What happens when idealism meets this awful messy world we live in, asked the moderator as he introduced the program about Samantha Power’s new book about Sergio Vieira de Mello at the program held at the New York Public Library. (1) The form of the program was a conversation between Power and the Iranian human rights advocate Azar Nafisi.

The book, “Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello & the Fight to Save the World” has recently been published by the Penguin Press.

Working on the biography of Vieira de Mello gave Power the chance to spend the past four years following in the footsteps of the remarkable United Nations diplomat who was killed in the bombing of the UN’s Iraq mission in August 2003.(2)

Power presented a short description of Vieira’s experience from 1968 up to when he was killed in Iraq in 2003.

“He was a guy… weiter lesen

The people of the United States and the people of North Korea want friendly relations with each other. This was the sweet message that the New York Philharmonic’s concert in Pyongyang on Tuesday, February 26 made concrete. Not only was an audience present in the wonderful concert hall that the North Koreans had decked with flowers. Significantly the concert could be heard and viewed on radio and television not only in North Korea, but in the U.S. as well. 

The program was broadcast on the public television station on Tuesday evening at 8 pm in New York.  Not only did the broadcast capture the orchestra and its program, but it also gave viewers a glimpse of the audience of North Koreans, and their western guests who had travelled with the orchestra.

Watching the concert, one could think that this was just another concert by the New York Philharmonic. The conductor… weiter lesen

[This article was written for Futurezone and appears in German at its website. Futurezone is the Technology web site for Orf, Austria’s national public broadcast media.The url is http://futurezone.orf.at/hardcore/stories/253842/ ]

 I- Sputnik Gives Birth to Important New Research Advances

On October 4, 1957, the world was greeted with a surprise. There was beeping from a man- made object orbiting the earth.  This was Sputnik, a 184 pound object the size of a basketball which was to be the catalyst for important new changes in our world. One of these changes would be a significant new means of communications connecting people and computers around the world.

How a small satellite orbiting our globe on October 4, 1957 would, 50 years later, make possible the digitized information and communications network we call the Internet, is a significant story. The subject of this story is, however, not the Internet itself. The subject of the… weiter lesen

“(M)y delegation believes that silence on the situation in the Middle East is more dangerous than even meetings where there might be a raising of temperatures and heat,” explained Dumisani Kumalo, the South African ambassador to the United Nations.

Speaking in the UN Security Council discussion held on Wednesday, Jan. 30, (1) Kumalo was responding to a statement by the British Ambassador Sir John Sawers. The British ambassador was questioning the usefulness of the Security Council discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian question.  

This exchange followed the events of the previous week. The Security Council had spent a week struggling to agree on a non-binding Presidential statement in response to the Israeli closure of all the border-crossings into the Gaza Strip. Israel’s action left the Palestinians in Gaza without fresh supplies of fuel, food or other necessities vital to life upon which they relied.

By Jan. 29, however, the Council failed to… weiter lesen