After the Revolution

I am re-posting this article from 2015 because it seems that in Romania, the revolution is indeed never over:

– – –

This afternoon I had a brief exchange with a friend about the long-term effects of the Romanian revolution, probably the most bad-ass revolution of all the 1989 revolutions.

As you can see from the following excerpt, I was much more positive in my assessment, stressing the progress that has been made in Romania. But I do quite frequently hear dissatisfaction, particularly with the lack of criminal convictions of those responsible for the killing of protesters during the revolution as well as for the Ceaușescu dictatorship in general, but also with the political system, the media and the way parties work.

Romanian revolution unfinished

I think this level of criticism and skepticism is healthy and useful, although, as I point out in the conversation above, I find it natural that a revolution runs out of steam once the primary objectives have been achieved. It’s much harder to explain why people should take to the street about changing the law of admitting new parties than it is to motivate people to rise up against a regime that leaves them hungry, cold and destitute.

Coincidentally, later today I was reading Ryszard Kapuściński’s Shah of Shahs, a most insightful book about the revolution in Iran in 1979, and came across the following passage:

When thinking about the fall of any dictatorship, one should have no illusions that the whole system comes to an end like a bad dream with that fall. The physical existence of the system does indeed cease. But its psychological and social results live on for years, and even survive in the form of subconsciously continued behavior. A dictatorship that destroys the intelligentsia and culture leaves behind itself an empty, sour field on which the tree of thought won’t grow quickly. It is not always the best people who emerge from hiding, from the corners and cracks of that farmed-out field, but often those who have proven themselves strongest, not always those who will create new values but rather those whose thick skin and internal resilience have ensured their survival. In such circumstances history begins to turn in a tragic, vicious circle from which it can sometimes take a whole epoch to break free.

I am curious to hear from my Romanian readers, particularly those who remember the time of the revolution, what you think about this.

Posted in Books, History, Iran, Philosophy, Politics, Romania | Tagged | 8 Comments

Cats in Riga

cat Riga

cat 3 Riga

lion Riga

cat 2 Riga(All photos taken during my trip to Riga in March 2013.)

Posted in Latvia, Photography, Travel | Tagged , | 16 Comments

Maritime Law with Cats

When I started this blog, I promised myself that I would never stoop as low as other blogs who use photos of cats to surreptitiously obtain their readers’ affection. But now I have come across a historical source of law in which cats fill maritime law with life.

Katze SchiffThe legal code of the Consulate of Valencia, published in 1494, contains the following clauses, whose disregard in subsequent centuries may have contributed to the demise of cats’ social status:

If any property or merchandise is damaged by rats while aboard a vessel, and the patron had failed to provide a cat to protect it from rats, he shall pay the damage; however, it was not explained what will happen if there were cats aboard the vessel while it was being loaded, but during the journey these cats died and the rats damaged the cargo before the vessel reached a port where the patron of the vessel could purchase additional cats. If the patron of the vessel purchases and puts aboard cats at the first port of call where such cats can be purchased, he cannot be held responsible for the damages since this did not happen owing to any negligence on his part.

(From Consulate of the Sea and Related Documents by Stanley Jados, quoted according to The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean by David Abulafia. – Hier geht es zur deutschen Version.)

Posted in Books, History, Law, Travel | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Easily Confused (62) GDP

Donald Trump on GDP:

I already understood more about GDP in 9th grade. But then, I just went to a regular public school.

Robert Kennedy on GDP:

Posted in Economics, History, Politics, USA | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Climate Change is Real (my TEDx video)

After giving a talk at a TEDx conference in Romania in 2015, I stayed in contact with the very friendly team in Târgu Mureș even after I moved to South America. So, for this year’s conference, they asked me for a video message.

I was happy to do that and climbed all the way to Mount Chacaltaya in Bolivia, at 5395 m a new record for me, a great adventure, but sadly also a place where the effects of rapid and dramatic climate change can be observed.

Here are the few words I could manage to speak, still short of breath after the heroic feat of climbing that mountain.

 

If you don’t believe that there really was the world’s highest ski resort, look at some photos from a few years ago:

skiing

Admittedly, I was there in summer, but until 2009, the glacier had been there all year round, as glaciers usually are. And above 5000 m of altitude, the change in seasons – less pronounced that close to the equator, anyway – shouldn’t make that much of a difference. (The Făgăraș Mountains in Romania are only 2500 m high, and I saw snow there in a very hot summer.)

In another coincidence connecting my two favorite countries, Romania and Bolivia, I was wearing my cool Gabor hat from Transylvania on that expedition.

andreas-moser-chacaltaya

The mountain in the back, Huayna Potosi, still has snow because it is another 1000 meters higher, but the glacier there has lost thickness and is retreating too.

Because I am returning to Europe in May 2017, I will probably be able to attend the next TEDx conference in Târgu Mureș in person.

tedx

Posted in Bolivia, Romania, Travel, Video Blog | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Winston Churchill on New Year’s Resolutions

It’s mid-February. If you are like me, most of your new year’s resolutions have already dissipated, been forgotten or pushed to March or April. The smarter ones among you won’t have made any resolutions in the first place.

But if you want to feel really bad, consider young Winston Churchill’s new year’s resolutions, as reported in his autobiography My Early Life:

I therefore planned the sequence of the year 1899 as follows: To return to India and win the Polo Tournament: to send in my papers and leave the army: to relieve my mother from paying my allowance: to write my new book and the letters to the Pioneer: and to look out for a chance of entering Parliament.

These plans as will be seen were in the main carried out.

A year has after all 365 days. Why limit oneself to resolutions regarding exercise, diet or learning a language?

River War ChurchillWhen Winston Churchill made these resolutions he had just turned 24. The planned book was about the war in Sudan. Churchill had requested to take part in that campaign several times but had always been turned down. He eventually paid for his own trip to Africa and financed it by writing reports for newspapers. The River War came out in two volumes comprising around 1,000 pages. Shockingly for someone of Churchill’s age, the book was already his third. It should however be remarked, without the age of the writer or the age of the time being able to serve as an excuse, that The River War includes some crude racist and anti-Islamic passages.

Churchill_&_Mawdsley 1899 OldhamChurchill did indeed run for a seat in the British Parliament at age 24, but did not get elected that year. Of course, he managed to get elected in the same constituency only the following year. It probably helped that he had used the few months in between to work as a war correspondent in South Africa where he, as a civilian, took part in some skirmishes, got captured by the Boers, managed to escape from a POW camp, found some English miners in South Africa (one of whom happened to be from Oldham, Churchill’s constituency) who hid him underground before he managed to escape South Africa hidden on a train, making him a celebrated war hero. Obviously, Churchill also wrote a book about these exploits, London to Ladysmith via Pretoria.

All in all, Churchill published 43 books in 73 volumes, some quite good ones among them (he won the Nobel Prize in Literature). All of this while fighting military and political campaigns, governing an empire and winning World War II. He also found time to paint, to build houses as an amateur bricklayer and to collect butterflies.

So now, please tell us why YOU can’t find the time to go running three times a week or to read one book per week.

Winston_Churchill_in_1900

Winston Churchill in 1900, unimpeded in his productivity by Facebook and YouTube

(Thanks to long-time reader Ana Alves who mailed me Churchill’s autobiography as part of her annual book package. If you want to support this blog too, here is my wishlist of books. Thank you! – This article was also published by Medium.) 

Posted in Books, History, Life, Military, Politics, Time, UK, World War II | Tagged , | 16 Comments

Video: Travel Advice

It’s really not that complicated:

Posted in Bolivia, Travel, Video Blog | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Film Review: “Hell or High Water”

Where The Hateful Eight failed, Hell or High Water succeeds: in reviving the Western genre. It’s not done with gory violence or with a cast of clichés, but with strong characters, well-acted and, above all that what makes a good Western, scenery. Both prairie and small towns play their part, where Quentin Tarantino completely wasted that asset by holing his eight people up in a hut.

It’s a movie about bank robbers, so of course there are gunfights, but here you are not exposed to the overdone, mindless rain of bullets that we have to endure in so many wannabe-Westerns. Hell or High Water is even quite funny, without ever becoming cheesy.

Here’s hoping that the film will be a commercial success, so that more producers and directors will try a Western again instead of the 13th sequel to some dipshit comic strip picturization.

(Zur deutschen Fassung.)

Posted in Cinema, USA | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

When people complain about my fees

kebab

I guess you can see that I was hungry when I replied to that comment.

Sometimes people say: “I understand that you charge so much. After all, you had to study for 4 or 5 years to become a lawyer.” That’s nonsense. Theologians and experts in ancient Chinese literature of Mongolia study even longer, yet you wouldn’t pay them your life’s savings, would you? You pay a lot because you are in a messed-up situation that only one person, the hot-shot lawyer, can solve. And by doing that, he will save you not only more money than you invest, but also your life, your freedom and your sanity.

And realistically, you only need a lawyer once or twice in your life. So you may as well pay a bit more than for your monthly haircut. Regard it as a treat, like a vacation. Just a more intellectually rewarding treat, at least if you find a lawyer who is also a philosopher.

Posted in Economics, Law, Time | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

How to keep the Jehovah’s Witnesses at bay

Remembering in how many countries the Jehovah’s Witnesses have already visited me at home could almost make me paranoid: in Germany, England, Malta, Lithuania, Italy, Romania, Bolivia and Peru. In Sicily and in Romania they showed up within days after me moving in, as if Mr Jehovah had an intelligence operation that is constantly monitoring all moves and movements around the world. Often, the Jehovah’s Witnesses stopped by to welcome me to their hood before the internet guys – whom I had asked to come – managed to do so. This actually led me to a business idea which I should convey to the CEO of the Jehovah’s Witnesses if I ever meet him.

And then there are the old ladies talking to me in the park, the younger ladies standing in pedestrian zones with their evolution-misunderstanding pamphlets, and the gentlemen who seat themselves next to me on the train, always quite coincidentally of course.

Based on my roughly 67 encounters with the Jesus Witnesses, I meanwhile know how to keep them at bay:

  • Pointing out that I am an atheist, that I have been an atheist for 25 years, and yes, that I have thought about this seriously, and that – when I grow impatient, I sometimes become elitist – I studied philosophy, after all, and that I have thus reflected on the important aspects of life at a higher level than is possible in a doorstep conversation, is absolutely useless.
  • Humor doesn’t help either. “Oh, is it Halloween already?” admittedly is a very low-level joke anyway, but it met humor-resistant ears. Maybe humor is as taboo as tobacco and alcohol.
  • Smoking cigars while the abstainers are smoldering their sermons, doesn’t help either. It may even make them feel like better humans. “Did you see the poor, weak sinner, smoking demonic herbs?” they say to each other with a sad look, as they leave.
  • Extremely aggressive unfriendliness may help, but it’s not in my nature. Sadly, I have always been in a good mood when the preachers rang the bell.

But now comes the trick:

  • Already on three occasions, the Jehovah’s Witnesses left of their own volition after half a minute. Each time, one of the Witnesses was giving his speech, while the other one inspected me and then noticed something that he didn’t like at all. Shocked, he pulled his colleague by the sleeve, pointed to my belly, his mouth open in horror, and both of them say goodbye very quickly.

What had happened?

  • I have a sweater with the logo of the Israeli Air Force. It’s very cozy, so I often wear it at home. And thus, my chest is adorned with the Star of David, which apparently makes the Witnesses run for their lives.
israeli-air-force-andreas-moser

The first time, it happened in Malta, where I still attributed it to the anti-Semitism which is part of the local folklore. But when exactly the same happened in Lithuania and in Romania, I recognized a pattern that went beyond the personal prejudice of the individual standing in my door.

A quick research yielded that the Jehovah’s Witnesses do indeed have an anti-Semitic tradition, which they are still nursing and which is also directed against Israel.

But at least now you know how to get rid of these obtrusive guys. Good luck!

(I haven’t found the exact sweater online, but here you can order a T-shirt with the same logo.- Hier könnt Ihr diesen Artikel auf Deutsch lesen.)

Posted in Israel, Religion, Travel | Tagged , , | 10 Comments