Saying goodbye to the army

What a special feeling, to turn back all army stuff (yes!, always surprising for foreigners, the Swiss keep their army rifle with 50 bullets at their homes as soldiers) that I kept for the last five years. However, after the 15-week recruit school in 2003, I just served one WK (annual repetition course that takes 3 weeks) in 2006, while the other years I "postponed" it:-) and - given the recent turmoil around the army, it's a goodbye with a multitude of meanings.

But, I fulfilled another annual duty so far, i.e. the also mandatory shooting on a 30om range with the SIG 550 (aka assault rifle 90 ("Sturmgewehr 90") of the Swiss Army) and I scored quite satisfactorily.
After that, furbishing and greasing, the weapong together with the uniform, bags and stuff turned went back to the army base.






The incident on the Kander river, some weeks ago, that killed 4 soldiers on a boat trip, stirred up emotions and all kinds of political opinions about what to do and what's wrong with the army.

Since the lost popular vote on the proposal for an army base in Rothenturm in the early 1980s (the location was a natural preservation area) and the first people's initiative to abolish the army altogether (also in 1980's) and the end of the Cold War, there is a kind of a vanishing consensus about what the purposes of an army should be.
Some important trends of warfare have been overslept, some equipment is outdated, the selection of the officers is ambiguous and a career in the army - in opposite to Cold War times - is highly unpopular in the business world.
Incapable officers, a lack of commitment and a complete lack of a meaning or understanding (in what to do on a daily basis in their role as soldiers if a war would erupt) have hollowed out this organization, so much that dramatic changes seem to be a necessity.
Who knows, maybe we too shift to a professional army (away of our Miliz-model), or reduce the size again dramatically.
One thing seems plausible: amidst all that shit around the army, we're definitely not in the need of new war planes, but of a huge clean-up in organizational/structural terms.

SWFs are here - no need to fear

Hot debates emerged in 2007 about Sovereign Wealth Funds and their implications. Be it oil exports, FX reserves or fiscal surpluses, the Mid-East and some East-Asian growth-states saw their SWFs mushrooming in the last few years.

An easy reader and entry for laymens is provided by the Council on Foreign Relations:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/15251

Some nice stuff is also avaiable at the IMF and the Peterson Institute for Int'l Economics (mainly written by E. Truman).
Check it out, and you won't have that much fear anymore, even though some policy questions remain and, as Larry Summers last July pointed out, potential problems exist.
What about a Code of Conduct and the reliance on market discipline and its forces? Will this work?
In the long run, not even hard-core special interests can stem themselves against the logic of a good return (cf. the problems with the Chinese CIC...)

Financial Integration in Asia - And Why It's NOT Really Happening

Hey

Since the Asian Crisis 1997/98 there's been much talk on economic and financial integration in East Asia. However, EA seems to integrate more with the world than with itself (so, who is the true globalizer?).
More on the topic at:
http://www.aric.adb.org/pdf/workingpaper/WP13_Cross-border_Financial_Asset_Holdings.pdf

or will that change when China takes over the world leader role (creating a new "hub-and-spokes" system in EA?)? ...

we're curious...

ADI (more stress with papers)

Uff . . . stress with paper writing

.. being behind with writing is awful, but the topics aref fascinating; cf. read news about Asia's burgeoning bond markets (even though they are still pretty small and illiquid):
http://asianbondsonline.adb.org/administrative/abm_overview.php

Wanna hear music from Switzerland?

Hey, maybe I am kind of chauvinist, but when I've heard this for the first time, it was quite relaxing.
http://www.elianaburki.ch/?get=musik

The Artist combines funk chill-out music with an alphorn. The alphorn, as everybody knows (:-)) is uniquely Swiss (I guess at least), i.e. a 3.5m long instrument. All you need to have is a strong belly/strong lungs and just simply blow in, possibly as strong as you can. You can even produce different tones. It's quite fun - and cool music.

Preparing for the big blockbuster

Protests wherever you look

Hum, strange ... you wanna celebrate the Olympics, but - boom - there is blood, violence and turmoil in you country. Sad, but maybe not so surprising, if you take the cries for autonomy and the claim to be supressed for granted.

However, it gets silly, if you blame others and refuse to talk to them by putting words into their mouths they never have used. How can effective and goal-oriented communication work like this? Or is the goal simply not to talk (to a in the West quite famous and bold monk?).
Even more strange it gets if you blame "the West" (what is that exactly? maybe something to eat...hmm:-) to be partial and systematically misrepresent information (which of course you (can/are allowed to) do, because it's your right and your "domestic affairs", thank the UN-charter's territorial integrity of states).
Of course information and media are not always impartial, how could they? The human being is fallible, has hidden agendas, pays attention more to sensational than dry news etc.
But the good thing about pluralism is pluralism of information, debate and challenging positions. This does not mean that the truth is revealed just around the corner. It can (sadly) mean that one copies from the other, herding behavior etc. However, it tends empirically to evolve critical thinking (every once in a while), a mentality of mud-racking/investigative journalism, a mentality of healthy scepticism and has at least brought us (or scientists) the method of falsificationism (Karl Popper's legacy:-)
So, while we should reprimand ourselves of being sometimes distorted and (too much) simplifying, we should be grateful of the other to have reprimanded us about some imperfections of our media system. This helps to improve it and develop debate.

However, why one still sticks to near-waterthight censorship and keeps believing to have the legitimacy to blame others on reporting standards, is too much for me. Maybe I am truly just a stupid white man; however, at least I don't measure with two different gauges...

Hey, btw: also the Swiss have their small turmoil/strike: some old folks believe the state-run railway company SBB (or the federal government directly) shall provide them eternally with the same jobs as yesterday. The funny thing is that the proposed restructuring measures wouldn't have led to firings (they could have kept their jobs, just at different factory...).
Crazy that you allows those folks to strike for the 4th consecutive week (this never happened before in Switzerland, maybe except the general strike in 1918 ... 90 years ago).
As SBB Cargo has sky-rocketing deficits anyway, maybe it would be good to go ahead with the reforms at a fast pace. Think about Reagan you fired all (!) striker of the air traffic control in the early 1980s...
(i.e. tabula rasa sometimes helps)

Hopefully we can enjoy a nice summer. Maybe the nomenklatura who self-celebrates itself at the Olympic Games sooner or later may come to the conclusion that pluralism is needed to develop its country further...

Year of Renewal

I am doing my last two papers at the university, before I - probably - say goodbye to my alma mater. Who knows where I will be taken in next fall?

I'll also step down of some more political functions this year. I am sure I will miss the fun I enjoyed during my four years as International Officer of the jfs (Young Liberals of Switzerland). However, there always comes a time when change is needed in order to find progress. And noone is irreplaceable...

It's cool that there are so many people out there craving for liberty, freedom, peace and progress. By the way, do you know an old European comic ("Asterix"; has also been poured into movie form...) about a tiny village in France of the Roman Age, which defends itself against a mighty empire? As they have a magic elixir that provides them with super (muscle) power, they and their two heros, Asterix and Obelix, dare to fight the Romans and subsequently defeat each of their attack.
Sometimes, a small island (Formosa) in the pacific ocean reminds me of this miracle, that free people who have determination, can make a difference and will reach what they dream for.
And they do so in a quite original way:
http://www.vivataiwan.tv/ :-)