A world parliament - what a wonderful prospect.

Wired has a nice and elaborate article about The Pirate Bay which is "operated by a crew of intrepid Swedes who revel in tormenting the content industries."

Well, although the images in the winter-gallery keep streaming in, there admittedly has been very little writing here. This may be due to my blog in German that has gained a little momentum recently, mainly because I got a little involved in the discussions about the Mohammed-Cartoons. But I am awaiting the 4.7 release of Drupal and most probably the upgrade will bring a change in layout, too.

Englishman and this year's winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Harold Pinter fiercely attacked the foreign policy of the USA after the second world war. Even without being a fanatic America-basher, it is a very interesting read. You can read the lecture in different languages from here where you can also get the video version of it.

Earlier, I wrote about about the outcome of the recent German parliamentary elections. It seems now like the two big ones, the social-democrats (SPD) and the christian-democrats (CDU/CSU), form a grand coalition under Angela Merkel (CDU) as chancellor. Just to remind myself, let's make a list of the ministers and other important posts of the new government:

• Vice-Chancellor and Minister for Labour and Social Affairs: Franz Müntefering (SPD)
• Foreign Minister: Frank Walter Steinmeier (SPD)
• Minister of the Interior: Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU)
• Minister of Finance: Peer Steinbrück (SPD)
• Minister for Economic Affairs: Edmund Stoiber (CSU)
• Minister of Justice: Brigitte Zypries (SPD)
• Minister of Defense: Franz Josef Jung (CDU)
• Minister for Education and Research: Annette Schavan (CDU)
• Minster of Economical Collaboration and Humanitarian Aid: Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (SPD)
• Minister of Health: Ulla Schmidt (SPD)
• Family Minister: Ursula von der Leyen (CDU)
• Minister of Traffic, Building and Housing: Wolfgang Tiefensee (SPD)
• Minister of Environment, Ecology and Nuclear Security: Sigmar Gabriel (SPD)
• Minister for Agriculture and Consumer Potection: Host Seehofer (CSU)
• Minister of State at the Federal Chancellery: Thomas de Maizière (CDU)
• President of Parliament: Norbert Lammert (CDU)
• Head of SPD fraction: Peter Struck
• Head of CDU/CSU fraction: Volker Kauder

Now the CDU/CSU ministers are confirmed but I still might have missed something.

Ich habe mich hier neulich über Pressefreiheit ausgelassen und auch einen Artikel von Telepolis zur sogenannten "Cicero-Affäre" verlinkt. Nun, es ist sicherlich verständlich, dass Journalisten sich für ihre Kollegen einsetzen, aber wie es scheint ist das Vorgehen der Staatsanwaltschaft völlig berechtigt. Einen guten Überblick gibt dieser ZEIT-Artikel. Siehe auch diese kleine Diskussion.

This year's Peace Prize goes to the IAEA and its director general Mohamed ElBaradei. I read about him being a favourite for the prize a few days ago, but these statements are usually bogus (at least in the other Nobel categories). I am not into the subject enough to be able to give a qualified comment on the Laureate, but I definitely agree that the justification touches very important topics: "for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way"

It is always shocking to hear that one particular country is putting lots of money into developping mini-nukes that will lower inhibitions to start using nuclear weapons again, instead of complying with nuclear disarmament treaties.

Darf in einem kritischen Artikel ein Link auf die Web-Seite eines in Deutschland illegalen Produktes gesetzt werden, oder nicht? Die Musikindustrie denkt "Nein" und verklagte den Heise Verlag wegen eines Artikels auf der bekannten Nachrichtenseite heise.de. Jetzt hat der Verlag Verfassungsbeschwerde eingelegt gegen gefällte Urteile aus niedrigeren Instanzen. Diese Urteile gaben der Musikindustrie recht und werden jetzt schon verwendet, um Web-Seiten betreiber abzumahen. Links gehören zur Online-Berichterstattung und stellen den Hauptunterschied zu gedruckten medien dar - eine solche rechliche Ungewissheit, im Bezug auf was verlinkt werden darf, würde sicherlich zu einer Verarmung von Inhalten führen, denn wer kann und will denn schon das Risiko einer teuren Abmahnung oder eines Gerichtsverfahrens eingehen. Versuche der Zensur und Einflussnahme auf Inhalte im Internet gibt es wohl immer wieder und deshalb gerade deshalb ist es wichtig, dass der Verlag den Schritt zur höchsten Instanz geht. Ich hoffe sehr, dass das Bundesverfassungsgericht im Sinne der Pressefreiheit entscheidet.

Eine chronologische Zusammenfassung des bisherigen Verlaufs und den Wortlaut der Verfassungsbeschwerde findet man auf http://www.heise.de/heisevsmi/.

Nachtrag: Es scheint, dass nicht nur die Industrie gerne etwas an der Pressefreiheit ändern würde - die Politik macht das auch freiwillig. :-/

Tolle Neuigkeiten: Stoiber (Zitat:"Wenn ich über steuer- und erbrechtliche Anerkennung von homosexuellen Paaren diskutiere, dann kann ich gleich über Teufelsanbetung diskutieren.") will Minister in der großen Koalition werden und Beckstein (ja der, der Internet Zensur will) soll sein Nachfolger in Bayern werden. Supi! :-/

As mentioned previously, I attended the Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture, given by Hans Blix. It was a very good lecture and instead of me giving a summary of what he said, you can read the transcript here. I only can highly agree with most he said, which might have to do with the fact that there was little new or controversial for pro-UN thinking people. Nevertheless, it was nice to hear things in a concise way by someone who knows what he's talking about. I also took some pictures.

Yesterday, there were parlametary elections in Germany and the outcome was as shown in the image. Christian Democrats (black) with their candidate Angela Merkel have won in principle but their 35% are much less than the predicted and expected 45% that would have allowed them to build a government with the Liberals (yellow). The old government (red and green) have also lost enough votes to not be able to continue their coalition, but the big surprise is that chancellor Schröder managed to raise his Social-Democrats (red) party from desastrous 21% at the time when he announced re-elections a few months ago to almost equality with the favourite Blacks.

If I may guess, then this highly disappointing result will make the Blacks revolt against their leader Merkel who is far from being favoured by all in her party. This will give Schröder enough momentum to remain chancellor either in a grand coalition (black-red) or in a red-yellow-green coalition. If neither of the two big players manages to form a big enough coalition and gain the majority in the parliament to elect the new chancellor there, another round of re-elections will be held. Guessing again, I would say that this would probably favour Schröder even more.

All in all it is amazing that there are real chances of Schröder remaining chancellor in Germany - a fact that has been considered 100% impossible during the last months. The next days and weeks will be interesting and funny. Good Luck, Gerd! :-)

For more information in English, have a look at SPIEGEL's articles here or here. In German, have a look at TELEPOLIS' texts here and here.

The Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture will be given on Monday, Sep 19th, in the University Hall here in Uppsala, Sweden. This lecture is given once a year in memory of Dag Hammarskjöld, the former UN Secretary-General that originated from Uppsala. This year's lecture is held by Hans Blix who is from Uppsala as well. He was in the news frequently until 2003 as head of the United Nations Inspection Commission that investigated Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In case you don't remember: they found none, the American government did not believe it and used it as an excuse to invade Iraq, they still have not found any.

Of course, I intend to go to the lecture.

There's elections on Sunday in Germany. Although I've sent in my postal vote already, I enjoyed looking at the election posters all over Berlin. I'll post the pictures of some later this evening, when I'm home and have gotten to looking at my camera's content. I just wanted to point you to this campaign video that we saw in the cinema yesterday evening and that I really liked. For all non-Germans: it's made by the still ruling social-democrats and shows three rivalling (and probably successful) kingpins from the christian-democrats and liberals. The text at the end says: "Are 40 seconds already to long for you?"

Depending on your location, you may or may not have heard about the parlamentary elections in Germany on September 18th. I just recieved the necessary papers to make my postal vote. You can have a look at the ballot here. In case you understand German, have a look at the news from "Die PARTEI" in the right-hand column. That is an actual party, founded by the satiric magazine Titanic.