This time, hopefully, the disproportionate violence of the Israeli government in international waters is not going to be easily forgotten. The death of the activists and the many nationalities involved is going to keep the act alive. And so it should be until a transparent and full independent investigation, not an Israeli one as suggested by the US, takes place. Read the rest of this entry »

The murder of a top Hamas official in Dubai, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, could be a fantastic plot for a bestseller. Unfortunately, never mind what we think about Hamas, it was nevertheless the killing of a human being in cold blood. Read the rest of this entry »

After the terrorist attempt last December by the so-called ‘underwear-bomber’, in a flight that took off from Amsterdam and was bound for the US, the matter of more security for the airports began to be discussed in many countries, specially the introduction of body scanners. Read the rest of this entry »

In 1991 the ECC (the European Economic Community which became the EU in 1993 by the Treaty of Maastrich) and the US agreed to a system of regular summits to deal with a wide range of economic, environmental and travel related issues that could impact the Americans. Each time these summits were held in different cities in Europe or the United States. Read the rest of this entry »

On the 1 January, Spain took over the rotating EU presidency, a six-month tenure with a change from the until now other presidencies. Since the Lisbon Treaty which entered into force a month ago, the EU has a newly appointed president, Herman Van Rompuy, and the rotating presidency of Spain will have to work together with him. Read the rest of this entry »

We began the year talking about body scanners. Terrorism was in our minds but the scanners,in many of the gatherings, were far more fun to talk about. Then we began thinking and realized that, if the US was able to influence governments around the world to buy and install them, most of us would have to go through one of those machines and the fun in many cases stopped. Read the rest of this entry »

Having contributed with China to destroy any possibility of reaching a positive deal in Copenhagen that could help our planet, President Obama went back to the US after calling the weak and not binding accord produced “a meaningful breakthrough.” Xie Zhenhua, head of the Chinese delegation, said, “I think we can call Copenhagen a success.” Read the rest of this entry »