Month: September 2004
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Sept. 11 and Beslan: a battle for civilization
Victor Erofeyev sounds alot like John Waters in the Irish Times last week, and Mark Steyn in the Spectator last Thursday. Where does Basayev end and Al Qaeda begin? A separatist and a fundamentalist are two very different things. The first demands political separation; the second declares holy war against us. But the separatist Basayev…
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There is no such thing as a war on terrorism: Javier Marías
Javier Marías is the author of “Dark Back of Time.”, and makes an interesting argument right at the end of the piece, I am inclined to agree with him. Here in Spain, we don’t feel as if we are at war because we aren’t. And neither are the inhabitants of the United States, however vociferously…
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Expats bask in Dubai's boom
Another article on Dubai, the “rising star” of the Middle East. A good article too, I see the hack in question had pints down in the Irish Village in Garhoud. The property markey in Dubai is booming, but I would always be sceptical about buying property in a kingdom with no real property rights, and…
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As journalists die, the government looks away
In the Philippines, journalists are working in one of the most dangerous environments in the world: Philippine journalists are dropping like flies, and the authorities are blaming the victims for their own violent deaths. Four journalists murdered between July 31 and Aug. 12 brought to 55 the number killed since 1986. Astoundingly, not one of…
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Plotting Europe's eastern border
Viktor Yushchenko, candidate in the upcoming Ukrainian presidential elections, makes some interesting points about the future of the Ukraine, and worries concerning the expanded European Union. He states: While welcoming the enlargement of the European Union, Ukrainians are anxious about European integration halting at our western frontier and in fact creating a new dividing line.…
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EU plays a strong role on Darfur
Bernard Bot, minister of foreign affairs of the Netherlands and the current president of the EU Council of Ministers writes about Europe’s efforts in relation to Darfur. If the European Union talks to the rebels, we will declare a unilateral cease-fire,â? said Vice President Ali Osman Taha of Sudan after his meeting with a Dutch…
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A Western strategy for Chechnya
Anatol Lieven, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington has a good piece about Chechnya in the IHT. He believes that the West needs a new strategy for Chechnya and that this strategy should have 3 vital components: The first would be directed towards Moscow, and would echo our approach…
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Sitemeter
Oh and my Sitemeter has passed the 250,000 visitor mark. Wohoo.
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Posting
I have alot of work to do on the backend of the server – I need to do some tweaking in order to get RSS, RSS2, RDF and Atom.xml feeds working again. It is all in PHP and SQL and relates in a complicated way to how WordPress is installed. I also have to work…
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Bloggin
Just too tired lately to blog, but have a good list of stuff to blog…it builds and builds.