Fact: Yesterday, a 23 yo Nigerian man attempted to ignite a flammable substance aboard flight DL253, a short time before landing in Detroit. Other passengers saw a bright light and a sound of fireworks before the man was stopped and the device extinguished.

The plane departed from Amsterdam. The first news reports in the Netherlands described the situation as “failed attempt to light a firecracker on board a plane departed from Schiphol;” “man controlled by other passengers after lighting a piece of fireworks;” and “the perpetrator was injured by fire, no-one else wounded.”

Curious, I used my brains:

• the materials in a plane cabin are fireproof;
• the other passengers heard and saw fire + a combustion device needs containment to become explosive (this is opposed to chemical explosives which do not need containment) + chemical explosives do not burn;
• if there was a deliberate intent to cause heavy flight disruption, the man could have fired his device in the plane's toilets where other passengers could not have controlled him.

In other words, while the motive of the man is not clear and we do not know the exact nature of his device, his actions where not well thought-out, and of limited risk for the plane and the passengers (burns are not deadly) — at least not of any more risk than a heavily drunk passenger breaking his wine bottle and using the glass shards as a weapon.

I would suggest the following exercise: when reading about this event, consider only the first-hand accounts by witness passengers on-board, and try to dismiss entirely any account from ‘US officials’. The contrast between the facts above and what follows is striking.

Soon after the situation was known in the US, the tone of the news reports there became different: “terrorism attack on US-bound plane;” “terrorist attempts to fire a bomb aboard a plane, heroic action from other passengers to stop him;” and “Moslim terrorist declares he was directed by Al-Qaeda”. The news reports in the Netherlands are then modified: “intelligence reports in the US indicate that…” and “US sources report that…”

Also, the plane was isolated upon landing in a remote area of Detroit's airport and all passengers and crew were interrogated by the FBI. Presumably, the perpetrator was subject to “advanced interrogation techniques.” Whether his “admission” that he was acting for Al-Qaeda is true or merely the wishful thinking of his interrogators will be lost with the torture logs, obviously.

Meanwhile, in an opportunistic move the White House declares that terrorism control in airports worldwide must be strengthened.

But this is Christmas. You should be celebrating, so nothing to see there. Move along.

Liu Xiaobo is on trial. The verdict is due on Dec 25th, 2009, when western media is on holiday so as to reduce international attention on the case.

Liu Xiaobo is a human rights activist and signatory of Charter 08, a groundbreaking manifesto requesting the modernization of the Chinese state. He is charged for “inciting subversion of state power.” Foreign officials support him and Charter 08, and criticize the trial; meanwhile the Chinese government decries diplomatic meddling. Liu Xiaobo faces 15 years in prison for wishing to improve the world.

But there is nothing to see there of course, move along. Your are celebrating Christmas tomorrow!

In other news:

• The world's richest nation only barely failed to elect a talking corpse now irrelevant in politics and the dumbest potential state leader in the history of modern democracy.
• In other views “The U.S. is the only country in the world where the major candidates for office are chosen by people (in primaries) and not by back-room political machinations. This much democracy give the results legitimacy, but not always quality. After all, they elected Bush twice.”
• That said, if the new president lives up to his expectations, chances are he will not live for long.
• Some other country steps into the show and attempts to boost consumerism to stay afloat in a flawed economic system. Not impressive and possibly selfish.
• While some dangerously misogyinistic cultures remind us of their ideology, some others try to get rid of the cruft. Whether there are strings attached remains to be seen.

Today's conversation added to the list of concerns evolving around my mind at the moment:

• will China invade Siberia when oil becomes scarce? or Iran?
• what will be the form of the next conflict between Japan and China?
• who will end up controlling North Korea?
• why doesn't the ECB propose to invest in a deep and far-fetching solution for the American mortgage crisis? Why doesn't China propose either?
• How is the obligation to carry identity documents helping against “terrorism”?
• what will be the long term evolution of the current tendency of governments to alienate citizens into criminals and “protect” them against themselves?

Leaving for a land so close and yet so remote is an exciting prospect.

The idea came a few days ago from a pair of friends, who intend to visit several cities as part of a small scale version of Flickr's Jumping Project; besides the pictures, they intend to have fun and party and that was enough for me to join them.

And now that accommodation and travel are all set, comes the question of what to do there. Having fun is an excellent plan; however, I would feel foolish if I was coming back afterwards without any insight on Warsaw. And there I am today, researching facts and hints about the city, its culture, people and history.

I realize I know next to nothing about Poland.

The name “złoty” sounds fun, but I have no idea of what is its value. Besides Chopin, I know no one originating from Poland. There are 20 theaters in Warsaw, but I do not know the name of any of them, nor what shows are produced there. I knew that Poland was a republic, but it wouldn't have crossed my mind that there was a President of Warsaw. So much to learn!

And yet at the same time I know that the country is ruled (or has been, until recently) by two very conservative parties and their friends, and I fear in advance the feeling of staying in a world of roman catholics, albeit for a short time.

We shall see.

Today the read box from irrepressible.info was quoting a paragraph from the Iranian Gay & Lesbian Healthcare Providers Association; this prompted me to discover more about this group, and I read some of their articles.

In one of them the following sentence rung a bell:

My family, like most Iranian families, centered on worrying about people's judgment. I learned from my family that my purpose of life was to earn people's respect by becoming educated and successful. Provoking envy in people meant I was on the right track. — Dr. Payam Ghassemlou

This idea disturbs me, for it describes accurately some of the feelings I have now about the way I was educated — although I have no (known) Iranian origins.

This accurate match does not seem to fit with the idea that the driving line of thought behind my education was socialism, not Islam. So I was told.

Or does it?

There are several ways to describe socialism; the following is relevant:

Socialism as a political system of communal ownership: a political theory or system in which the means of production and distribution are controlled by the people and operated according to equity and fairness rather than market principles — Microsoft Encarta

This raises the question of who decides what is equity and fairness. If I understand correctly, that would be the very same people who decide how to redistribute the wealth. Threfore, assuming that attribution of wealth to a person is decided not based on their innate capabilities but rather by their perception by society as a group, the way to attract (more) wealth to a specific person is to ensure that they are judged positively by society.

There we are. Islamism and socialism as backgrounds for family life have different goals, but some of their effects on the education of the young are the same — namely, preventing the blooming of children when it doesn't lead to "success" as defined by society.

I once thought that all families were doing that. How naive.

Our leaders, both in the EU and the US, paid careful attention to the lessons learned in the French Revolution, namely that as long as you keep your people well fed and entertained, you can do whatever you damn well please. In the French Revolution, the people storming the Bastille had nothing to lose. But our level of comfort is carefully maintained to keep actual violent revolt from ever happening. Even the poor in our countries have too much to lose (thanks to government programs)to risk anything angrier than waving a slogan on a posterboard sign. -- Original Replica

Today, I learn that the USA opposes G8 climate proposal. I'm not surprised, although I'm interested to learn that they are now “isolated on the issue among G8 members.”

They are one of several global enemies when it comes to environment issues.

In other news, Irak gets bombed by the USA because they fail to comply to international requests for less dictatorship…

In a recent study made by the NBER (National Bureau of Echonomic Research) and commented recently on Slate, it is shown that

there is a negative relationship between real GDP per capita and the female-male difference in total work time per day — the sum of work for pay and work at home.

Some results commented on Slate are quite interesting and positive : women and men do work on average the same in rich countries, which somehow shows a positive balance between genders.

On the other hand, the article has another reading. It states that on average men work less than women in poor countries. I would be very curious to see the relationship between the difference of work time between men and women, on the one hand, and the wealth of the country on the other hand.

Is there a correlation? Is it so that a country "gets richer" when men work more?

Lovely potential for politically incorrect stuff.

Usually the end of FOSDEM is the occasion for newcomers to observe RMS in person and maybe get a true sample of a beautiful troll about Vi and GNU Emacs.

Hopefully, it did not happen this time. Instead, we got a talk from Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation of Europe.

What a change!

Richard Stallman is very libertarian, in the American sense of the word. He advocates free software as a way to do what he wants to do, the way he wants. Richard Stallman deals mainly with defending freedom for the sake of itself and invites hacker to follow him in this fight because he believes that only freedom in software allows hackers to do what they like to do. That's very individualistic — centered on the well-being of the hacker as a single entity.

Goerg Greve, on the contrary, advocates free software at a political level. He appeals to the sense of community, and invites his followers to group together and fight against the evils that threaten our social future by restricting freedom and innovation. Moreover, he explains how to do that strategically.

I'm relieved: at least once in a while I could see someone standing up not for the sake of free software itself and individual freedom, but for the future of the community as a whole.

And last but certainly not least, Georg Greve is young, healthy, dresses carefully and shows a clear balance in his life. That's a far more effective model to follow than whatever RMS could ever dream to be.

During the proceedings of the Nuremberg Trials, the psychologist Gustave Gilbert visited Hermann Göring in his cell. He later reports the conversation in his book Nuremberg Diary published in 1947:

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction. "Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Timeless words…

This video was set as a decoration on the sidebar of a weblog I read every now and then: essaisconcepts. For the non-French-literate, the speaker on the video explains that some random idea is mistakenly considered as solid fact by most people, namely that work should be the basis for active life in society. The discourse — a sort of verbal essay — goes on explaining how building around this idea leads to misery and unhappiness, but unfortunately fails at presenting how to actually build otherwise. Or it may have been explained, but the explanation is not part of this recording.

Despite the missing (important) bits, I find this kind of energetic presentation refreshing. Witnessing this display of unconventional thinking in public is a relief, as it is symptomatic of shared hope for change in the future.