Many observers share the belief that very dangerous or, on the contrary, very positive, situations can be determined by minor accidents. For instance, that a war could finally follow a disruption of equilibriums between politicians and generals in Turkey. That in Italy severe strife, even the end of the Berlusconi era, might be the ultimate consequence of paradoxically light mishaps in the filing of candidacies to elected offices that are not important enough. That the emergence of a brilliant orator who makes capital of social discontent could torpedo the partitocratic regime the Allies installed 65 years ago (many surveys show that here derisory percentages approve the Italian institutions and their political ways).

The above fuses may or may not ignite large explosions. But, by a sort of counter-analogy it’s arguable that, if certain marginal or escapable events of the past had not occurred, the contemporary world would be incredibly different. Had the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III, assessed a diplomatic slight by chancellor Bismarck for what factually was a simple discourtesy rather than a threat to the vital interests of France, the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 would not have followed (no serious conflict existed then between Paris and Berlin). Just two battles annihilated the French armies and their prestige. The Emperor was deposed, France was occupied, Alsace-Lorraine lost. Then, thousands died in the Paris Commune insurrection.

In the following 44 years France was dominated by ‘revanche’, the obsession of vengeance. So, had it not been for the foolish choice of 1870, possibly in 1914 French president Poincaré wouldn’t pressure St.Petersburg, and even London, to fight Austria-Hungary and the German Reich. Without the Tsarist defeat, it is not proven that a Bolshevik revolution would triumph in Russia. Had WW1 and the Treaty of Versailles not humiliated Germany, probably Hitler would not become the Fuehrer, Germany would not resort to WW2, and our history would be entirely different.

There’s more.

If Hitler had a quirk different from antisemitism, millions of Jews would not be killed. Not dissimilar could have been the consequences had the Jewish world community decided to buy Hitler with (a lot of) money or otherwise instantly confronted him. For many centuries, Jews easily bought Christian sovereigns’ tolerance, namely in Castile, France, and England.

Nobody of course can demonstrate the above successions as inevitable. But as nobody can prove the contrary, the assumption is legitimate that the XXI century world would be almost the opposite of what we have, if only Napoleon the Third with his courtiers, diplomats and marshals had been wiser.

Academic historians traditionally decry this way of thinking. But in no way can they prove the superiority of their approach. They idolize just what is archived and recorded. Which is at the same time scientifically correct and devoid of human lessons. Things that do not happen can be more fateful than actual events.

Massimo Calderazzi is member of the Société Européenne de Culture, to which many eminent
scholars and a few Nobel prizewinners belong.

Dubai has identified 15 new suspects in the assassination last month of a Hamas official, and 10 of those suspects share the names of Israelis who hold dual citizenship, Haaretz has learned.

Dubai police said Wednesday the total number of people believed involved in the death stands at 26.

Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed last month in his hotel room in what Dubai police have said they are near certain was a hit by Israel’s Mossad spy agency. Police said the killers travelled to the Gulf Arab emirate using European passports.

Dubai authorities had earlier named 11 suspects, who they said travelled on fraudulent British, Irish, French and German passports to kill Mabhouh. Six were Britons living in Israel who deny involvement and say their identities were stolen.

“Dubai investigators are not ruling out the possibility of involvement of other people in the murder,” the statement said.

The suspected killers’ use of passports from countries including Britain and France has drawn criticism from the European Union that diplomats said was aimed at Israel. Some of governments involved have summoned their Israeli ambassadors.

“Friendly nations who have been assisting in this investigation have indicated to the police in Dubai that the passports were issued in an illegal and fraudulent manner,” the Dubai government statement said.

It said that pictures on the passports did not correspond to their original owners.

In a statement on Monday that European diplomats said was intended as a rebuke to Israel, EU foreign ministers said that the assassination was “profoundly disturbing.”

Read more here.

A strike by air traffic controllers will disrupt flights from French airports during this week’s school holidays, the civil aviation authority (DGAC) said on Monday.

The DGAC said services all over France would be affected, adding that it had asked airlines to cancel some flights at the two main Paris airports on Tuesday.

It had asked for half the flights at Orly to be cancelled and a quarter of those at the capital’s other main airport, Paris-Charles de Gaulle at Roissy, reports France 24.

Five air traffic unions have called for a strike from Feb.  23 to Feb. 27 to protest at Europe’s Single Sky Policy which partly aims to modernise air traffic control. Union members say their jobs and status are under threat.

EU Observer reports that the so-called ‘Single Sky Policy’ plans to merge the traffic control services of France with those of five European neighbours by 2012. The four unions believe that such a merger would result in significant deterioration of their ability to perform their job.

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French wine-makers and dealers were convicted Wednesday of selling millions of bottles of fake Pinot Noir to the US firm E&J Gallo in one of the biggest scams ever to rattle the world of wine.

A court handed out suspended jail terms and hefty fines to 12 people for selling 18 million bottles (135,334 hectolitres) of wine they said was Pinot Noir but which was in fact made from far cheaper grape varieties.

The convicted included executives from wine estates, cooperatives, a broker, wine merchant Ducasse and the conglomerate Sieur d’Arques.

“The scale of the fraud caused severe damage for the wines of the Languedoc (region) for which the United States is an important outlet,” the judge told a packed courtroom in Carcassonne in southwestern France.

He said that the accused made seven million euros (9.8 million dollars) in profits from the scam, with Ducasse raking in 3.7 million euros and Sieur d’Arques 1.3 million euros.

The fines he imposed ranged from 1,500 to 180,000 euros, while the suspended jail sentences went from one to six months.

Millions of bottles were sold in the United States under Gallo’s popular “Red Bicyclette” Pinot Noir label, which in 2006 was marketed as having “aromas of dark fruit flavours” and whose palate was said to be like “black cherry and ripe plum.”

Gallo, which was neither a defendant nor a plaintiff in the case in Carcassonne, said after the verdict it was “deeply disappointed” at its supplier Sieur d’Arques.

“We believe that the only French Pinot Noir that was potentially misrepresented to us would have been the 2006 vintage and prior,” the firm’s vice-president of public relations, Susan Hensley, said in a statement.

Gallo also said that — based on details from the French trial — it imported less than 20 percent of the falsely-labelled Pinot Noir involved, “and is no longer selling any of this wine to customers.”

US authorities are investigating potential infractions.

Read more here.

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We read or hear a lot about the rise of worldwide unemployment, while not so much on the different social reactions to the loss of jobs or incomes across the world. Most of the little we know is vague or impressionistic- that Americans are rather tolerant about the ambushes of capitalism; that the French cherish their revolutionary heritage and still practice rebellion occasionally; that Germans dislike striking; that Spanish anarchists have quieted down; and so on and so forth. Stereotypes are misleading, although they often describe realities or are ultimately vindicated by facts.

Recently, employees of a number of French companies detained or even kidnapped their managers to prevent them from terminating jobs or transferring operations elsewhere. In France and Italy, industrial workers, miners and combative farmers tend to blockade highways, airports and railroad stations in order to forcibly affirm their claims. They also climb on roofs, cranes and other tall structures, install themselves there for days and nights in the cold, so reporters and cameras can rush to report on their daredevil protests. Things like these seem to be uncommon, say, in Scandinavia.

Some situations, while understandable from a human perspective, challenge common sense. For years, Fiat in Italy and Renault in France have been moving production to countries where labor and/or other costs are lower. Naturally, employees resist moves that destroy their jobs. But in specific cases, their demands border on the absurd. It’s common knowledge that the world automotive industry expanded too much, and that overcapacity became huge. Consequently, output had to be reduced. In the case of the Fiat plant in Termini Imerese, Sicily, the company has insisted that the costs of making cars there are so exorbitant that paying salaries and taxes without making cars would lower the losses of said plant. The result? The Termini Imerese operation will be terminated in a year or so. The management will now strive to determine a line of production that is not focused on automobile production. This is for the additional reason that many urban administrations everywhere are discouraging or even forbidding car traffic in city centers as to limit pollution. In the meantime, Fiat shut all her plants in Italy for two weeks.

The Termini Imerese unions simply said no- the plant must continue to produce cars that don’t sell, or that sell at a heavy loss. They argue that for a whole century, Fiat received giant subsidies from the government, so in the current crisis the company must return what received. Also, that the automotive orientation of the local factory must remain, even if alternatives are offered. Eventually unionized workers risk losing everything, should any prospective buyer of the plant conclude that said workforce is unreasonably combative.

At Pomigliano, in Southern Italy, at the site of another Fiat plant, a number of workers even threatened to set themselves on fire, should their jobs disappear.  Suicide is such a tragedy that no facetious remark is permissible. However, it’s evident that they would not accept working in nearby farms and plantations (where black laborers toil, but are increasingly discriminated), even if government subsidies would significantly add to farm wages. Picking oranges is heavy work, pressing keys on car-making robots is not.

Suicidal threats are something that one would expect in India (where some persons are said to kill themselves so that remorse will punish their enemies), or in Japan, where stoic, heroic sacrifices are a national tradition, rather than in sunny Pomigliano, not far from Naples. Manufacturing activities have spread so much worldwide that situations like Pomigliano, Termini Imerese and the kidnapping of French managers may happen everywhere. Whether behavior to defend jobs and incomes are going to stay different or become similar is a question that can only get vague and tentative answers.

Hanoi Vietnam.

2 flights and 20 plus hours of traveling.

I’m a long way from New York City but it’s a warm late December morning in North Vietnam, and I’m just fine with that. I’m a little confused about the time change… Can it really be that I haven’t eaten for 2 days??!  Not sure, but I am hungry and that’s not up for debate.

This is not a travel piece, and I am not a travel writer. I am a culinary student and I’m in Vietnam. And I packed light. All I brought was my camera and my appetite.

This was my first meal in Vietnam. Cha ca fish. I was starving and would have eaten just about anything at this point, except cottage cheese – can’t stand the stuff. That said I enjoyed meal but little did I know that I would find this fish just around about any corner in Vietnam.

The ubiquitous Cha ca fish- part catfish, part bass. It’s a firm, round white-fleshed fish, that tastes just a little bit tough and fishy. The consensus at the end of the meal was that fresh herbs, greens and toasted peanuts were the winners.

I was pleasantly surprised when I found the same fresh herbs (basil, thai basil and coriander) accompanying my next meal (which was about an hour later).

Bun Cha (above) is my personal favorite.

It’s something I could eat at any meal of the day or, for that matter, every meal of the day. Bun Cha is a luke warm fish broth with cold rice noodles served with fat bits of meat (either pork or beef or other) or sometimes fried egg rolls, garnished with fresh herbs, soy beans, toasted peanuts and finished with chili sauce. If you are particularly fortunate, your Bun Cha will be served with a cold local beer called Bia Hoi and prepared by the lady seen above.

Bun Cha is an anomaly. A hearty, savory dish that is both unctuous and refreshing. Maybe this is because it is a fish soup served neither hot nor chilled, but at room temperature. One would think: Its definitely a fish soup, isn’t it? But the trick is, while it has a fish broth and fish sauce, the floating bits of protein in the broth are beef.

A better way to think about Bun Cha may be as a wet salad as opposed to a tepid soup. The raw greens, cold noodles, and cold meat are reminiscent of an Asian beef salad, something about as common as a rat in the subway, and in my opinion not much more appealing. But don’t get me wrong, Bun Cha – I’m a big fan of yours. The difference is the fish sauce. Vietnamese fish sauce come in two versions: non-fermented and fermented. Both are sweet and tangy but the latter has a smell similar to a men’s locker room.

After 48 hours in Hanoi, I hit Halong Bay. It’s beautiful. It should be one of the 7 wonders of the world. But it’s not, so there is a huge promotional campaign to have it included in the “next” 7 wonders of the world. I hope it works out.

Halong Bay has over 2000 limestone hills that seemingly just pop out of the water. It’s incredible. If you want to hear more about it, see pictures in a Lonely Planet guide or something…

Within these 2000 or so islands there are fully functioning communities, complete with their own stores, markets, even bars.

I decided to stop by one of these villages to pick-up some food for a simple lunch of fresh local fish. Who am I kidding? That was never going to happen. Things got out of hand pretty quickly and I had a full-on shellfish orgy on my hands.,

Here are a couple “before” pictures from lunch- a big-ass octopus and crayfish-looking shrimp straight from the bay.

Lunch wasn’t bad. The shrimp were steamed in vinegar and green onions and the octopus was steamed as well but in beer and red chillies. Both were served with fish sauce, but fortunately it was of the non-fermented variety. Otherwise lunch would have smelled like a wet gym-sock.

On the left is the octopus steamed in beer and chillies accompanied by the fish sauce. On the right are 2 different types of crabs that were pulled out of the bay less then an hour before they ended up on this plate and then in my belly.

On the left: the fish-monger called it a carp. But I knew better, once again the ubiquitous cha ca fish, this time fried and stuffed with tomatoes, peppers, and onions. As for the photo on the right, like I said: I enjoyed myself. Let’s leave it at that.

From Halong Bay it was time to head south and hit Saigon, the largest city in the country for a day visit.

Saigon is a big city with lots of motorbikes. About 4 million of them, so the air quality was not great, but the city more than made up for that with its gastronomic offerings. While in Saigon I ate everywhere from the gnarly (and I mean it in both the good and the bad ways) stalls in the markets (below [fish stand, roast pork, and random parts] yum) to a classic French restaurant where I was able to enjoy a traditional 5 course lunch of smoked salmon, foie gras, truffles, maigret de canard, and venison. The chef was from Nice and didn’t speak any English or Vietnamese. I may have been in Vietnam but in his house it was France, France and more France.

I enjoyed my classic French meal rich with the flavor of nostalgia, for what now feels like an ancient colonialism. The lesson I took away from this meal was that imperialism, like most other things French, tastes better in France.

During my brief stay in Vietnam I also had the chance to try some of what the hotel concierge called the “new Vietnamese haute cuisine.” It was good; I enjoyed it. But it was basically just better quality versions of the staples such as spring rolls, seafood pancakes, and the like. I really enjoyed this meal and I am going to choose not to be critical. Why? South Vietnam as we know it today is basically a completely new country. It was entirely destroyed less then 50 years ago and has only been open to trade with the United States since the mid-1990s.

I say give it time. With the quality of produce that is available in Vietnam and the ever-increasing influx of western cultural influences, there is a bright future for high-end Vietnamese cuisine.

That said the most memorable thing I ate in Saigon was Pho (below).

Pho is a large noodle soup served hot with beef or pork, and clear rice noodles, in a broth of unknown or secret origin. Like Bun Cha (and Cao La in some parts) the Pho is also topped with fresh herbs and served with fish sauce and chili sauce.

My final thoughts on Vietnam; I came in with high expectations and was a little disappointed to find that the cuisine did not vary regionally as much as I had anticipated.

But I arrived hungry and left full so the food couldn’t have been that bad.

A French parliament report called Tuesday for a ban on the full Islamic veil in all schools, hospitals, public transport and government offices, saying the burqa was an affront to French values.

“The wearing of the full veil is a challenge to our republic. This is unacceptable,” the report released by a parliament commission said. “We must condemn this excess.”

After six months of hearings, the panel of 32 lawmakers recommended a ban on the face-covering veil in all state-run institutions and offices, the broadest move yet to restrict Muslim dress in France.

The commission called on parliament to adopt a formal resolution stating that the burqa was “contrary to the values of the republic” and proclaiming that “all of France is saying ‘no’ to the full veil.”

Women who turn up at government offices wearing the full veil should be denied services such as a work visa, residency papers or French citizenship, the report recommended.

The panel however stopped short of proposing broad legislation to outlaw the burqa on the streets or in shopping centres after cautioning that such a move would have to be reviewed by the courts to establish its legality.

Read more here.

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A Venice heritage association is appealing to French First Lady Carla Bruni to persuade the Louvre to return the most famous painting looted by Napoleon from the lagoon city, reports ANSA.

The Progetto Nordest (PNE) is the latest in a string of local bodies to ask France to restore Paolo Veronese’s Wedding at Cana to a Palladian refectory on a lagoon island where it hung from 1563 until the French emperor sacked Venice in 1797.

“I feel I can appeal to your sensitivity to raise the Veronese issue with French public opinion once more,” PNE culture chief Ettore Beggiato wrote to the Italian wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Beggiato said that “thanks to (Bruni’s) authoritativeness” the Mannerist masterpiece “may find its way back to its natural home on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore”.

He recalled that Bruni, who is also a singer and arts patron, had come out in the past in favour of returning the giant canvas, one of the prize pieces in the Louvre’s late-Renaissance collection.

The former supermodel also came to Venice in November to give the Cini Foundation, which is based on San Giorgio, the huge archive of her father Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, a tyre magnate, music buff and art collector who died in 1996, the PNE chief noted.

The Louvre has turned a deaf ear to Venetian pleas for the Veronese, which is regarded as his greatest large-canvas achievement.

France has closed its embassy in Yemen after threats from a local branch of Al-Qaeda, the French foreign ministry said Monday, following a similar move by the United States and Britain.

“On January 3, our ambassador decided to no longer authorise public access to the premises of our diplomatic mission,” spokesman Bernard Valero told reporters.

He said French citizens in the country had been warned to remain vigilant and to limit their movements.

Yemeni forces have tightened security around the airport and foreign embassies in the capital Sanaa amid fears of strikes by an Al-Qaeda branch linked to a botched attack on a US airliner.
The US and British embassies in Sanaa have been shut since Sunday for what they said were reasons of security.

US President Barack Obama has accused the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) of arming and training a Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day.

AQAP claimed responsibility for the failed attack and called for strikes on embassies in Yemen.

Read more here.

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France 24 reports that France is currently in the throws of a debate on what it means to be French and what French national identity is, a discussion that many feel has been stirred up by the ruling UMP Party in advance of regional elections as a means of speaking about two reliable right-leaning themes: immigration and integration.

In the context of this national debate, the Minister for Families Nadine Morano yesterday made some incendiary remarks at a public meeting in the east of France. She told those assembled that in order to integrate, Muslim youths should dress and speak properly. “I would prefer if young Muslims did not speak slang (“verlan”) or wear baseball caps backwards,” she remarked. Many are asking how narrow the interpretation of national identity can be if, as Morano sees it, it doesn’t include such basic elements of youth culture as dressing differently and being inventive with language. “Verlan”, the particular kind of French slang Morano referred to, takes ordinary French words and “inverts” them. For instance, “arabe” (Arab) becomes “beur”. Many linguists have pointed to this as an example of how the French language is alive and evolving. Critics and purists see it as a threat, however.

Predictably, the left-leaning press is unimpressed by Morano’s remarks. Liberation says this is just the latest in a series of remarks made by UMP politicians that are racist in nature. Earlier this year, the former Immigration Minister (currently Interior Minister) Brice Hortefeux was caught on camera telling a party member of Arabic origin that ‘one of you is ok but where there are many there is a problem.” The remark was made in jest but was broadly condemned.

Libération’s editorial warns against making a false distinction between being Muslim and being French.

“Of course we can debate what the nation means and what Islam means but not to the extent that it becomes a point-scoring exercise with the Front National (far-right party),” the paper notes.

The regional newspaper L’Est Républicain defends Morano in its editorial, saying the controversial remarks were taken out of context. Morano was merely giving examples of how following certain social codes is essential to integrating, it says.

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