US removes Nelson Mandela from terror list

Just in time for his 90th birthday this month the USA has removed former South African President and Nobel Peace Price laureate Nelson Mandela from the so called “US terrorists watch list”. After the bill had been approved by the US Senate, G.W Bush has now signed it and by that bringing an end to at least one of the most visible quarrels beleaguering this “list” since a long time.

“…Today the United States moved closer at last to removing the great shame of dishonoring this great leader by including him on our government’s terror watch list…” said Senator John Kerry.

Previously Nelson Mandela like other former ANC freedom fighters required…

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Geo-Politics: The New Yorker on war preparations in the USA

The New Yorker in his next issue (July 7 - available online) includes an excellent editorial on the preparations for another war by the Bush administration.

This time its Iraq Iran and based on a Presidential Finding signed by G.W. Bush the congress has already approved 400 Million USD for covert, sabotage and all sorts of other shady activities to “destabilize Iran“…

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USA: The never ending story of money motivated war crimes in Iraq continues

What BBC’s popular political TV magazine Panorama yesterday night called the greatest heist in history or Daylight Robbery seems now to be going into another round of new discoveries.

In the more than one hour long broadcast Panorama’s Jane Corbin tells us some of the stories of those who became rich from the war and those who stood up against the crimes and “got burned”.

…If you believe that such corruption happens by pushing around brown envelopes with money under the table, sorry, but that might just be a very small part of it. We have compiled a short list of the most common activities identified within Iraq below. Some of them have also been mentioned in the report of Panorama yesterday night…

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Quote of the day: Civic courage

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.

The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations.

Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, famous Russian dissident writer, Nobel prize and Templeton Prize winner, Harvard University address (1979)

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Humor: Make Love

Great compilation, lots of kisses and dances - well just to get you forget what politics was all about - or is this actually what it is about.

The last flick alone is worth watching - young G.W. is showing us one of the building blocks of New Republican thinking.

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Data visualization: Leading surveillance societies around the world

Since 1997 two NGOs - the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International - have surveyed and assessed the state of surveillance and privacy protection in 47 countries. The annual Privacy & Human Rights Report compiled from their findings has by now become one of the most comprehensive surveys of global privacy and citizen rights.

Their “most recent report” published a few days ago has been created with the help of more than 200 experts from around the world and has grown to 1,100 pages. It shows trends of

“…an overall worsening of privacy protection across the world, reflecting an increase in surveillance and a declining performance of privacy safeguards…“, and

“…an increasing trend amongst governments to archive data on the geographic, communications and financial records of all their citizens and residents. This trend leads to the conclusion that all citizens, regardless of legal status, are under suspicion…

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Quote of the day: Iraq

I hate Iraq. I wish we had never gone to the place…

Winston Churchill, 1926

Quote of the Day: Foreign Policy

Yee-ha Is Not a Foreign Policy…
seen on a wall inside the Emerald City, Baghdad, Iraq

…is this the end of the yellow brick road…

Data Visualization: Doctors of the World

The image below was created as a poster for Dutch doctors to hangs on the wall of their waiting rooms. With 170 inhabitants per doctor Cuba is still the world leader on that chart. Not unsurprising other (former) communist countries follow on the next positions (in some of those countries the numbers have already started to deteriorate).
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Quote of the day: Arabia

We have been rather lazy to put up new content on this site (sorry for that, but we are preparing for a quite large project in the moment) so now just another short one (much more to come the next weeks):From the prologue of one of the books we are currently reading (Imperial Life in [...]