Censoring Santa

Aaaahhhh the holiday season in Germany. Glittering Christmas markets, tasty mulled wine, rich, fabulously delicious ginger bread -- and of course, hoards of people frantically racing around town grabbing up last-second Christmas gifts. Tis the season after all -- the season of love and the season of, well, rampant consumerism.

That, at least, is how one group, the Frankfurter Nicholas Initiative sees things. And they think they know who is to blame: Santa Claus. The Frankfurt am Main-based group isn't just sitting around pointing fingers either. For the third year in a row, they are passing out round stickers depicting poor Santa's merry dimples, rosy cheeks and cherry-like nose -- with a fat red line slashing right through the middle of it. Santa Free Zone the stickers proclaim.

"Santa is a symbol of consumerism and commerce," says initiative spokesman Helmut Zimmerman. "The Santa Claus free zones are an attempt to refocus attention on the real tradition of Christmas." Namely: Saint Nicholas.

The idea seems to be taking off this year. In the eastern Austrian town of St. Wolfgang, Santa is persona non grata at the town's Christmas market this year. "Santa Claus is not a typical Christmas tradition neither in Germany nor Austria," said St. Wolfgang tourism manager in Hans Wieser. "This red-suited man only turned up over the last decade or so." Maybe, he is hoping, Santa will leave. (6:30 p.m. CET)

What Happened to Pootie-Poot?

George W. Bush is starting to fill out the agenda for his first sojourn to Europe following his re-election. Along with expected visits to Brussels and Germany, he'll also be hooking up with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovakia next month. When the pair met for the first time in 2001, Bush famously quipped: "I looked the man in the eye ... and I was able to get a sense of his soul." In that soul, he saw a man committed to the "best interests of his country" and the start of a beautiful friendship. A few visits later, he was so enamoured he was calling Putin "Pootie-Poot."

Three years on, soul searching is the order of the day. Pootie-Poot's been up to no good, and Bush and Putin's best friend in the West, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, both know it.

But biting back at Pootie-Poot isn't the easiest thing for Bush or Schroeder to do -- even if Putin is making speeches calling the US a "dictatorship in global affairs." The Putin payback has proven addictive. To thank Bush for his early support, for example, Putin made it easier for the war on Afghanistan to be staged from Central Asia. He also cleared the way for NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe and he let Bush pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. That made it harder for Bush to scold Putin when he refused to back the war in Iraq -- thus National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice's now famous "punish France, ignore Germany, forgive Russia." Schroeder has also benefited from Putin's largesse -- the Kremlin leader helped the chancellor adopt a 3-year-old Russian girl earlier this year and has helped German companies become involved the otherwise off-limits Gazprom.

Even as he moved on their behalf, he has almost made decisions embarrassing to his Western friends. The semi-autocratic Pootie-Poot has cracked down on the political opposition, forced the somewhat shady break-up of the country's largest oil company under, directly supported corrupt elections in Ukraine and rolled back democratic reforms in Russia. This week, the Freedom House, a US organization whose work has been described as the "Michelin guide to democratic development," repealed  Russia's status as a "free country" for the first time since the Soviet era. Unlike Schroeder -- who called Pootie-Poot an "unblemished democrat" -- Bush at least criticized the democratic deficiencies, saying this week he has a "good personal relationship" with Putin but that "we have some disagreements." For his part, Schroeder has said through deputies he will take Putin to task privately but not in public.

There are strong reasons to cooperate and promote close ties with Putin; economic potential, intelligence, cooperation in the fight against terrorism and the need to secure Russia's nuclear stockpile are all vital to the West. But the man is increasingly becoming a liability for both Bush and Schroeder. And even his hints this week in Hamburg -- aimed at protecting Schroeder from a growing chorus of critics -- that he would be willing to discuss the Chechnya issue, and freedom of the press, aren't enough warrant monikers like "unblemished democrat" or Pootie-Poot. But Putin knows the pressure is on and he brought his moneybags to help out; he is promising to repay approximately €2 billion a year in loans to Germany for the next three years -- money desperately needed to help balance the budget. (1 p.m. CET)

Hack-a-Bike

There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but hackers in Germany have proven that it is still possible to get a free ride. A few years back, Germany's national railway, Deutsche Bahn, introduced its "Call a Bike" service in big cities like Berlin, Frankfurt Munich and Cologne. The sturdy, chic bikes, which cost 6 cents per minute to ride have proven popular with tourists, locals and, apparently, hackers. The system allows you to locate a bike on the street, call a central number on your mobile phone to get the access code, then you just plug it in and you're off, wheels on fire. It's great if you've been out with friends and don't have enough cash to get home. But there's a problem: Hackers! An unidentified group in Berlin apparently reverse-engineered the bikes and created "Hack a Bike ." Berlin residents who had access to the Hack-a-Bike code were able to ride about 200 of the cycles across the city without paying. The hackers even changed the beeping light on the bicycle so that people would recognize the hacked rides. Their work was so subtle, in fact, that executives at Deutsche Bahn didn't even realize they had been duped. A Berlin web Site alerted them to the ploy. (12:20 p.m. CET)

British ID Cards, Much Ado About Nothing

In the last year, the Brits have fought about the destiny of the European Union and they've seen a cabinet member resign over a mistress and nanny scandal. But one of the most politically sensitive issues was a vote in the House of Commons on Tuesday to introduce national identification cards in 2008. The IDs will include a chip containing biometric data including an iris scan and digital fingerprints in an effort to prevent terrorism, human trafficking and other crimes. Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has already weighed in, calling ID cards as a "Germanic idea" at a private dinner party. Other opponents say the ID cards could force illegal immigrants into hiding or even alienate and radicalize Muslims. Nor, they point out, did Spain's mandatory ID cards stop the March 11 terrorist attacks on Madrid. But most, it seems, just don't like the idea of the government being able to track them - it's a civil liberties issue, they say.

But what's the big deal? After all, universal ID cards have made life easier for the residents of most other EU countries, who have used them for years to open bank accounts, travel or conduct business that requires that their identity be verified. And unlike previous ID cards, this one will be hard to forge. Contrary to the Orwellian visions forecast by critics, it's hard to see the cards ushering in anything like a Big Brother society -- they certainly haven't in the rest of Europe. (10:45 a.m. CET)

European Environment Agency: Kyoto Target in Sights

The European Union failed this weekend to secure deeper emissions cuts to stop further global warming at an international conference in Buenos Aires on Saturday, but it still got a bit of good news this week. No, Washington won't be signing the Kyoto Protocol, which remains a victim of America's war against itself . Instead, it actually looks like Europe stands a decent chance of meeting the requirements laid out in Kyoto for green house gas emissions. With a little bit of what Washington might call "fuzzy math," the European Environmental Agency estimated  the EU will have reduced its emissions by 8.8 percent from 1990 levels by 2010. However, Germany, a leader in the global battle against global warming, may miss its target by a hair, the agency warned. That may not be enough to save the planet -- and as the report states, all currently planned measures and projects must be implemented for a positive result -- but if Europe can reach its own goals, it could boost the development of future treaties on climate change. (10 a.m. CET)

Bush is Man of the Year

Heartfelt congratulations to US President George W. Bush for winning the prestigious Time magazine "Man of the Year" award for the second time. We couldn't agree with Time's editors more. They say he won because of his successful re-election campaign (true) and his bold, uncompromising leadership (The Microsoft Word synonym for uncompromising? Stubborn. Can't argue there.) Then again, they also say he won because of his forthright connection with the American people. Here, we'd clash swords. Wasn't it Bush who spent much of his first term lying to the people about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? Still, as Time editor Jim Kelly points out, Bush remains one of the world's most polarizing figures and he single-handedly reshaped the global rules of politics "to fit his 10-gallon-hat leadership."

Bush joins an elite list of past world leaders who have been honored by Time. Each year since 1927 the magazine has singled out "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse." The list includes many past US presidents. It also features Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942) And Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran (1979).

Strangely, Bush -- known to prize loyalty and not to forgive easily -- told Time he doesn't want people to like him. "I think the natural instinct for most people in the political world is that they want people to like them," he said. "On the other hand, I think sometimes I take kind of a delight in who the critics are." Does he want a list of names? (Monday, 3 p.m. CET)

US is from Mars, Europe isfrom Venus

Robert Kagan, the American neo-con egghead who first identified the growing trans-Atlantic rift in 2002 and coined the phrase "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus," shares his latest luminosities in Monday's issue of the German daily Die Welt. Kagan argues that America has to forget the idea that Europe is still a global player and realize that the Continent no longer has power and influence much beyond its borders. What's more, he says (apparently forgetting about French President Jacques Chirac), few Europeans even aspire to such a role. In 2002, Kagan wrote a now-famous essay in which he claims the trans-Atlantic difference boils down to one salient factor: military might. The US has it -- and therefore can afford to be a unilateralist bully -- and Europe doesn't and therefore hides its weakness behind a love of treaties and multilateralism.