Although I am far from being an expert on the subject, I did some work in the Middle East and had the opportunity to facilitate mixed groups of Israeli, Palestinians, Lebanese and others in their effort to dialogue and launch co-operation projects.

One of the good things about those project was that participants were ordinary people, mostly members of small NGO’s that had as a primary concern other issues than the ongoing conflict in the region. Talking to each other and starting a cooperation was in large part just instrumental to access public funding from international institutions.

Paradoxically, I think that particular mix of participants maximised the outcome in terms of peace building. The fact that meetings were not targeting peace activists avoided the “preach to the converted” situation, and the fact the issue at stake was not “peace in the middle east” prevented the discussion to reach a standstill (participants had to challenge only some of their beliefs in order to co-operate, and not all of them, all together). Read the rest of this entry »

As anybody who follows international politics knows by now, the Sweden Democrats (whose only democratic thing is the name, being the party a spin-off of the neo-nazi movement) have for the first time in history gone over the 4% threshold, a fact that allows them to sit in the Swedish riksdag.

On the election night (SVT1 live coverage of the event), Jimmie Åkesson (the party leader) claimed that SD “are not against immigrants, but against broken immigration laws”. Not that anybody really believed him, but it is good to know that some of his fellow neonazis proved him wrong in a matter of hours.

From this article:

“Line the immigrants here on the film up against the wall and put a bullet between the eyes, then put them in a bag, stick a stamp on them and send them back to where they come from,” the Sweden Democrat candidate for Trelleborg in southern Sweden wrote on her Facebook page, according to the local Trelleborgs Allehanda daily.

On the other hand, there are rumors the other parties in the parliament are working out new rules for the parliament commissions, with the specific aim to exclude the SD from taking part into the work of them. Let’s hope they will manage to keep them at bay.

Yesterday was election day in Sweden and also my first direct experience with democratic elections.  Although the result was extremely disappointing yet the whole experience was amazing and very thought provoking. I believe that many modern Western citizens, especially young ones, take the right to vote for granted, but it’s  means something completely different for someone who was only given the chance to vote yes or no for the same president for most of her adult life (Hosny Mubarak is still in power and the preparations are in full swing to “coronate” his son).

Read the rest of this entry »

Isao Hashimoto works as curator in a Japanese museum. He is not famous, but a few years back, he made a short film showing the location of nuclear detonation on the planet, in the years 1945 to 1998, that became famous enough for me to find it.

The clip is lengthy and – quite frankly – a bit repetitive, but it serves well the purpose of illustrating the idiocy of the human race. Some data and observations that is easy to extrapolate from watching the film: Read the rest of this entry »

Remember my wife’s post on TED?

Well, a couple of days ago TED released the latest talk from Hans Rosling… Another great one, both content-wise and for the way it is delivered. Enjoy!

With the depletion of oil reserves, and the increase in extraction costs, even mainstream media have begun to publish articles about the need to reach out for alternative sources of energy.

Naturally, oil companies have no interest in promoting use of truly renewable energies: energy generation based on natural, abundant and freely accessible resources (such wind, tides and solar radiation) would radically change the “rules of the game” and break the monopoly of the supermajor. The business model of oil companies is extracting natural resources and selling them, and this is why they are now trying hard to legitimise coal and natural gas as “environmentally friendly” source of energy.

Of course I never believed for a moment that natural gas could be the right answer to the problem, but – until yesterday – I was under the impression that natural gas was at least cleaner alternative to oil. Little I knew that: Read the rest of this entry »

Social and economical costs of road accidents are huge, even more so in industrialised realities such the USA or the EU.

According to the report linked above, “The socio-economic cost [of road accidents] is estimated to be about 2% of a country’s gross domestic product. For European Union countries alone, this means about €180 billion – twice the Union’s annual budget.”

But the real surprise comes a few lines further down the report: “Reducing the average driving speed by 3 km/h would save [...] €20 billion in crash costs.”. Have difficulties figuring how much money is that? Just think that according to the FAO (The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations) that is about what it takes to eradicate world hunger. Think about it: if Europeans drive 3 km/h slower, we will eradicate world hunger. It seems a good deal to me. Read the rest of this entry »