Spain’s Moratinos speaks about Gaza flotilla incident
FT.com’s Rob Grimshaw presents the paper’s iPad app (audio)
Twitter: the 1/2 principle
I’ve noticed an interesting pattern with Twitter: for every two new followers, I seem to lose one. Likewise, I seem to follow half as many people as I have followers.
For now, I’m working on the assumption that the extra follower is the result of Twitter spam. One spammer/PR person for every genuine follower: What do you think?
Sunday Kermit
Frog at Geneva botanical gardens
Plain text only Outlook
A quick tech tip for those of you who, like I, are forced to use Outlook and hate the way it replies with bloated HTML e-mails by default. “Wongablog” explains how you can display all e-mails as plain text, including replies.
Bankers behind closed doors
There is a persistent myth that the rich and powerful meet in secret to discuss how they are going to organize the world economy.
Of course that’s nonsense. Nobody can organize the world economy: it’s a tangled web of independent actors each with their own _ sometimes opposing _ interests.
And yet there are reasons to ask questions about the decision by the Swiss National Bank and the International Monetary Fund to hold a closed-doors meeting in Zurich last Tuesday at which academics and industry figures got exclusive access to key central bank officials.
SNB boss Philipp Hildrebrand defended the decision to not even publish a participants list, explaining in this clip that the secrecy was necessary to ensure “open and confidential” discussion.
Here is the list of participants, obtained from unofficial sources:
2010 SNB/IMF meeting participants page 1
2010 SNB/IMF meeting participants page 2
NB: Although there were several financial journalists present, they were forced to operate under so-called Chatham House rules, meaning they couldn’t report who said what. Also, the journalists were hand-picked by the SNB.
Up close with the UN refugee chief
UNHCR boss Antonio Guterres speaks to correspondents in Geneva May 2010
Firefox, Google and Facebook: stop guessing my preferred language
I suppose tech companies think they’re being clever when they try to automatically guess your preferred language. After all, most of them come from a country where only one language is spoken by many people.
Yet roll that logic out to the rest of the world and what you get is many, many frustrated users. I’ll give you a personal example:
I live in a French-speaking city in a country where German is the majority language. My ISP randomly routes traffic through different cities, some of which are French-speaking, some of which are German-speaking. Firefox, Google and Facebook, in all their genius, have decided that if my traffic comes from a French-speaking city then I must want to view their page in French. If it comes from a German-speaking city then I must want German.
Wrong!
I want English. That’s what my system language is set to. That’s what my browser language is set to. And that’s what most people around the world speak as a first or second language: English.
Don’t try to second-guess my preferred language based on your misconceived algorithms. Unless I say otherwise, stick to English.
/Saturday morning rant over
Saturday brunch
50 years of EFTA – an unpublished story
Not every story that’s written gets published. Below is one such piece, written at the start of the year with the help of my AP colleague Ian MacDougall in Norway about the 50th anniversary of the European Free Trade Association.
EFTA was once a rival to what has become the European Union, but its significance has dwindled in recent years. So perhaps it’s not surprising that this story wasn’t deemed of sufficient interest.
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Snow is ankle deep in Geneva’s Planpalais market and the vendors say they’ve never heard of EFTA.
Is it a fish, a type of cheese, some ask.
Mention of the European Free Trade Association draws shrugs from other stallholders more concerned whether customers will brave the biting cold to buy their local produce.
“I’ve never heard of it,” says Felicia Mendes, cashier at a nearby supermarket where office workers are buying fruit and sandwiches for their lunchtime snacks.
And that anonymity is just fine by EFTA’s Secretary-General, Kare Bryn.
“It’s not our objective to be known,” he (said) at the organization’s headquarters on the third floor of a discreet Geneva office building.
Bryn insisted that the 50 year-old organization’s sole purpose remains to open up new trade opportunities for its dwindling membership that now includes only Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
With negotiations over a new global trade pact bogged down since 2001 and governments increasingly showing protectionist tendencies, EFTA recently signed free trade deals with Canada, Colombia and Egypt, and is working to conclude talks with India, said Bryn. It also hopes to start negotiations this year with Russia and Indonesia, to be inked by 2013 if all goes well, he said.
Jan Atteslander, head of foreign trade at economiesuisse, an umbrella group of 30,000 Swiss businesses, said EFTA’s small size is one of the reasons it is so successful.
“Nobody needs to be afraid when negotiating with EFTA that we’re going to take over the domestic market,” he said.
But the bloc’s size may also ultimately be its downfall.
Conceived as a trade-only alternative to the more political European Union, EFTA has studiously avoided the grander ambitions that have turned its bigger rival into a 27-nation super bureaucracy with over 40,000 employees, an anthem and the power to interfere in member states’ domestic affairs.
“We are not a political organization,” said Bryn, who oversees 80 staff in Geneva and Brussels. “One of the very reasons why EFTA was created is because our members would not or could not join the European Union.”
Since its founding in 1960, however, most of EFTA’s members have succumbed to the lure of the European Union: Austria, Britain, Denmark, Portugal, Finland and Sweden have switched sides and Iceland _ battered by the recent meltdown of its banking sector _ looks set to jump ship too.
That leaves Norway, Switzerland and tiny Liechtenstein.
“The possible departure of Iceland certainly raises some questions about the future of EFTA,” said Atteslander of economiesuisse.
Bryn acknowledged that “EFTA can only survive as an organization as long as the political feeling in Norway and Switzerland is that it’s not the right time to become members of the Europen Union.”
Both countries’ voters rejected EU membership in the 1990s, but “sooner or later the issue will come up again,” said Bryn. “We can’t plan for 100 years of EFTA.”
Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, in an interview Tuesday, said the bloc’s members were pragmatic enough to find ways of keeping the organization going.
“It (EFTA) has been a very flexible organization, which has seen countries leave for the EU while maintaining smooth efficiency for its core operations,” Stoere (said).
Nevertheless, both Norway and Switzerland have in recent years taken steps toward closer partnership with the EU on non-trade issues including passport-free travel, the free movement of labor and financial regulation.
Experts say one way of keeping the organization going _ and cushioning its remaining members against the weight of an increasingly pushy EU _ would be to allow other countries to join.
Ulf Sverdrup, a political scientist at the University of Oslo, said European micro-states such as Andorra have been approached, and even Turkey would be a possibility if it continues to be snubbed by the EU.
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About
Musings of a wire reporter in Geneva. Feel free to contact me with your questions about journalism, Switzerland, or anything else I write about on this blog.
