I have to strongly disagree with several diaries and comments, both posted here in ET (e.g. The Ruskies are back. Praise the Lord!) or at dkos in Jerome's most recent diary.

The narrative is, that the Western press would unanimously condemn Russia and generally ascribe Putin as  'evil' compared to the 'good' west.

For the beginning I want to start with translation of an article from the pro-atlantic, conservative German newspaper FAZ, which was earlier this day on their online front page at the top:
Zerwürfnis in der Nato
Politik des leeren Stuhls

Thomas Fricke has a new article in the FTD, which by the way stands for Financial Times Deutschland and is owned by the well known FT.

He comes up with a typical American suggestion, how to rescue the economy, and less usual, the environment at the same time. While the article is targeted on Germany, the basic idea may work for Spain, Ireland or so in the same way.

I personally am not convinced, that this is so great, but maybe some of you think it is a reasonable short term thing.
As well I don't think it will be implemented, as the current gov is completely fixed on balancing the budget, and won't do anything like this.

German online writer have found a problem: themselves. In comparison to their US collegues, they lack power and importance, for having a say in the public discussion. Most are unpolitical, self-opinated, self-centered, and unprofessional.

That's the start of an article today on spiegel.

The diary consists of a rush translation of some exerpts, as I think the individual bloggers that do exist are not too important, and I add some of my thoughts.

As the general theme of the article conincedes with my personal experience, in the comment section I would as well like to ask about the experience with political blogs in your country.

All the time people here who have otherwise a very left rhethoric speak about the rescue of the 'middle class', and how great Europe is.
When I read German blogs and comments, left leaning people may speak sometimes as well of the middle class, but never will say anything is good in Germany. How comes this discrepancy?
My provocative thesis here: ETers are to a big chunk salon socialists.

From FTD:
(The link is in German, here a free translation of this funny piece)
Productivity growth in the US is 3.2%. The consumer deflator growths only slightly faster than than in the Eurozone, despite the dollar collapse. At the same time car sales and home building starts are lower than 30 years ago. Nobody asks why there is this discrepancy. A mistake.

The LHC, the Large Hadron Collider is the next project of collider particle physics which will be switched on. The multi billion Euro machine has already helped practical purposes in various ways, e.g. due to the development of huge superconducting magnets, the efforts to create a computing grid, and the research on silicon pixel detectors among many other things. The analysis will help young physicists to learn statistics in a well suited environment. The CERN, the laboratory where the LHC is build, has a unique history anyhow. In the cold war meetings on neutral ground took place and politically hunted physicists could be freed when getting publicity through their former work at CERN. The most important issue CERN does, however, is proving the superiority the European model as reliable partner in scientific international projects.

But can the physics there do anything useful?

Going back to my origins... - Diary rescue by Migeru

I have several times claimed to be politically conservative and that I'm unsatisfied with the current politics, which others on this blog assume to be very conservative. Due to this it came up the question what I understand as conservatism.
The most important issue for what I understand under conservatism is the question of political loyalty distribution. Conservatism means a declining loyalty starting with individuum, family, region, country, (Europe), world. Social-democrats clearly have different order and put start with groups I wouldn't put at all in such a line.

Diary Rescue by Migeru