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Hooligangs

Worth watching. As the film say at the end: the next riots are happing in Austria / Switzerland 2008. (via vowe)

Peace

This is really shocking

A blood-covered girl screams after her parents were fatally shot by soldiers with the 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division after the family failed to stop driving their car. The girl was uninjured.

more + images (via boingboing)

Allowed to live on the same continent

This is crazy: US agnorance to Canadians: "They even don´t need an armee, we protect them." But what the US really don´t like about Canadians, is - they speak french! Watch it! (via Christian)

A President full of surprises

Another surprise from George Walker Bush: first he started a blog (not accessible at this time), then, well, invaded Iraq, and now it turns out, when he rides his bicycle, he listens to an iPod - he´s supposed to be the man holding it in the picture on the left. Maybe the iPresident is the "ultimate endorsement" for getting an iPod ! :-)

(via engadget)

Tsunami disaster

Help! Online donations available at: Austria | Germany | USA

Tsunami blog

There´s lots of Tsunami related coverage these days on blogs all over the world - such as on BoingBoing and the The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog, which lists contact numbers in the region and more.

Europe

"Punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia"

Condoleezza Rice in the spring of 2003 on how Washington should treat European opponents of the US.-led invasion of iraq. (Select any source you like)

9th November 1989

Haiko Hebig has some links regarding 9. November 1989 - the fall of the Berliner Mauer (the wall in Berlin) - with audio statements (MP3) from Walter Ulbricht, JFK, Ronald Reagan, Willy Brandt and the legendary press conference (german link) with Günther "Nach meiner Kenntnis ... ist das sofort" Schabowski. Worth listening!

Oh, America!

Well, I wasn´t going to blog on the US elections and it´s surprising, in a way yes, outcome.

Apart from the results, the voting system is though really very weird, especially with the several different ways the ballot is taken.

Please note what the Internation Herald Tribune wrote about the OSCE election monitors.

The observers said they had less access to polls than in Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of Georgia and that no other country had such a complex national election system.

and especially:

Jeff Miller, a Republican congressman from Florida, considers the monitors an insult and has publicly urged them to leave. "Get on the next plane out of the United States to go monitor an election somewhere else, like Afghanistan," he said.

I agree that the initiative by the Guardian to persuade Ohio citizens to vote for Kerry was stupid and counterproductive, but the general momentum is that the world did care about this election. Now it´s four more years. Let´s see what 2008 will bring.

(partly via Joi Ito's Web)

Transatlantic differences

Things differ. In Europe Italy´s controversial European Commission nominee, Rucco Buttiglione, is going to stand down because of his views on homosexuality and women (from a conservative roman catholic viewpoint). In the US - as German TV network ARD reports - president Bush as a supporter of creationism, with the ARD author touting that movement as a danger to science. Creationism supporters object the teaching of evolution at (public) schools in the US, whereas the Superior Court ruled in 1987 against creatistic education due to the seperation of government and religion (as defined in the US constitution).

Further reading: Case for a Creator, by Lee Strobel (pro Creationism), The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins (pro evolution). I didn´t read either though.

(partly via mehrzweckbeutel)

HTTP 403 (Access Denied)

Seems that George doesn´t like us nasty Europeans visiting georgewbush.com. Ah, how stupid, as we can - through this or this or any other anonymization service or public proxy server. The internet strikes back! :-) (via vowe)

Or forget these services - they are too slow anyway - and try the https version. Then watch the video "Whatever it takes".

I remember public proxy servers came handy when the 128 bit version of Microsoft Internet Explorer wasn´t available from outside the US, and that was quite some time ago!

How did you feel

Austrian sport journalists like to ask questions like "How did you feel when ...". Now even designated foreign minister Ursula Plassnik was asked how she felt when she was nominated. Really stupid.

Schwimmstar Marcus Rogan konterte in Athen mit: "Was für eine originelle Frage! Wie sind Sie darauf gekommen?"

(via DerStandard, page 1, 20.10.2004)

International politics backfire

Some US-citizens are not amused by project Operation Clark County which asks to write to undecided voters and persuade them to vote for Kerry. In the first three days over 11,000 people requested addresses, but according to the Guardian some Americans objected:

Have you not noticed that Americans don't give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies.

Somehow some Americans have a deep misunderstanding of Europe, politically and economically. :-(

Bushlympics!

Telepolis blogs (in German) about the games in NYC.

Das hätte man nicht besser choreographieren können. Kaum ist die olympische Flamme in Athen erloschen, da beginnen bereits die nächsten Spiele der Neuzeit. Herzlich willkommen in New York, herzlich willkommen zu den BUSHLYMPICS! Die Republikanische Partei und ihr Vortuner, Präsident George W. Bush, laden ein zu fünf Tagen voll Spiel, Spaß und Spannung.

Mike is blogging

Michael Moore has launched a blog - read it!

Too good

"If it sounds too good to be true, it is not true!!!"

The NYT reports on Nigerian scam eMails.

Europe 2004

Find the party you should vote on in the upcoming European Parliament elections based on 25 questions in VoteMatch Europe 2004.

Who and when

Check attendance records for Austrian (and other nationalities) european parliament members.

Alternative intimacy at school

Guess we went to school at the wrong time (and the wrong place too): a british government study shows that the best way to cut teenage pregnancy is to encourage schoolchildren to try oral sex. Yes, that´s oral sex lessons!