General

I just got two spam mails, both only containing a link to this page. When you have a look at it, you will be astonished what "die neue Bewegung" (the new movement) is: a pro-Islamic website. Wow. Is now [[Al Qaida]] recruiting holy warriors over the internet in western countries?

You've probably heard about O.B. Laden's latest message to the world. The quintessence of his speech is that he's angry at the US because of their foreign policy in the middle east. Interestingly, that pretty much matches the reasons for bin Laden's ideology in the book Against all Enemies by Richard A. Clarke. Dick Clarke describes in his book that he got toally fed up with the United Status, when they used Saudi Arabia to station their troops for the second Gulf war (freeing Kuwait, that was). In general, I would recommend buying and reading this book, as it gives a lot of insight into how the United States government and their secret services and law enforcement agencies work. It also clearly shows that Bill Clinton was not a fool, and that all these assertions about attacking other countries to draw off attention from the Lewinsky affair are simply not true (only a few months later, law enforcement agencies uncovered several terroristic cells in New York and Montreal how have been in operation for several years).

Christian Schöller pointed out a small political quiz in his weblog. I did that quiz, too, and that's my result:

Actually, I would characterize myself as green socialdemocrat (the green part of me being a "realo"), I strongly believe in the need of a good social system, I also believe that one a country's duties is to satisfy the basic needs for all citizens, be it water, electricity, heating, reasonably priced shelters, a guaranteed low price for staple foods, etc. So, I definitely don't want to be moved into the "libertarian" corner, as they believe in almost the exact opposite (and sometimes, weird stuff like private gun possession). All in all, I don't feel quite represented by this quiz, but that's possibly because it's US-centric, and neither socialdemocrats nor greens have any significance over there. So definitely not a country where I would want to live.