Exactly two years ago, on 23 January 2010, a vigil was held for Neda Agha-Soltan who had been shot and killed on 20 June 2009 by an Iranian government militia when they cracked down on protests in Tehran. Because Neda’s death was captured on video and quickly broadcast around the world, she became the symbol of the millions of Iranians who dared to protest against the rigging of the elections in 2009 and against the lack of personal and political freedom in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I was among the people who organised the vigil in London. We chose 23 January because it would have been Neda’s birthday. We chose to protest outside of the London offices of Press TV, Iran’s foreign TV channel because this channel had just broadcast an inflammatory piece in which they had blamed the BBC and the usual array of foreign intelligence services for her murder. (The UK’s media regulating body Ofcom has now finally revoked Press TV’s license.)
Here is some video footage from the event. I read a letter from Caspian Makan, Neda’s fiancé:
If you want to learn more about Neda and the protests in Iran in 2009, I highly recommend to watch the documentary “For Neda” (in which I play a small part again).
As someone who has been to Iran twice and has a deep interest in the country’s future, I am disappointed that there is still no improvement at all in the political and human rights situation in Iran. The Iranian opposition is highly ineffective and – especially if compared with the opposition groups in the countries of the Arab Spring – far too timid, lame and more concerned about arguing with each other instead of toppling the brutal regime. It is sad to say, but there is absolutely nothing that makes me optimistic about Iran’s future.
Many comments on my blog suggested that the US soldiers would be disguised as tourists. At first, I dismissed this as the typical conspiracy theory which always finds more amazing “answers” to any question posed.
But today, I have to admit I saw the first pieces of evidence myself. In a dramatic scoop for this blog, I can reveal the first and exclusive photos of the US soldiers currently stationed on Malta, inconspicuously posing as harmless tourists.
On first sight, they hide really well:
But when you get closer, as I dared to, there are many tell-tale signs that give the US soldiers away. Look at these gentlemen: wearing the typical US military sunglasses, one of them – of course – drinking a beer, others eating food that makes them even more fat. Clearly, the guy who is pointing at something is the commander.
But it becomes even more obvious. You see these two? One of them reads instructions for the upcoming invasion of Libya. She is so sure of herself that she even has her weapon right next to her!
The following two members of the US military were sitting in front of what looks like harmless phone booths. But of course, nobody uses phone booths any more, we all have mobiles. So these green (which is a military colour, after all) booths surely are US military communication installations.
If you still need more evidence – beyond the beer and the ice-cream – that these foreign occupying powers are indeed American, here it is. One of the persons depicted reads a newspaper. And in what language is the newspaper? Exactly: in English! Now, Malta has it’s own language, Maltese. So who on earth would read an English newspaper here? Only Americans!
I hope you acknowledge by now that all these photos were taken under extreme danger to my own life. But when I noticed that something is going on here, I thought I owe it to you to discover the truth. And if is the last thing that I will do in my life.
Look at the following guy. Who on earth sits in a park with a computer? No sane person does that. He must be a soldier. I bet he controls a drone strike in Iran via his notebook. And do you see what clothes he wears? Adidas. Adidas is German, not American. But we all know that Germany was occupied by the US Army in 1945, so it all fits together.
One reason why I initially dismissed the idea of 12,000 US soldiers on Malta was that I didn’t think anyone could hide tanks, artillery, helicopters and other equipment.
But I even solved this puzzle. I discovered stockpiles of the most advanced transportation equipment.
And then I saw a large troop transport vehicles, in military colours, with tinted windows. This vehicle alone has a capacity to transport hundreds of troops, invisible to anyone outside. It is also suspicious because Malta is such a small island, it would never need such large buses for its own population. And were the old Maltese buses not just replaced a few months ago, even though nobody in Malta had been unhappy with the old buses? Now it all begins to make sense!
If you still have doubts – like me initially – I submit the following photo as the final piece of evidence. What is this? A camel! But there are no camels in Malta. Why would there be a camel in a children’s playground? – Which country has camels? Exactly: Libya.
All photos were taken on Malta on 18 January 2012. (C) Andreas Moser
Today, on 18 January 2012, Wikipedia and other sites have closed down and will blackout the internet for one day. They want to protest against a bill currently being considered by the US Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
I realise that without Wikipedia, many students, researchers and journalists will despair.
If you have urgent fact-checking questions, you can therefore post them here and I or some of my readers will answer them. This service is not offered in an effort to circumvent the blackout, but I am simply fed up with how many mistakes seep into newspapers or TV news every day already and I don’t want these mistakes to multiply today.
A few days ago, on 13 January 2012, Cynthia McKinney, a former six-term member of US Congress, wrote on her blog:
It is with great disappointment that I receive the news from foreign media publications and Libyan sources that our President now has 12,000 U.S. troops stationed in Malta and they are about to make their descent into Libya.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t reveal any of her sources.
Cynthia McKinney: “I really have no idea what I am talking about.”
As a resident of Malta, I can guarantee her – and you – that this is untrue. There are no 12,000 US soldiers stationed on Malta. And trust me, this island is so small, I would have seen them. There isn’t enough space for 12,000 troops to hide, especially not if they have the typical soldiers’ equipment of tanks, artillery, helicopters et cetera with them. – To put things into perspective: the whole military of Malta is 2,140 troops strong. Even at the height of World War II, when Malta was hotly fought over as the central location in the Mediterranean, no more than 26,000 troops were stationed on Malta.
Granted, I did see the USS Whidbey Island in port in Valletta last Friday, but this ship only has a crew of about 400 sailors.
Also, I can’t see why US forces would go to Libya now. Gaddafi is dead, Libya is liberated, the job is done.
Ms McKinney either has no idea about international politics and the state of the world, or she is one of these conspiracy gurus, or she doesn’t know where Malta is and confused it with something else. Either way, it’s very embarrassing for a former US Congresswoman to make these ridiculous statements.
But just in case, people of Malta: let’s keep our eyes open in the next few weeks for any suspicious activity on the ground, on the sea and in the air. If you spot anything, please let me know.
“I am trying to hide on Malta. And so are 11,999 of my comrades.”
(I have contacted Ms McKinney and asked her to comment on her statement. As she has not allowed me to make a clarifying comment on her blog, I doubt however that we will hear from her. Until she comes up with the next bogus story.)
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus: The New Colossus (engraved on a plaque inside the Statute of Liberty)
Last weekend, a few people on a boat experienced a sudden problem while they were sailing in the Tyrrhenian Sea, west of mainland Italy. Their cruise ship “Costa Concordia” ran aground, listed and partially sank.
More than 4,000 people had to be evacuated to the close Italian island of Giglio. There and on the Italian mainland, they were welcomed by the rescue services and quickly housed by local communities and residents in schools, hotels and churches.
A warm welcome, an organised response, helpfulness, everything provided for: shelter, blankets, food, medical attention. The whole community, actually the whole country, stood behind the rescue.
How different the passengers of a different boat must have felt, even though they also arrived in Italy, namely on the island of Lampedusa:
Lesson learnt: If you want to come to Europe, try to look as white as possible. It makes for a much warmer welcome than if you are black.
Some people find my blog because they have subscribed to it (do the same to spice up your life!), some get the alerts about new posts (and much more) through my Facebook page and some people find me through search engines.
WordPress shows me the search terms that people entered into Google, Yahoo! or other search engines which subsequently landed them on my blog. Search terms like Andreas Moser or Andreas Moser blog are among the entries you would expect, just as world’s best blog, smart blog or funny blog.
The most interesting searches are those that pose a direct question. I actually hadn’t realised that some people enter full questions into Google, just as if they could speak with their computer. Here are some examples from 2011:
why are hot girls dumb?
why are hot girls stupid?
are stupid girls hot?
and similar variations is a question on the mind of a great many people. This is something that I luckily have the definitive answer to.
are the riots still going on in London
was asked 40 times, probably in August 2011. I can assure you, it’s safe to travel to London again. The riots were over after four days. Actually, it was also safe to travel to London during the riots. As always, they looked much worse on TV than from on location. I still don’t know why people google for information like this instead of going to a news website. You should however avoid London in 2012 because due to the Olympic Games, the city will be more crowded than ever. That is one reason why I moved away.
why do I hate Christmas
was asked 9 times. It is really sad when people have to google for the reasons behind their own feelings. I can only tell you my opinion about Christmas.
which translates as “what was conscription?” which shows that people forget rather quickly because Germany only abolished military conscription in July 2011. The article about my experience with conscription (and how I avoided it) is unfortunately only available in German.
Some people asked
why girls don’t answer the phone
to which I don’t really know the answer. I can however suggest that their reasons might be similar to the reasons why I don’t answer my phone.
Read this and you will die
don’t read this or you die
are somewhat strange requests, methinks. Did these readers try to commit suicide by reading a blog? Instead they had to read about correlation and causation.
where is Malta
is a question which I actually prefer people to google it instead of them asking me personally. After my move to Malta, I got the question “where is Malta?” so often and grew so tired of explaining it, that I devoted a whole blog post to it. It is shocking how many people don’t know where Malta is. After all, it’s a country, not just a village.
within a retributivist sentencing system is it justifiable for courts to sentence more harshly those who commit an offence in the context of a riot?
is my favourite question. Articulate, interesting, topical, a complete sentence. For the answer, I will make you read my essay on the philosophy of punishment.
was posed. I recommend watching a space shuttle launch (oh wait, they don’t use space shuttles any more, so I’ll post a video here) and then you will have a pretty clear indication what they run on.
I am not an engineer, but this doesn’t look like nuclear power to me. But I may be biased because I am against nuclear power.
The answer to the question
who denies the Holocaust
is unfortunately “still too many” and even more negate the causality behind the Holocaust, how many in Germany and beyond were actively involved in the mass murder, or they pretend that no lessons have to be drawn from history. I have this short reply to Holocaust denial.
As you saw, a thousand different ways lead to my blog which indicates that it is a really worthwhile read; or that search engines don’t work too well.
Next weekend, 20-22 January 2012, I will visit Venice for the first time.
A good person to ask for travel advice is my old mate James Bond.
He has already been to this beautiful city three times, the first time in 1963 in “From Russia with Love“. James Bond and Soviet spy Tatiana Romanova leave the Orient Express between Zagreb and Venice, hijack a truck, drive to a dock and embark on a speedboat with destination Venice, not without having to fight off a squadron of boats manned by the criminal organisation SPECTRE:
(I know, some of these old clips are dreadful to watch now. But the last clip from “Casino Royale” will compensate you for the ordeal.)
James Bond returned to Venice in 1979 for “Moonraker“. Bond went to Venice to investigate a laboratory used to manufacture biological weapons, and to team up with astronaut and CIA agent Dr Holly Goodhead. Inevitably, Bond is chased around the canals in his gondola:
(Yes, I also find the hovercraft gondola silly.)
The last time that James Bond was in Venice was in “Casino Royale” (2006), in my opinion one of the best James Bond films of all times.
Here is the scene in which James Bond and Vesper Lynd come to Venice in their yacht:
But he should not have taken Ms Lynd with him. Because Bond later finds out that she stole the money that he had won at the poker tournament in Montenegro. The following clip (unfortunately without dialogue) shows part of the finale in which Bond pursues Ms Lynd and her co-conspirators. They end up in a building under renovation which is being kept from sinking by inflatable supports. In the gunfight, the supports are punctured and the building eventually sinks.
Don’t worry, Venice. I will try not to destroy any of your buildings during my stay.
Despite being on sabbatical from working as a lawyer, I sometimes volunteer to give advice about German law. Some people think that they can approach a lawyer and are entitled to an answer to their questions. They are wrong.
One year ago, I wrote about a greedy child from the Philippines who wanted to sue and garnish his father’s ass off and even wanted to receive part of the estate before the father had even died. He had already annoyed me, not only because of the content and the wording of his questions, but because of having reminded me 3 or 4 times that I should please reply to his questions soon – without him paying for it of course.
I think he is back:
“Moser,Which has the priority in Maintenance Obligations ? Is it the child or the new wife?I read about this new Alimony Law of 2008 that said that the child maintenance support has priority over the divorced wife and even the new wife. The maintenance claim is against the pension income of the father. The maintenance title is a foreign judgment but declared enforceable in germany. It seems there is a table of how much is distrainable.
Has the new Alimony Law of 2008 affected this table ? Does this table has to be followed or applied strictly or are there exceptions to the rule because of the emergence of the new Alimony Law ?Does this include foreign maintenance judgment where the amount was already fixed ?
Now my question is: who gets the precedence in the maintenance payment or entitlement first, is it the child or the wife ? Please elaborate why the wife or child or why not.
I understand the father is entitled to his living expenses of some Euro 930. The father’s pension is some Euro 1,500,00. the child’s maintenance was set at some Euro 300,00. The father is saying that he has remarried and claiming support for a new wife.
There is this table that I don’t understand, there is a column “0”, does this mean no dependents ? In this case, the child is the only dependent other than the new wife. Where does the child belong in this table and how much is he entitled ? If you can explain this, would be grateful.
I refused to answer the question because I thought it resembled the “greedy child” case too closely.
I received this response:
Moser,You replied but you said: you cannot help” ! Give me a REASON why you cannot help with my question. Are you just being polite or just unreasonable and stubborn ?
Now, here’s some free advice: If you want a service from a professional, calling him “unreasonable and stubborn” won’t help.
But this guy still did not stop pestering me:
Moser,For God’s sakes, you did NOT answer my question! What is your problem ? Why do you refuse to answer this question ?I do not want to call you a LIAR but if you can show proof that indeed you have answered this question on “Maintenanance payments PRECEDENCE ” – then, YOU WIN !!
Surprise announcement: I don’t need to prove anything, I don’t need to do anything, I don’t have any obligations towards you, just because you e-mail me. You e-mailing me does not establish a contractual relationship, as we lawyers would say.
Can you believe it? This guy still did not give up. I just received the 4th e-mail today:
Moser,You have not my first question ! You have not answered either the 2nd and 3rd follow-up ! WHY ? At least give me a REASON !
I hope he will find this blog, and his answer in it.
Doe this mean that I grew old too soon or that I was lucky enough to leapfrog the mid-life part of sitting in an office for 30 years? Why should I wait until I am 65 to do the things I enjoy?
Two generations (and a previous one in the sarcophagus): My father and me in Caesarea, Israel.
From time to time, usually when nothing else of interest happens, the news remind us of bird flu (avian flu, H5N1) again. See The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and The Washington Post for examples from the past few days only. It is a constant scare in the papers, on radio, on TV and parents are telling their children not to play with the birds.
But let me put things into perspective:
Since 2003, fewer than 600 people have been infected with bird flu, of which 335 people died.
That is 37 deaths per year worldwide, which is less than any other known cause of death. (In 2010, in the USA alone, 29 people died from lightning so even that figure is bound to be higher worldwide than the deaths caused by bird flu.)
Looking at the number of people (7 billion) and the number of birds in the world (unknown but huge, based on my own observations), these numbers are extremely low. In addition, while I generally refuse to blame the victims, some people might have almost called for being infected. This is from a New York Times article about the transmissibility of bird flu:
There have also been some anomalous cases, including a group of diners in Vietnam who apparently were infected by raw duck blood pudding, and the handlers of fighting cocks who were stricken after sucking blood and mucus out of their birds’ beaks.
There is another reason why I have a hard time feeling sorry for the few people that are killed by bird flu:
And that’s only chickens. Humans also kill ducks, turkeys, geese, swans and any other type of bird that they can lay their hands on.
Now people will ask “Don’t you see the difference between birds and humans?” Yes, I do see the difference:
Birds don’t kill humans on purpose.
Next time you eat, count the lives lost.
I cannot discern any moral justification for killing animals on such a grand scale. Yes, animals are different from people. But being different does not mean that they are worth less. A bird, a horse, an ant, a whale and your dog have a life too. Some of them have a partner, many of them have children.
Some proponents of mankind’s right to kill animals argue that animals can’t talk, don’t have emotions, don’t have the same kind of sophisticated lives as we do. But we don’t really know that for sure, and we can’t, despite all of the science that we have at our disposal, because this scientific approach will always be guided by how we as humans think. We just cannot imagine, feel or understand what it’s like to be a cat or a worm. Heck, we men can’t even understand what makes women tick the way they do.
For those who like to stress the difference between humans and animals, I would like to point out one difference that I concede: We as humans can pause in our actions, reflect about the ethics of our behaviour and change it.
(Disclaimer: I may change my opinion about bird flu once I will contract it myself.)
The Happy Hermit 