maandag, november 30, 2009
Stad Amsterdam
ashmachine iPhoneLabels: Beagle-trip
- posted by DD @ 11:19 a.m. Perma Link/Print (0) comments
zondag, november 29, 2009
America vs. The Narrative
hat should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood?Here’s my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against America — the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by “The Narrative.”
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Read on | The New York Times
Labels: NY Times, Thomas Friedman
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Opinion leaders in Turkey welcome Wilders visit
he Turkish government fears a visit by Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders will have negative consequences for its relations with the Netherlands and Europe. But both secular and religious Turks say they welcome a debate with him.Read on | nrc.nl - International - Features - Opinion leaders in Turkey welcome Wilders visit
Labels: Geert Wilders, Turkey
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dinsdag, november 24, 2009
Minister on Jack Sparrow in first TED Amsterdam
rans Timmermans, minister of European Affairs of the Netherlands holds the opening Talk on the first TED Talk in Amsterdam last friday.TEDxAmsterdam 2009 - Frans Timmermans from Fellermedia on Vimeo.
Labels: Frans Timmermans, TED Talk, Ted.com
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zondag, november 22, 2009
Trading Our Way Out of Crisis
ENEVA – Global trade contracted in 2009 at a rate not seen since the Great Depression, and those paying the heaviest price are those who can least afford it. So, when trade ministers from the World Trade Organization’s 153 members gather in Geneva later this month, the issue of how the WTO and the global trading system can help the poorest countries will be high on the agenda.Driven largely by collapsing domestic demand and production levels, but also by a shortage of affordable trade finance, trade volumes will fall by more than 10% this year. Whether trade will recover next year is an open question. Despite some evidence that trade volumes grew over the summer, recovery has been patchy – and so fragile that a sudden shock in equity or currency markets could once again undermine consumer and business confidence, leading to a further deterioration of trade.
Pascal Lamy
Read on |Project Syndicate - Trading Our Way Out of Crisis
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Labels: Economy, Pascal Lamy, Project Syndicate, WTO
- posted by DD @ 2:18 p.m. Perma Link/Print (0) comments
Obama in Chains
EW YORK – It is hard for international observers of the United States to grasp the political paralysis that grips the country, and that seriously threatens America’s ability to solve its domestic problems and contribute to international problem solving. America’s governance crisis is the worst in modern history. Moreover, it is likely to worsen in the years ahead.The difficulties that President Barack Obama is having in passing his basic program, whether in health care, climate change, or financial reform, are hard to understand at first glance. After all, he is personally popular, and his Democratic Party holds commanding majorities in both houses of Congress. Yet his agenda is stalled and the country’s ideological divisions grow deeper.
Jeffrey D. Sachs
Read on | Project Syndicate - Obama in Chains
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Labels: Barack Obama, Project Syndicate, United States
- posted by DD @ 2:10 p.m. Perma Link/Print (0) comments
Big Think Interview With Paul Auster
he auther Paul Auster interviewed on his latest novel Invisible.Big Think Interview With Paul Auster | Paul Auster | Big Think
Labels: BigThink, Paul Auster
- posted by DD @ 1:13 p.m. Perma Link/Print (0) comments
vrijdag, november 20, 2009
New EU's president's life motto is quiet determination
erman Van Rompuy is a practising Catholic who belongs to the conservative wing of the Flemish Christian Democrat party. He prefers the Beatles to the Stones.Not long after Herman Van Rompuy unexpectedly became prime minister of Belgium late last year, he went on a skiing holiday to Austria – by overnight coach. He didn't intend to suddenly start living a life of luxury, he said. Last summer Van Rompuy ventured out quite a bit further, to Australia, but he travelled economy class.
nrc.nl - International - Europe - New EU's president'slife motto is quiet determination
Labels: European Union, Van Rompuy
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EU names Belgian Van Rompuy as first president
uropean Union leaders named Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy, who is little known outside his own country, as the bloc's first president on Thursday to lead efforts to make it more influential on the world stage.They also chose baroness Catherine Ashton, a Briton little known even in her own country, as EU foreign affairs chief under a deal that kept out more established figures such as Tony Blair, and raised questions about how the bloc plans to lift its profile.
Read on | nrc.nl - International - Europe - EU names Belgian Van Rompuy as first president
Labels: European Union, Van Rompuy
- posted by DD @ 10:15 a.m. Perma Link/Print (0) comments
zondag, november 15, 2009
The climate peril: a race against time
he latest climate-modelling projections underline the potentially catastrophic impact of global warming. The implications for civic and political action are profound.The approach to the United Nations climate-change summit in Copenhagen on 7-18 December 2009 is mired in controversy as blocs of states vie with each other to determine the real agenda. The multiple interests involved range from elite trading-networks and powerful oil-producers to small-island states in the global south. The underlying reality is a deep-seated inequality in bargaining-power in which the United States and leading European Union member-states can assemble delegations of a hundred or more specialist advisers, whereas the poorest states may have two or three diplomats with no special help. The stark injustice is reinforced by the fact that the climate dynamics of the world’s environment put the majority world most at risk.
Paul Rogers
Read on | Open Democracy: The climate peril: a race against time
Labels: Climate Change, Open Democracy
- posted by DD @ 11:18 p.m. Perma Link/Print (0) comments
donderdag, november 12, 2009
Global Warming’s Misunderstood Victims
AMAKO, MALI – Media organizations in wealthy countries regularly send forth reporters to find “victims of global warming.” In dispatches from the Pacific Islands, Bangladesh, or Ethiopia, journalists warn of impending calamity. Global warming is the most horrific challenge facing these regions, we are told. Its resolution is vital.But seldom do we hear from the local people who are said to be in danger. These people are not voiceless; we just pay no attention to what they say.
The Copenhagen Consensus Center set out to ask people in global-warming hot spots about their fears and hopes.
Bjorn Lomborg
Read on | Project Syndicate - Global Warming’s Misunderstood Victims
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Labels: Bjorn Lomborg, Climate Change, Project Syndicate
- posted by DD @ 11:34 p.m. Perma Link/Print (0) comments
Held by the Taliban
he story of David Rohde, a New York Times reporter, kidnapped by the Taliban, who finally escaped.Labels: Afghanistan, David Rohde, Taliban
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More Walls to Fall
OSCOW – The German people, and the whole world alongside them, are celebrating a landmark date in history, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not many events remain in the collective memory as a watershed that divides two distinct periods. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall – that stark, concrete symbol of a world divided into hostile camps – is such a defining moment.The fall of the Berlin Wall brought hope and opportunity to people everywhere, and provided the 1980’s with a truly jubilant finale. That is something to think about as this decade draws to a close – and as the chance for humanity to take another momentous leap forward appears to be slipping away.
Mikhail Gorbachev
Read on | Project Syndicate - More Walls to Fall
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Labels: 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev, Project Syndicate
- posted by DD @ 8:58 a.m. Perma Link/Print (0) comments
zondag, november 08, 2009
Saul Griffith: Climate Change Recalculated
ongnow seminar, at langnow.org.Labels: Climate Change, Kernenergie, Klimaat, LongNow
- posted by DD @ 5:22 p.m. Perma Link/Print (0) comments
A Great Jump to Disaster?
he idea that Earth is a living thing goes back at least as far as Plato, who according to Francis Bacon believed that the planet "was one entire, perfect, living creature." But it was James Lovelock and his colleague Lynn Margulis who, in the early 1970s, developed a testable scientific hypothesis aimed at investigating Earth's lifelike properties. Known as the Gaia hypothesis, it states that life on Earth works to keep conditions at the planet's surface favorable to life itself. In 2006 this led to Lovelock joining the likes of Louis Agassiz and Charles Darwin in receiving geology's most prestigious prize—the Geological Society's Wollaston Medal. In presenting the award the society's president acknowledged that the Gaia hypothesis had "opened up a whole new field of Earth Science study.A Review by Tim Flannery
Read on | A Great Jump to Disaster? - The New York Review of Books
Interview by Nature.com with James Lovelock.
Labels: Climate Change, James Lovelock
- posted by DD @ 2:46 p.m. Perma Link/Print (0) comments
dinsdag, november 03, 2009
What’s Left After 1989?
EW YORK – Twenty years ago, when the Berlin Wall was breached and the Soviet empire was collapsing, only die-hard believers in a communist utopia felt unhappy. A few people, of course, clung to the possibility of what was once called “actually existing socialism.” Others criticized the triumphalism of the “new world order” promised by George H.W. Bush. And the way West Germany rolled over the wreckage of its East German neighbor seemed almost like an act of cruelty.Still, 1989 was a good time to be alive (except in China, where the democrats were put down). Many of us felt that we were seeing the dawn of a new liberal age, in which freedom and justice would spread, like fresh flowers, across the globe. Twenty years on, we know this was not to be.
Xenophobic populism is stalking democracies in Europe.
Ian Buruma
Project Syndicate - What’s Left After 1989?
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Labels: 1989, Ian Buruma, Project Syndicate
- posted by DD @ 11:43 a.m. Perma Link/Print (0) comments
maandag, november 02, 2009
Twenty Years After the Wall
ERLIN – Those who witnessed that night 20 years ago in Berlin, or elsewhere in Germany, will never forget what happened – the night the Wall came down.History in the making is all too often tragic. Only rarely is it capable of irony. November 9, 1989, was one of those rare moments when irony reigned, because East Germany’s bureaucratic socialism died as it had lived – with a bureaucratic snafu.
Joschka Fischer
Read on | Project Syndicate - Twenty Years After the Wall
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Labels: 1989, Germany, Joschka Fischer, Project Syndicate
- posted by DD @ 11:17 a.m. Perma Link/Print (0) comments
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