Jedem das Seine. Barbara Rütting muss immer wieder erzählen, wie sie ihr Brot selber bäckt; Nadja Tiller und Walter Giller, wie sie sich vor 5o Jahren kennengelernt haben; Angela Ermakowa, wie sie von Boris Becker in der Besenkammer eines Londoner Hotels geschwängert wurde; Dietmar Schönherr, wie er den Kapitän im Raumschiff Orion gespielt und Dolly Buster, wie sie zum ersten Mal ihren G-Punkt gefunden hat. Mehr haben sie nicht zu bieten, und mehr will man von ihnen auch nicht hören. Und alles, was man von Alfred Grosser hören will, ist eine Antwort auf die Frage: “Wie hältst du es mit Israel, Alfred?” Und schon kommt die postsenile Plaudertasche richtig in Fahrt, zuletzt im stern. http://www.stern.de/politik/ausland/:Alfred-Grosser-Israels-Politik-Antisemitismus/600037.html
Was aber hat A.G. mit Israel oder den Juden zu tun?...

Schöner Text im Wall Street Journal über eine ärgerliche Entscheidung:

Not Nobel Winners

“In Olso yesterday, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to the Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country’s military junta in recent weeks captured the attention of the Free World.
The prize was also not awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders who were arrested and in some cases beaten by police earlier this year while protesting peacefully against dictator Robert Mugabe.
Or to Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest in Vietnam arrested this year and sentenced to eight years in prison for helping the pro-democracy group Block 8406.
Or to Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni, co-founders of the League of Demanders of Women’s Right to Drive Cars in...

A couple of years ago I gave a lecture at a French university on the
intergenerational transmission of historical trauma. After it, a group
of students from what seemed a variety of countries—gathered to ask
me questions. Was it important to me, they wanted to know, that the
government of Germany acknowledged the Nazi genocide of Jews?
Yes, I said. It was very important. I wondered which of the twentieth
century genocides –Armenian? Rwandan? Cambodian?—the families of
the students before me had survived and, not for the first time, was
astonished at the depth with which historic trauma marks its survivors
generations later.
It may be politically expedient to deny the Armenian genocide but
it’s morally wrong. As a writer, I support novelist Orhan Pamuk and
other courageous Turkish artists and writers who have paid dearly for
telling...

Mahmoud Ahmadeinejad (Iran) und Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) wollen eine progressive Front aufbauen, zusammen mit bewährten Revolutionären aus Nicaragua und Bolivien. Auf einer Konferenz in Teheran wurden die Pläne für einen “globalen Jihad” bekannt gegeben. Dabei ging es ziemlich drunter und drüber zu. Amir Taheri war dabei.

The Khomeinists were pleased to hear their European and Latin American guests denounce “America’s criminal plans to attack the Islamic revolution,” and insist that Iran had every right to develop its nuclear capabilities. The aging Guevaristas were equally pleased as their hosts praised the dead T-shirt poster boy as “a fighter for universal justice.”

Mahdi Chamran claimed that Ahmadinejad, Chavez and “the leaders of the revolution in Nicaragua and Bolivia” belong to the same family of “strugglers for universal...

“The total energy reserve contained in the Sun would be sufficient to support forever a society with a complexity 10 trillion times greater than our own.” (Freeman Dyson, Infinite in all Directions, 1985)

Space Solar Power Video Animation
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/sspvideo.htm

Where, exactly, does his message fit in with promoting world peace? According to the Nobel committee, climate change “may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the Earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.” Cut greenhouse emissions, in other words, and climate change will be averted and peace will be preserved.

There is a problem with this thesis, in that the process of cutting greenhouse emissions itself has the potential to burden the world’s most vulnerable countries and to induce violent conflicts and wars. Nothing would be so damaging for world peace than if developing nations were hindered in their efforts to industrialise, thereby...

Indonesia wants to be paid $US5-$US20 ($A5.50-$A22.20) per hectare not to destroy its remaining forests, the environment minister says, for the first time giving an actual figure that he wants the world’s rich countries to pay.

Participants from 189 countries are expected to gather in Bali for global climate talks at a UN-led summit in December.

They will hear a report on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation (RED) - a new scheme that aims to make emission cuts from forest areas eligible for global carbon trading.

But apart from carbon trading, Indonesia also wants big emitters such as the United States and the European Union to pay the country to preserve its pristine rainforests.

“We will ask for a compensation of $5-20 per hectare. It’s not fixed; it is open to negotiation,” Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar told reporters...

I see a bright future for the biotechnology industry when it follows the path of the computer industry, the path that von Neumann failed to foresee, becoming small and domesticated rather than big and centralized. The first step in this direction was already taken recently, when genetically modified tropical fish with new and brilliant colors appeared in pet stores. For biotechnology to become domesticated, the next step is to become user-friendly. I recently spent a happy day at the Philadelphia Flower Show, the biggest indoor flower show in the world, where flower breeders from all over the world show off the results of their efforts. I have also visited the Reptile Show in San Diego, an equally impressive show displaying the work of another set of breeders. Philadelphia excels in orchids and roses, San Diego excels in lizards and...