Global News Journal

Sun setting on Merkel coalition?

As the sun started to set on the west side of the Reichstag on Wednesday evening — and perhaps on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right government as well — delegates to the Bundesversammlung (Federal Assembly) began switching to beer from the preferred beverage earlier in the day — coffee, water and apple juice.   There was an unmistakeable air of “Endzeitstimmung” (doomsday atmosphere) on the comfortable rooftop terrace of the historic German parliament building, where the catering is superb and the view of Berlin breathtaking.    The conservative delegates on the Reichstag roof were easy to spot — they were the ones with worried looks on their faces after a couple dozen unidentified “rats” from within their ranks twice failed in votes during the afternoon to give Merkel the votes she needed to get her candidate elected.

The conservatives were drinking their beer and trying to forget the day’s humiliation before going into battle for a third and final round later in the evening.

 ”It was a bit like Germany vs Serbia in the first two rounds,” said David McAllister, a leader in Merkel’s Christian Democrats in Lower Saxony, referring to a 1-0 World Cup loss earlier this month. “But the third round will be more like Germany vs England,” he added with a smile, referring to Germany’s 4-1 win over England on Sunday.   The opposition delegates were also easy to spot on the Reichstag rooftop terrace — they were the ones with smiles on their faces (and beer glasses in their hands) after seeing Merkel humiliated twice by her own coalition. Her candidate, Christian Wulff, fell short of the 623 votes he needed even though there are 644 delegates in the centre-right bloc.

Wulff got 600 in the first round and 615 in the second round. Even if he wins the third round later on Wednesday evening, Merkel has been badly damaged by the debacle.   The question on everyone’s mind is: How can someone lead one of the world’s most important countries if she can’t even keep her own coalition in line?   What is most unsettling for delegates in the centre-right bloc is that they don’t know who the defectors are. It has brought instant comparisons to the beginning of the end of the previous centre-left government of Social Democrats and Greens in 2005.

Early that year, the SPD and Greens were betrayed by someone from their own ranks on three votes in the state assembly of Schleswig-Holstein and state premier Heide Simonis was forced to resign. That humiliation sent tremors through then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s centre-left government and after a similar SPD-Greens government in North Rhine-Westphalia was voted out of power a few months later in May, Schroeder dramatically pulled the plug on his government. He called for snap elections — and ended up losing power to Merkel.   Will Wednesday’s debacle in the Reichstag mark the beginning of the end of Merkel’s reign?

Is Malaysia’s net clampdown at odds with knowledge economy?

The opposition wants to cut the sale of alcohol in a state that it rules and now the government wants to restrict Internet access .

Malaysia is a multicultural country of 27 million people in Southeast Asia. It has a majority Muslim population that of course is not allowed to drink by religion. Yet clearly some do as shown by the sentencing to caning for a young woman handed down recently

(Photo: Prime Minister Najib Razak leaving the National Mosque as he prepared to mark his first 100 days in office in July. Reuters/Bazuki Muhammad)

Proposals by the Pan Malaysian Islamic Party, which wants an Islamic state, could effectively end the sale of alcohol in the country’s richest state, Selangor, which is next to the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Its rules would penalise not only Muslims that consumed alcohol, but also for example Muslim shop assistants in say Tesco’s who could be fined if they sold alcohol.

This is coming from a country whose most celebrated film maker, PJ Ramlee, made movies featuring alcohol, smoking and night clubs as well as cross-racial relationships and whose first premier Tunku Abdul Rahman, a Muslim of course and a member of one of Malaysia’s royal families, was fond of  whisky. 

And the Internet? If you want to find out anything in Malaysia, you need to read the net. The country’s newspapers, largely owned by the political parties that have run this country for 51 years and which need to be licensed annually, feed their readers a steady diet of pro-government propaganda.

Pirates, Pawnbrokers and a Pint: the best reads of April

Hi, is that the Somali pirates?” Your best source is jailed. You track high-sea hijacks by text and email, get through to captors on a satellite phone. Reporting on Somali piracy can be surreal. During the saga of American Richard Phillips, Reuters reporters in Somalia contacted Phillips’ captors on their lifeboat stalked by U.S. warships.

Online ‘blood plague’ offers lessons for pandemics In 2005, a plague called “Corrupted Blood” caused mayhem in the online game World of Warcraft. An estimated 4 million players were affected by the pandemic. The Corrupted Blood plague accidentally provided something unprecedented — a chance to safely study a pandemic in a uniquely complex virtual environment in which millions of unpredictable individuals were making their own decisions.

Public pawnbroker keeps Parisians’ secrets safe In the ornate rooms where Auguste Rodin once pawned a hand from one of his sculptures to raise cash, immigrant mothers with toddlers queue to pledge their dowry gold or secure a loan. From Napoleon III’s mistress to cash-strapped modern-day bankers, Parisians have stored their jewels and secrets in a discreet building not far from the Seine: the public pawnbroker.

Researchers hope to clear mystery from clouds Wearing 3-D viewing goggles, scientists peer at virtual pink, blue and purple clouds billowing in cyberspace at a research laboratory in Delft. By tracking how particles move in and around computer-simulated clouds, they hope to shed light on one of the unknowns of climate forecasting: how these masses of water droplets and ice crystals influence changing temperatures.