News Archives: Year 2004

Happy Easter to everyone!

I sincerely welcome the 10 new states in the European Union. I still haven't given up my dream of the United States of Europe...

A good news not directly relevant to my website but important anyway: US Federal District Court Dismisses VeriSign's Anti-Trust Claim against ICANN with Prejudice
I'm glad to see this "service" of Verisign to be discontinued and ICANN's position confirmed by Justice. They caused a lot of headache because spam filters were not working as accurately as they used to.
More details can be found on the ICANN Website and in the court's decision.

September 24th is the European Democracy Day. Let's celebrate the first anniversary of 2003-09-24, a commemorable day in the history of the information society and of Parliamentary Democracy in the EU, by banners and temporary celebration pages on the Net!

On 2003-09-24, the European Parliament voted to clearly make software unpatentable in Europe and to defend basic liberties of the information society, such as freedom of "computer-implemented" reasoning and calculating, freedom of publication, freedom of interoperation. The Parliament's decision was backed by a large and well-informed consensus of programmers, entrepreneurs, economists and consultative organs of the EU. Many MEPs said that they had never before witnessed so intense participation of citizens in their decisionmaking.

I've been asked by a number of people whether I was still supporting the idea of introducing a political and territorial organization in Europe that would allow the creation of the United States of Europe. The answer is yes!
Although I cannot welcome the reelection of George W. Bush because of his ineptitude to govern the most powerful country on Earth and because of his ideas and views, this doesn't change anything in relation to the way the United States of America are organized. When introducing the US of Europe I never claimed that we should be governed by the same bills and laws in every detail which would be really silly.
So the answer is yes to the United States of Europe as a federal system of strong and united states (the current European countries) with a central administration directly (in opposition to the US American system) elected by all European people.
As I final point I'd like to tell you all that I'm a little bit disappointed that Bush is still president and that that American people found their religious and moral values more important than the wealth of the middle and lower-class and the international stability and peace. But nearly as much voted against him and are really sorry.

Some people claim that AIDS is back. AIDS has always been there for the last 20 years! People have just forgotten about it. The pandemic currently shows a dramatic increase in the number of new infections and the World AIDS Day 2004 is good moment to think about how to fight the epidemic in the future. World AIDS Day 2004 focuses on women, girls, and HIV and AIDS. It can infect anyone of us. It's not a disease of the third world and homosexuals anymore. It's time to realize it.
"Make Love, Not War" --- that was yesterday. "Make Safer Sex, Not War" --- that is the device of today.
And to everyone out there still preaching that condoms are bad and should not be used: Please, stop it! We all know it's bullshit. Safer Sex saves lives...

• UNAIDS: The main advocate for global action on HIV/AIDS
• DIE ZEIT: HIV & AIDS: Dossier
• Das moderne Gesicht der Seuche
• Gib AIDS keine Chance: BZgA-Kampagne zur Aids-Prävention in Deutschland

We went to see the movie National Treasure (Das Vermächtnis der Tempelritter) yesterday and I must say that this piece of art is the best movie I've seen in years. It's full of suspense, of adventure and it's really funny: it doens't just make you smile but really laugh. Simply amazing! If you have the chance to go and see it: just do it. You won't regret it.

In memory and solidarity to those who died and their dependents in South Asia.
Please spend some money to the helping initiatives instead of buying fireworks.