Sweden vs Israel: war of the words

The diplomatic row between Sweden and Israel has quickly reached ridiculous proportions, with this video being one of the most recent contributions, apparently there is no freedom of press in Sweden! (And apparently the former Israeil ambassador to Sweden has no grip on reality).

The whole story is nicely summed up in Daniel Korski's article which also has an interesting conclusion to the question I've been asking myself for the past few days: why has the Israeli government has reacted the way it has?

Trains vs Planes

Trains are my favourite mode of transport, for the comfort, the relaxation, the beautiful views and it's so good for the environment! At least relative to cars and air planes.

Or so I thought, now I'm a bit confused. On the one hand, Eurostar is so eco-friendly that Friends of the Earth has gone so far as to form a public partnership with them, and if that's not a seal of approval of ones environmental credentials I don't know what is. But on the other hand, a recently published report claims that Britain's long overdue joining of the high-speed train revolution will actually generate more CO2 than air planes! This was calculated for the London-Manchester route, over a period of 60 years. Trains going to Scotland will generate slightly less CO2 and some criticism has been made that they have not taken into account the carbon emission from winning car drivers over to the train but still, it looks a lot worse than I had always assumed!

As much as I love my bike, I really don't fancy cycling to Manchester...

Shinkansen: the height of high-speed trains

What do Turkish people have for breakfast?

Grilled halloumi, garlic sausage, olives, egg, bread and Gozleme (Turkish pancake filled with feta and spinach, there's a lady sitting in the window making them, kinda like this). If it's late enough in the day, any one of about 20 different kebabs will go down well too. All washed down with some Turkish coffee of course - yum!

Evin cafe is the place to go for the best in London, and cheap too: here.

People in the picture are not Turks, they just like Turkish food, well any food really.

Carl Bildt: foreign minister and blogger

While I am no fan of his party's domestic politics or his lobbying for 'intervention' in Iraq, I must say I've been reading Sweden's current foreign minister Carl Bildt's blog quite religiously over the past couple of years. Never failing to update his blog, whether in the midst of gunfire in Georgia or dining with Obama, his reports from around the world are fascinating and interesting. Currently at the helm of the Swedish Presidency, Foreign Policy have published a profile well worth reading - on why he is too good to become foreign minister of the EU.

EDIT: I'm not aware of any other foreign ministers who blog, well apart from David Miliband's which is as boring as his interns are bored writing it. Hillary Clinton and her interns are too busy I suppose...

Cycling and Class

When the Observer Culture section does a four-spread feature on cycling then one can be sure that the current cycling trend is a revolution indeed. "Middle class revolution" muttered my friend Liam sipping his tea while I poured over an item on Mariella Frostrup's preferred choice of bike (very cute, though I would have opted for the Christiania version).

And he's right. In my East London ex-council estate building you can tell the temporary residents (me and my friends, hipsters and students mostly from middle class homes) apart from the permanent residents (those more likely to be working class, immigrants, poorer and/or with lower status jobs) by looking for the bike on the doorstep.

It's ironic that the trendiest bikes of the cycling trend is the fixed gear and single speed bikes, popular amongst hipsters for their simplicity and elegance, is very similar to the type of bikes that used to be ridden by factory workers over fifty years ago. Inspiration is often sought in such romanticized images, the most desirable of fixed gear bikes in Sweden at the moment is named 'Strömmen' or 'The Stream' after the stream of workers that used to be seen cycling to the ASEA factory in Västerås.

Dole sues filmmakers from Malmö for defamation

The dissertation I’m working on this summer is on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), in particular of multinational companies. The term is quite fuzzy and can include everything and anything from the environment, to community development to the safety of employees.

A running theme in my paper is the difficulty of holding large powerful corporations to account. The recent story of Dole suing two fellow Malmöites who made a film about their alleged improper use of pesticides illustrates this very well, see the article in Business Respect or local newspaper Skånskan.

When irresponsible practices are exposed in the media it’s important to tread carefully and not give in to sensationalist claims. While issues such as not paying banana growers a fair price for their products (buy Fairtrade bananas instead of Dole!) and a long but now old and thus less exciting history of environmental and human abuses (see a good article in (Global Issues) may not create the buzz necessary to finance a film such issues are nevertheless just as important.

A new lawsuit was filed against Dole in April this year regarding a story reminiscent of Shell's abuses in Nigeria - hope this lawsuit gets the attention it deserves without having to exaggerate the story. And that the story can help expose the very unfair production and trade system of bananas.

Hidden treasures of Berlin

As soon as school finished and summer began I put some flowers in my hair and went to Berlin. Here are some of my favourite spots I found there...

1. Club der Visionäre: grab a beer and soak up the sun on a float with live music all day and night.


2. The black and white photo booth next to the Kaiser in Kottbusser Tor: finally an old-school photo booth that does the individual four photos, lovely description of itself as well.

3. Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park: an absolutely massive and beautiful park with a very impressive memorial of which the statue pictured here is just a small part.

4. Le Petit Mignon: quite a pretentious little French record/magazine/book/zine/poster shop with a reluctantly charming owner, think Bernard Black. Fantastic selection of everything.

6. Eiszeit Cinema: very nice independent cinema tucked away in a backyard. Various bike films and videos were showing when I was there, as part of the International Bicycle Courier Festival.



7. Bull Bar: somehow I ended up here the majority of late nights in Berlin, irresistible combination of good beer, metal heads and general cosyness, on Wrangelstrasse 90, Kreutzberg.



8. Sanatorium: super slick bar on Frankfurter Allee, nice drinks and music.


9. Best street ever: Falckensteinstrasse - best pizza ever on one side and best ice cream ever on the other side!


10. The International Bicycle Courier Festival mentioned above was organised by the Berlin Massive who have the best taste in everything, larger size of the guide on my flickr page.