In case you missed it, nine countries have joined the Schengen area today: our three Baltic states, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia and Malta.
For European citizens, we can travel through all those countries with just a simple national ID. This is even better for non-EU citizens who can now travel to these countries with a common Schengen Visa.
Goody goody!
An article on the BBC website.
This I learned from Paul Oakenfold.
He is so full of shit 
A succession of weird assassinations: Andrei Kozlov (young vice-president of the Central Bank), Anna Politkovskaia, Alexandre Litvinenko (in the UK this time, this is quite something). Recently, Kasparov has been sent to jail for a few days for no obvious reason. All opposition seems to be systematically repressed.
But the fact is none of this is necessary, Putin has got a strong regime with a really strong following and would have won the elections anyway. So I have a question: what’s the point?
The answer probably lies in a deeper analysis of the Russian political sociology. Unfortunately I don’t know anything about that.
EDIT 04/12/07:Sarkozy has “heartily congratulated” President Putin on his party’s win. Talk about sucking up…On the other side of the border, in Germany, the government has said of the same Russian elections that they were not fair nor democratic.
Unser Täglich Brot is a documentary by Nikolaus Geyrhalter about food production.
It has no interviews, no comments, no music, and yet it’s absolutely brilliant!
In cinemas in the UK on the 25/01/08.
US President George W Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have said they will work jointly to convince Iran to give up its nuclear programme.
Source BBC News.
We can expect the worst…
I’ve found the on the Ninja Tune website some links to three videos from Coldcut @ the Eurockéennes de Belfort this year.
As usual with Coldcut, there’s a lot of VJing and visual effects with their music.
A hip-hoppy first part with MC Juice Aleem, mixed with Hendrix and AC/DC. Those Coldcut guys are crazy!
The second part, not any saner than the first. Humphrey Bogart can be seen with some bits of Blade Runner and C3PO.
Oh and remember how they mixed the theme from Peter and the Wolf 10 years ago? Well they’ve done it again with the jazzy theme of King Louie from the Jungle Book animation movie.
The third video: utterly out of control!
Blair, Bush, Chirac, Nixon with Tintin and even Pierre Richard for a loud D’n'B version of “Revolution”. The lunatics have taken over!
There’s a very, very interesting article on Le Monde Diplomatique about Max Havelaar and the development of fair trade.
It’s called “Max Havelaar ou les ambiguïtés du commerce équitable”. Unfortunately it’s only available in French, if I’ve got time I’ll translate bits of it into English.
Have you ever noticed that now a majority of coffee and tea you find at your supermarket are labeled “Fair Trade” and have the Max Havelaar logo on it? It’s literally exploded during the last five years.
Have you ever wondered why, with so many fair trade products now being sold, the situation of poor peasants in developing countries hasn’t improved significantly?
What do you think of McDonald’s or Starbucks, two companies that have dubious social practices, selling fair trade coffee?
If you’ve asked yourselves these questions, then this article is for you.
The article is quoting the CEO of Leclerc, one of the biggest supermarket chains in France:
Fair trade is just an emerging market segment. With bigger volumes, producers will be able to squeeze their production costs, thus allowing us to increase our margins.
This is surprisingly eloquent, especially coming from this CEO and that sort of confirms the feeling I’ve got when I’m in the coffee/tea alley at the supermarket: spurred by “charity coffee” businessmen, fair trade has quickly become the trade of fair…
Last Saturday, Bavaria’s very own Edmund Stoiber has resigned from both his posts of minister-president of Bavaria and CSU party chairman.
Here’s a few videos to remember him by:
Transrapid
Thanks to Stoiber’s convincing speech, the state of Bavaria has decided to go ahead with the Transrapid.
Bruno der Problembär
Farewell Edmund, you will be missed!
I don’t want this blog to become just a repository for links to articles written by other people. But when I hardly have the motivation to write something of my own (this something wouldn’t be clever anyway), and when someone else comes up with a gem, I have to give you the link.
Influential Mac developer and astute businessman Wil Shipley is expressing his views about Apple, the iPod, the iPhone and iTunes. His thoughts are very sharp and I couldn’t agree more.
Continue reading ‘Apple, the iPod, iPhone and iTunes: comments by Wil Shipley’
I used to be the sort of person who thinks: why would I pay for a software if I can get the same, or rather the same result, for free?
While I still look around for free software, and definitely love it, I think I’ve come to acknowledge the value of paid software.
Continue reading ‘Blogging with MarsEdit’
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