate Party. "Pirate" was a battle cry for content providers, which has been picked up by a political movement: If you call us pirates, then we will call ourselves pirates, and there you have it. This is the origin of our entire folklore, complete with its nautical metaphors. But it also contains self-evident features, such as setting foot on virgin territory, doing something wild, breaking rules.

Lauer calls for an open dialogue between creators and users. But what could that mean? On the radio station Deutschlandfunk yesterday, Pirate Bruno Kramm sought to clarify the situation:

Here's the problem: If we really want to create a situation where precisely every title that is copied on the Internet has to be invoiced somewhere, then that means we're moving into an area where we need complete control over the Internet. And that is precisely what we all don't want to have. And particularly the copyright holders don't want the Web to be totally controlled on a totalitarian basis. That's precisely the point we have to think about, namely that other systems have to operate on the Internet.

"Doing something wild":

Berlin Pirate Christopher Lauer

(Source: Piraten.de)

Kramm admits that the "big" artists and authors have fared famously under current copyright law. But what about the others?

Let's be honest: The majority of artists live as part of the precariat, and under frequently appalling conditions. They have nothing to do with the fact that conditions have changed so much. They have always lived under terrible conditions, because the industry has always dictated these conditions. So, we have to make very, very clear distinctions. Now, we also have this new market, which is called "the long tail." There is extreme differentiation, the spread of an incredibly large range of styles. And now - in statistics and studies - it has been shown that the field of many small copyright holders represents the largest portion. Which, however, is most poorly represented under the current system.

Kramm calls for creating new structures, specifically the kind discussed on the French Internet advocacy website La Quadrature du Net, where new models of netsharing are discussed. They call for roundtables including Internet activists and creative artists. And who can deny that such models are needed in the twenty-first century?

But not all Pirates - with a large and a small "p" - are so patient. The "Anonymous" activist group has gone on the offensive, publishing the contact information of many of those copyright holders who have denounced the Pirates' attack on copyright laws in their manifesto, and threatening to continue their activity if the artists and authors fail to desist. Today the German journalists' association published a formal protest, stating that

this not only invades the privacy of the affected artists... but also represents an unacceptable attempt to strangle the discussion on the future of copyright law. It represents the absolute low point of tolerance!

And so the battle rages on. Artists aren't ready to walk the plank just yet, but in the long run, do they have any choice? The Internet has made a mockery of the very notion of copyright law, and the concept of payment has become a sad joke. [For example, one of my novels ended up on "Google Books" with nary a word to me, let alone any royalty payments, and I've been writing this oft-reproduced blog, with its gazillions of clicks, for more than three years without so much as a penny in compensation ].

A new age is dawning. It is wonderful for digital consumers, particularly for those who have had to pay through the nose for entertainment all their lives. But if you are among that creative minority that creates texts, images, or music for a living, keep your eyes on the horizo. In the words of Bertolt Brecht's Pirate Jenny,

A ship with eight sails

And with fifty-five cannons

Will lie at the waterfront.

So keep your head down. Pirates are near...

Click here to hear Ellen Greene's

rendition of "Pirate Jenny"

Plagiarism scandal swallows yet another politician

Mon, 7 May 2012 07:05:23 -0400

Setting a bad example to students?
German education minister (Dr.) Annette Schavan
(Source: Wiki)

THE WAGES OF SIN is death, the Good Book t ells us, and the wages of plagiarism is now increasingly disgrace and political suicide. Ever since the scandal over former German defense minister and chancellor-in-waiting Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg's dodgy dissertation hit the press back in early 2011 (I wrote about it HERE and in nearly a dozen other blog postings), the Schadenfreude hasn't let up for a moment. European parliament deputy Silvana Koch-Merin, political adviser Margarita Mathioupolos, Berlin CDU whip Florian Graf... Legion are the titled politicians and other public figures whose doctored doctorates and phoney footnotes have brought them tumbling down to the workaday level where the rest of us mere mortals struggle to pay the rent.

The latest to go is Annette Schavan, Germany's conservative minister of education. Schavan is not only one of the country's most prominent female politicians, she is also a close confidante of Chancellor Angela Merkel. According to the website schavanplag.wordpress.com, Schavan's 1980 dissertation "Person and Conscience: Studies on the Preconditions, Necessity and Demands of Modern Conscience Formation" contains false or at least inadequate footnotes on fifty-six out of its 325 pages. You can see the plagiarism hunters' full documentation HERE.

This isn't just an anonymous accusation. The opposition are demanding that Schavan (who is, after all, in charge of the nation's educational system) come clean. She herself keeping silent as her party allies rally around her - always a bad sign. Now, a researcher identifying himself only as "KayH" has given an interview to the influential Spiegel Online. While Schavan didn't exactly copy from other texts, KayH says,

(s)he made things too easy for herself by not labelling other people's formulations as such. Moreover, in numerous cases she apparently did not read the original text, or didn't cite it, but instead drew upon the secondary literature without making this clear. This is sloppy, although - even if this can't be our standard - it isn't as blatant as with Guttenberg...

If checking for plagiarism is easy today with digitalized texts (as a history professor, I would regularly run selected passages from my students' term papers through a simple search engine), Schavan's analogue dissertation from the offline 1980s presented the Schavanplag team with special challenges: They actually had to digitalize not only the entire thesis but also the literature Schavan cited in order to carry out their study.

If the plagiarism scandal has been attracting less attention in recent months, that is because the hunters are now focusing on academic plagiarism instead. The website Vroniplag, where KayH spends most of his time, has been taking down one tenured professor after another - and it's not a pretty sight.

So what's the big deal, you might be wondering? Who really cares if a grad student skimped on a couple of citations thirty-two years ago? (Not to mention the obvious question: Who else besides KayH has ever given a damn about Annette Schavan's insights on "Person and Conscience" since 1980?)

The answer has to do with Germany's troubled social history. For centuries now, struggling middle class upstarts have been striving for equality with the titled aristocracy and the booming bourgeoisie through the acquisition of academic initials and the accompanying privileges. Harvesting where one has not sown - particularly in the case of a fabulously wealthy aristocrat like Baron Guttenberg - is the academic equivalent of stealing from the collection plate. Anyone caught doing it can expect to face the collective fury of all those hapless students who played by the rules and ended up with little more than a bunch of useless certificates and a stack of student debts, along with impeccably documented but certifiably unreadable dissertations that nobody will ever look at in ten million years. And that's what we're witnessing in the Schavan case. The Vroniplag and Schavanplag attacks quite literally represent the revenge of the nerds against the cool kids who made it in respectable society.

Former Hungarian President (Dr.) Pál Schmitt

(Source: Wiki)

Plagiarism is in no way limited to Germany, of course. Just last month, Hungarian president Pál Schmitt was forced out of office after the University of Budapest stripped him of his doctorate. He seems to have copied nearly every line of his diss from other authors. The same goes for Russian president Vladimir Putin, who also liberally copied his thesis from books he found at the library - perhaps the only "liberal" thing about the man (in his case, though, the issue didn't figure very prominently in his recent election campaign). And it isn't only "reactionaries" who are guilty of pilfering. Even such a seemingly inspired figure as Martin Luther King lifted material from other authors in grand style. Of course, Shakespeare and the authors of the Bible did too, but that was before the rise of copyright law.

Plagiarism can be a very serious business indeed. In 2003, the British government selectively plagiarized its notorious "dodgy dossier" (a briefing document with the official title Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation) from other sources in order to suggest that the emasculated Iraqi regime of Sadam Hussein represented a military threat - not only to its neighbors, but also to the world at large. The subsequent Iraq War it was used to justify has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

For the record, if you run my dissertation through a plagiarism checker, I'm confident you won't find a thing.

As for Annette Schavan, she still has her job for the moment, but her reputation is in the shredder. It may well be too late for her and for PhDs of the predigital generation, but for the rest of you young'uns out there, engaged as you are in the hunt for academic honors, let me repeat my advice:

Use footnotes. Use good footnotes. Footnotes are your friends. Footnotes save reputations, careers, and even lives.