Peter Voß fragt die Schriftstellerin Juli Zeh from Netwatcher24 on Vimeo.

The video is a German perspective (with English subtitles!) on the recent security discourses surrounding surveillance and control in the name of “the war against terrorism”…

What about trusting your own citizens…?

This blog post is part of a campaign to restore trust and rebuild bridges initiated by the Anna Lindh Foundation. I blog for trust.

But at the same time it is rather difficult to write something about it. In a way, everything has already been said. That is why I keep it short.

If you only read one thing today:  Do read Mark Danner’s Voices from the Black Sites, his take on the Red Cross Torture Report and: If Everybody Knew, Who’s To Blame?

Some of you know that a couple of weeks ago  I have participated in a rather interesting seminar in Luxembourg which brought together a bunch of Bloggers from the Euro-Mediterranean region to discuss aspects of  inter-cultural dialogue.  Two things really stroke me:

First of all, it is really difficult to bring together such a group (just think of the Visa requirements + Israel and the Arab world) and that such a meeting is easier to organise on “neutral soil” (in this case Luxembourg) than in the region… Second thing is about intercultural dialogue in our home countries: 10 years ago I went to school in a very multicultural environment and strangely enough things like “identity” and “religion” were never a big issue at the time. Something has changed – and not for the better.

This cartoon by Clay Bennet (that won the 2002 Pulitzer prize for editorial cartooning)  somehow captures the political discourses quite well – and it does not matter wherever you live it is pretty much a global discourse.

This blog post (here is another one) is part of a campaign to restore trust and rebuild bridges initiated by the Anna Lindh Foundation. I blog for trust.