Early Monday morning, Israeli forces killed Hamas’ spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin. Here’s some early coverage of this important development from Reuters, AP, and Haaretz.
Author Archives: Tobias Schwarz
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Recently, Samuel Huntington laid out his reasons for being afraid of Mexican immigrants to the US in an essay in Foreign Policy. You should read it. But even more importantly, make sure to read our AFOE co-editor Scott Martens’ most excellent three part (one, two, three) point by point refutation of Mr Huntington’s effort over at pedantry. While the case study is about the US, there are important lessons to be drawn for European immigration, too – “It’s all Tim Berner-Lee’s fault.”
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According to the people who voted in the Bloggytm category “best European weblog”, the best one is Textism. The four runner-ups are, in order of appearance on the award’s website – Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent, Open Brackets, Giornale Nuovo, Chocolate & Zucchini. The overall winner is, by the way, BoingBoing, the directory of wonderful things.
Al Quaida, a Learning Organisation?
Spiegel Online claims to be in possession of a 42-page arabic language document that, according to the magazine’s author, Yassin Musharbash, suggests not only that Al Quaida had strategically targeted Madrid just before the elections, but, moreover, that the organisation’s intellectual and thus strategic capacities seem to have risen significantly. According to Musharbash’s article (in German), international experts who analysed the document – which was allegedly found on the internet by a Norwegian defense research agency in December 2003 – assume it to be authentic.
Digitally Scared.
No doubt about it – revolutions are truly scary. Whether you think of the French one, the ones that freed Eastern Europe, or the digital revolution that is currently changing much of the transactional structure of our economies, and in particular the music industry. But contrary to most people, I do pity major label executives who never even stood a chance of understanding just what happened to them. After all, this is an industry where the average person?s desk had not seen a computer in 1996, as some insider once said.
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Right on time: The European Journalism Center’s report on the Cyprus Media landscape.
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The EU is now officially a player in this year’s US elections: After talks in Washington failed, Pascal Lamy, the EU trade commissioner, has confirmed that progressive trade sanctions to counteract illegal US export tax breaks will be imposed from March 1st on.
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After a stopover in Chicago, where he once again urged to keep more than an eye on the current Dollar weakness and Euro area interest rates (transcript in English | .doc), Gerhard Schroeder is having lunch with GW Bush today in order to further mend relations after the two leaders’ bitter disagreement over Iraq.
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EUR-Lex, the EU’s web gateway to legal documents now also offers provisional access to the official legislative journals of all member states (via handakte.de)
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The Boston Globe has uncovered the (truly) European roots of J.F. Kerry. Sueddeutsche Zeitung picks the subject up… “I hope you don’t write that Kerry was a Sudeten-German…” (in German).