Ralf Goergens

Some more on color photographies from the WW I era

by

James had posted some links to French color photographies from World War I last week. I had found some of the many of the same photos even before that, but couldn’t find the index page, which seems to be different from that James had posted Anyway, even without the index page , a lot of pictures can be found by playing with these URLs:
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/image/memoire/0084/sap01_cvl00001_p.jpg (up to sap01_cvl00159_p.jpg)

http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/image/memoire/0083/sap01_ca000002_p.jpg (up to sap01_ca000616_p.jpg).
(There are some gaps in between, though).

WWI era or not, what interests me most are the buildings, so I have put up those two images:

I had to reduce the resolution to get their sizes down to 40 kb each, the original images can be found
here and here.

I have linked here to some more images that I found interesting, in no particular order:

Read more

The Rueda Report on the ‘European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports’

by

My post below mentions a Code of Conduct that needs to be implemented to make a lifting of the EU’s arms embargo somewhat more palatable for the United States. The EU will have to work very hard at creating and enforcing a Code that is worth more than the paper it is written on, though, for the existing Code simply doesn’t work:

Although officially the European Parliament’s hands are tied regarding armaments questions, parliamentarians increasingly see it as their duty to comment on controversial developments. This criticism has now been made into a 26-page report by Spanish Parliamentarian Raul Romeva Rueda.

Rueda’s report took issue with the EU’s code of conduct for weapons sales, which is supposed to provide a set of ethical guidelines for countries to follow. However, the document, which was created in 1998, is not legally binding. The European Parliament is overwhelmingly in favor of changing that.

“The main problem with the code of conduct is that it is a very weak instrument,” Rueda said.

The code of conduct sets a series of minimum standards for arms exports. Those include stipulations that no weapons should be sold to countries that might use them to abuse human rights. Weapons are also not to go to countries where regional conflicts are taking place, or where weapons purchases will further poverty in the population.

“Some of the equipment being sent to countries is torture equipment, or equipment that is being used to apply the death penalty,” he said. “You have electric sticks, for instance, that is sometimes used by some police to force confessions.”

(Emphasis mine)

Read more

The EU arms embargo on China: An overview

by

This is not good:

The European Union announced on Tuesday that it intends to bring its 16-year arms embargo against China to an end, much to the regret of visiting US President George W. Bush.

US President George W. Bush expressed “deep concern” on Tuesday about European Union plans to lift an arms embargo on China, saying that it might upset relations between Beijing and Taiwan. His concerns alone are unlikely to be enough to stop the EU from pursuing its goal of ending its ban on arms sales to the People’s Republic.

“With regard to China, Europe intends to remove the last obstacles to its relations with this important country,” French President Jacques Chirac announced after talks with President Bush.

Chirac maintained that the embargo, imposed in 1989 after the brutal suppression of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement, was no longer justified but the EU would ensure its abolition did not change the strategic balance in Asia. He noted that US allies Canada and Australia did not have such restrictions on arms sales to Beijing.

I agree with Lex that it would be a very bad idea to lift the EU’s arms embargo on China, but I disagree that Europe would be acting as an enemy of America if it did so. For if the EU really were an enemy it wouldn’t have imposed the embargo after the massacre in Tiananem place in the first place. The motive is greed, not hostility, and also some serious political considerations. The point is, Britain supports the lifting of the embargo, too:

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has defended plans to end the European Union’s arms embargo on China, despite opposition from the US and Japan.

…

China has in the past said it sees the weapons ban as politically driven, and does not want it lifted in order to buy more weapons.
Mr Straw, speaking at a joint news conference with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, stressed this point.
“The result of any decision [to lift the arms embargo] should not be an increase in arms exports from European Union member states to China, either in quantitative or qualitative terms,” Mr Straw said.
Earlier this week he said he expected the embargo to be lifted within six months.

Read more

Russia’s role in helping the Iranian nuclear program is mostly ignored

by

This has largely gone without comment in the blogosphere:

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Friday he was convinced Iran was not trying to build a nuclear weapon and that Russia would press ahead with nuclear cooperation with the Islamic Republic.

Putin’s defense of Iran, where Russia is building a nuclear power plant, comes in the face of U.S. concerns that Tehran could be using Russian know-how to covertly build a nuclear weapon.

“The latest steps by Iran convince Russia that Iran indeed does not intend to produce nuclear weapons and we will continue to develop relations in all sectors, including peaceful atomic energy,” Putin told Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rohani.

“We hope Iran will strictly stick to all agreements with Russia or the international community,” Putin said at the start of talks with Rohani at the Kremlin.

The United States has criticized Moscow for pressing ahead with construction of a 1,000-megawatt reactor at Bushehr in southern Iran.

Russia’s top nuclear officials are due to travel to Iran next week to finalize the final technicalities of its start-up later this year.

The question of Russia’s nuclear ties with Iran is certain to figure in a summit between Putin and President Bush in the Slovak capital Bratislava on Feb. 24.

Most bloggers have so far concentrated on the negotiations France, Germany and Great Britain are conducting with Iran, in the hope of preventing the country from arming itself with nuclear weapons. The fact that Iran wouldn’t even have the capability of doing so without Russian help is rarely mentioned. I hope that this summit will change that, and also that Bush can persuade Putin to cut that crap out.

Looking for an intergalactic bounty hunter? I’m your man!

by

Some people really should read the job adverts a bit more thoroughly:

Nintendo is no stranger to viral marketing, having dabbled in it during the N64 days with Perfect Dark and Majora’s Mask, but the marketing technique has recently had a spotlight cast on it thanks to Microsoft’s well-publicized ilovebees campaign for Halo 2. Nintendo, not to be outdone, orchestrated their own viral campaign for Metroid Prime 2 that spanned multiple websites for fictional companies, blog entries, and more.Perhaps most interesting of all was the seemingly innocuous (at the time) posting of a ‘Bounty Hunter’ job entry on Monster.com. Although plenty of Nintendo fans got the joke and sent in “applications” of their own, over 90 serious applicants expressed interest in the job. Yes, over 90 people submitted applications to become an intergalactic bounty hunter.

Bounty Hunters Having Trouble Finding Work?
A quick glance at Nintendo’s initial posting on Monster would tip off most readers that something was amiss: “Candidate must also be comfortable using high-tech (some would say alien) weaponry… Experience operating in subterranean, low-oxygen, zero-gravity or other harsh, unforgiving environments is a definite plus.” The obvious tells that all was not as it seemed didn’t stop the genuine applications from rolling in.

“Many of the serious applications we received came from users who reply to job postings without carefully reading the job description. Most of these applicants are ex-military, and they jumped at the chance of working in an exciting and high-risk field. As for the alien technology and other out-of-this-world references in our job posting, perhaps these ex-military personnel know something about government weapons research that we don’t?” Nintendo’s Senior Director of Public Relations Beth Llewelyn told GameDAILY BIZ.

…

It didn’t take Nintendo long to realize that the response to the job posting wasn’t going to be strictly the net-savvy Metroid fans that they expected. “Within the first day of posting the job, we had several replies from real applicants who seriously wanted to be an intergalactic bounty hunter for a living. The skills and experience these people listed went beyond surprising into the realm of frightening. We never expected such a wide array of replies from so many people who were actually pursuing interviews for gainful employment as a space warrior. However, Metroid fans did start to catch on and submit applications,” Llewelyn said.

I supppose that it’s a bit late to use Iraq as flypaper for people whose skills and experiences go “beyond surprising into the realm of frightening” [sic]. Maybe they can at least be used to soften up some of the remaining dictatorships – how about large cash prizes for those who kill all enemies in the first three levels of Metroid Prime 2’s Teheran map?