Nobel Peace Prize 2014 for Liu Xiaobo

Posted on 2014-10-09 by Andreas Moser

My suggestion for the Nobel Peace Prize 2014: Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese writer and human rights activist.

Yes, I know that Liu Xiaobo already won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 and it would be the first time that one person wins the same prize twice. (Although it doesn’t seem to be a problem for the same football team to win the championship twice in a row.) But this is a special situation which calls for a special reaction: The Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2010 is still in prison in China. If the Nobel Prizes are supposed to achieve anything beyond some newspaper articles for a week after their announcement, then the Nobel Prize committee can display the determination to continue awarding the prize to the last laureate who is still imprisoned and thereby to name and shame China. They should do so year after year after year – until China will have to release Liu Xiaobo.

The outrageousness of China’s treatment of Liu Xiaobo becomes even more apparent when looking for a historical parallel: in 1936 Nazi Germany released the laureate Carl von Ossietzky from a concentration camp (although he was of course still being watched by the Gestapo).

(Zur deutschen Fassung.)

Posted in China, History, Human Rights, Politics | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

Video Blog: Life can be a Beach

Posted on 2014-10-08 by Andreas Moser

On my bicycle tour around Sinis peninsula on Sardinia, I discovered this beach, not without drawing two valuable lessons from its discovery:

Posted in Italy, Life, Sardinia, Travel, Video Blog | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Not even a Factory can destroy this View

Posted on 2014-10-07 by Andreas Moser

After yesterday’s sunset photos, many will have thought: “Well, lucky him caught a beautiful evening and now he pretends that it looks like that every night.”

Thus I took some photos today, noticing that if the sky is in the right mood, it makes even a chemical plant look interesting.

factory sunset 1factory sunset 2

(The photos were taken in Târgu Mureș in Romania on 7 October 2014.)

Posted in Photography, Romania, Travel | Tagged , | 5 Comments

“Why did you come here?”

Posted on 2014-10-07 by Andreas Moser

There are two types of places in the world: those where nobody will bat an eyelid if you move there and those where you will be welcomed with the question “Why did you move here?” – if you want to call that a form of welcome.

Having lived and worked in eight different countries so far, I have experienced both cases.

london-crowdsThe strange thing is that nobody is surprised when you move to a crowded, smelly and noisy city where you will spend two hours every day under the ground and where rents are so expensive that you can only afford a room in a basement. Because everyone considers it normal that people move to New York or London.

But when you move to a quiet and peaceful place where you can reach the mountains or the forest by foot from home and rents are so affordable that you can rent a whole house without working too much, people ask you “Why of all places did you move there?”

It’s no coincidence that I am writing this one week after my move to Târgu Mureș, although this time I did have a good reason for my move to Romania. Often, the question displays merely the lack of knowledge of the person asking. Some people do not know more than three countries beyond their own and the rest of the world is like outer space to them. They won’t be able to associate anything with any other city besides Rome, Paris or London.

Birds move twice a year. Why shouldn't we?

Birds move twice a year. Why shouldn’t we?

I have always found it particularly strange when locals pose that question to me in such a way as if they think that their own city is the worst place on earth. If you don’t like it there, why don’t you move away? We are people, not trees. We can walk away from places.

Having moved 20 times already, I am beginning to consider the question of where one lives to be overrated. A place can be top-notch exciting, but if you have to work all the time, you won’t get much out of it. Another place may offer less at first sight, but it allows you to enjoy your time and discover the country, or – as I am planning for the upcoming Eastern European winter – to stay inside with a cup of hot chocolate and catch up on my writing.

Different places are for different times in your life. Because you are not the same person you were two or three years ago. Hopefully.

(Zur deutschen Fassung.)

Posted in Life, London, Philosophy, Romania, Travel | Tagged | 4 Comments

Fire in the Sky

Posted on 2014-10-06 by Andreas Moser

I have only been living at my new place in Târgu Mureș in Romania for one week, but thus far every evening offered a colorful spectacle which I could observe from my bedroom. In chronological order, all four acts:

DSCN2937 DSCN2946 DSCN2952 DSCN2956

(All photos taken in Târgu Mureș on 6 October 2014.)

Posted in Photography, Romania, Travel | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Lines in the Sand

Posted on 2014-10-06 by Andreas Moser

Human beings feel the urge to leave signs of their presence in nature. When I was a child, it was common to carve one’s name (or a heart and a girl’s name) into the bark of a tree. Now people use spray cans to tell everyone that “Johnny was here”. Some put whole cities into the middle of the countryside.

All of this is damaging to the environment.

The least damaging way to leave your name may be to write it in the sand, where it will last for a few hours at best, about to be washed away by the eternal movement of the oceans. Not only ecologically sound, but also a reminder of our transience.

I wonder if people actually did this before they could snap photos of it, but now they do it a lot.

sand guy writing

sand Dorina

sand SOS

But – I am sorry to tell you – you have to stop doing this! Please!

This writing in the sand is not as harmless as it seems. The beach is not yours, it’s the home of many different animals, among them turtles. As you know, turtles crouch along on the ground and cannot see very far. If they stumble across one of these lines that you drew in the sand, they get completely disoriented. Even worse, they sometimes trip over them and fall over:

turtle_upside_downHelpless like this, they either slowly dry out under the scorching sun or they get eaten by foxes or hyaenas. – You may think that your name in the sand is cute or romantic, but you are killing turtles.

Posted in Travel | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Peak Oil

Posted on 2014-10-04 by Andreas Moser

gas station Hiiumaa 1

gas station Hiiumaa 2

(Photographed on the island of Hiiumaa in Estonia.)

Posted in Economics, Estonia, Photography, Travel | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Brazil, a Paradise for the Left?

Posted on 2014-10-04 by Andreas Moser

Brazil will hold the first round of a presidential election tomorrow.

The candidates with the best prospects of advancing to the second round are incumbent Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party, Marina Silva of the Brazilian Socialist Party and Aécio Neves of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party.

That doesn’t seem to be enough of socialism and social democracy because the Socialism and Freedom Party, the Christian Social Democratic Party, the United Socialist Workers’ Party, the Brazilian Communist Party and the Workers’ Cause Party are all fielding their own candidates for president.

Of course I realize that parties’ names don’t say much about their profile, but on first sight this looks more like a meeting of different student socialist groups than a presidential election.

(Auf Deutsch.)

Posted in Brazil, Politics | 4 Comments

Shocking anti-tobacco pictures

Posted on 2014-10-02 by Andreas Moser

Everyone knows that tobacco products are potentially dangerous, nobody is forced to smoke, and after the wide-ranging smoking bans in public places, there is hardly any harm caused to third parties. Yet, some countries require that shocking warning pictures be printed on the boxes. These photos of smoker’s legs, cancer and death are supposed to drastically illustrate the consequences of lighting up, in the hope of ultimately convincing the smoker to kick the habit.

shocking smoking pictureMeat products lead to the gruesome treatment and killing of other living beings against their will, although there are plenty of food alternatives. Yet, nobody thinks of printing photos taken inside slaughterhouses on the packaging of salami slices of chicken wings.

Isn’t it weird that one is encouraged to preserve one’s own life, while the extinguishing of other lives doesn’t seem to cause any moral concern?

(Auf Deutsch.)

Posted in Philosophy | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

There is always another minority

Posted on 2014-10-02 by Andreas Moser

A small city in Romania.

A Roma mother with her two daughters is shopping at the supermarket. All of them in colorful traditional dresses, with long skirts and headscarves in red, yellow, purple, blue, green. More colors than the wall of flags in front of the United Nations building.

The non-Roma Romanians, whose politicians had tried a few years ago to officially rename the Roma as gypsies because “the bad treatment and negative discrimination of the Roma could otherwise unjustifiably extend to Romanians”, look askance at the Roma women, critically eyeing their dresses, although these are not an uncommon sight in Târgu Mureș.

I display my friendly and genuine disadvantaged-minorities-deserve-friendliness-too smile.

Then an apparently Muslim girl with a tightly bound headscarf appears from the back of the supermarket and walks past the Roma family. One after the other, the three Roma women turn around, staring after the girl, their heads turned almost 180 degrees, with open eyes and mouths, as if they had spotted an extraterrestrial. The mother explains something to her daughters, of which I only understand the word “hijab”.

(Auf Deutsch.)

Posted in Romania | Tagged , | 16 Comments