Image: African National Congress

I was just a kid when Nelson Mandela was arrested and when he was released from Robben Island, I was a man at my best age (physically). “Free Nelson Mandela” was a regular outcry at quite a lot of meetings I attended. I signed a number of petitions with those words and eventually, he was released.

There is no need for me to tell what he accomplished during those years when he could have just retired and nobody would have blamed him for that. But he did not retire until the time was right to do so. Nelson Mandela is an extraordinary man!

This extraordinary man is 90 today. His health may not be as good as I would wish but his mind is still bright. He is still going strong. Nelson Mandela is being celebrated by millions today. Even the BBC made an audio slide show to honor him.

So what can I say that others more prominent than I have not already said? Maybe I have nothing original to say but this comes right from the bottom of my heart: HAPPY BIRTHDAY NELSON MANDELA!

We just had better get used to the idea that Big Brother is watching us (via Vesa)

I detected (via Aarne) a tool to measure the dirty language at any given web site. It gave my blog a relatively low score. My language is cleaner than I would have thought. Dam it, fuck!

Created by OnePlusYou

The Surgeon General has concluded that photography may be dangerous for your health.

This just in from Reuters:

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man convicted of his seventh drink-driving charge was spending about A$1,000 ($972) a week on beer — enough to buy more than 2,500 small bottles a month, a newspaper said Tuesday.

I would be happy to match if I had the money to spend. And access to as cheap beer!

Viacom, MTV and other litigants give up their demand to get access to all YouTube users’ viewing history, IP’s and user names included. I for one would have been more than annoyed if such details about my usage had been handed over. Not that I have anything to be afraid of copyrightwise or otherwise. I just do not like the idea of somebody peeking over my shoulder. My user name makes me identifiable in the real life as my account includes a number of clips where I appear with my own face and voice. I strongly dislike the idea that somebody could connect my viewing history to my real person.

In an earlier post YouTube explained why they keep IP records in the first place:

Why do we keep this information in the first place? It helps us personalize the YouTube experience, getting you closer to the videos you most want to watch. We have many features on the site that help users discover and share compelling content, and we’re improving the video experience through recommendations, related videos, and personalized directories that help you find meaningful videos.

Well, thanks but no thanks! I am quite happy to “personalize” my YouTube experience all by myself. I have no problem using the search function to find the contents that I am interested in. So if that is the only reason for keeping IP records, I am not convinced.

Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme has offered to resign after the coalition parties failed to agree on adding autonomy to the country’s regions. I am now in a position to publish some footage from the last cabinet meeting. The battle of Oudenaarde 1708

Question from Belarus: what shall we do with the drunken sailor referee?

World’s oldest blogger Olive Riley passed away on Saturday in Woy Woy, New South Wales, Australia. She was 108. Her blog tells a story of the 20th century and a life well lived.

R.I.P Olive!

This footage from Estonian channel 2 shows the effects of the Moscow-Tallinn train going just a bit too far due to a break failure. The engine driver and his number two are now being investigated (Estonian) as it turns out that they failed to make some of the mandatory break checks during the journey.

I want to congratulate Spain   for becoming the European Champs. And say that I am sorry for Germany.

But football is a game of friendship so that is what counts. Let us be friends, alllover Europe!

Kukupai teeb minu kulul nalja ja tahab, et ma Tiia meemist osa võtaksin. Kurat! Kas ma siis peangi kuus kummalist asja oma elust leiutama? Või mäletan tagasi oma variisiku(te) elule?

1. Porilaste marss

Kuigi ma pole ühegi vabariigi president, on mul praegu Tulirebases laekuva kirja märguandeks esimesed sekundid Porilaste marssist. Soomes on see marss proua Halosele kui Vabariigi Presidendile ette nähtud. Võiks muide panna number kaheks, et Tarja on esimene riigipea maailmas, kellega ma sinapeal olen ja seda juba 35 aastat. President Ilvesega loodan kunagi sinapeale saada. Kuna see asjaolu aga sai kõrvallauses nimetatud, mõtlen kenasti viis järgnevat numbrit välja.

2. Juuksed

Need on mul väga pikad. Eelmine kord käisin juuksuris umbes kuus aastat tagasi (nagu siiagi peab kuus viperdust kirjutama). Kuidas ma neid korras hoian, jätan aga enda teada. Mõned sõbrad on näinud. Pilti üles ei pane, kuigi seegi on mul olemas.

3. Viina viskamine ja muu alkohoolindus

Viina ja õlut joon ma agaralt. Ega teisiti elada ei saakski.

4. Suitsu tõmbamine

Tänases maailmas peetakse suitsetamist patuks. Aga minu lapsepõlves kuldsetel 60nendatel oli see ise enesest mõistetav. Siis suitsetas oletuslikult igaüks ja külaliste jaoks tuhatoosi puudumist peeti ebaviisakaks. Õpisin tol ajal suitsetama ja tänini pole maha jätnud.

5. Heteroseksuaalsus

Mulle on alati naised meeldinud ja meeldivad ka edasi. Sallin teistsuguse kalduvusega inimesi, kuid eeldan ka sallivust enda vastu.

6. Mis kuues?

Ei tule meelde kuuedant asja, millest siin kirjutada võiks. Ega sellist järelikult ei olegi. Püüdsin küll sellest mõelda.

I would have made a video to congratulate Andre on his birthday but my webcam is temporarily out of business and I have a limited access to other media tools. Which is why I am just saying happy birthday, Andre.

The Belgian Privacy Commission intends to sue Sweden in the European Court after Sweden adopted legislation allowing their military intelligence service FRA to monitor without explicite court order all phone and web communications passing the Swedish borders. Here is a Belgian TV news story about the Swedish legislation and the outrage it has prompted among Belgian privacy advocates (via projO).

Finland’s largest e-mail service provider Sonera Finland moved in April 2008 the accounts of their Finnish customers back to Finland from the joined Sweden based servers of Telia-Sonera. “We decided to move Sonera’s e-mail services back to Finland in order to protect the privacy of our Finnish customers. After the migration, e-mails sent from one Finn to another will not cross Finland’s borders at any stage”, says Juha-Pekka Weckström, Senior Vice President of TeliaSonera Broadband Services Finland.

A major part of international calls and web connections in Finland and Estonia are routed through Sweden. While the Swedish legislation has passed almost unnoticed and undebated in Estonia, Finnish MP Jyrki Kasvi tabled a written parliamentary question to the Minister of Telecommunications asking what the government intend to do to protect the privacy of Finnish citizens, residents and businesses. The freshly adopted Swedish legislation provides the Swedish military intelligence a multitude of access to telecommunications of Finns and Estonians that the Finnish and Estonian intelligence agencies dare not even dream of.

Sweden’s Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge has a good post in English explaining the details of the Swedish Big Brother law.

What do you know! I was pretty sure that Holland would have made it to half finals. I sort of expected the orange revolution of 1988 to repeat itself which is obviously not going to happen. Then again, there would be no point in following a tournament if no major surprises took place.

It was not a great game but a quite enjoyable one to watch. Guus Hiddink seems to have brought a Dutch sort of tactical approach to the game which combined with the traditional hard physical training of the Russian team eventually made the difference. I would not have believed this before the tournament but I have to admit that Russia deserved to get to the half final.

Another thriller to be expected tomorrow when Spain and Italy decide the other part of that half final. It may not be that enjoyable to watch, especially if Italy scores the first goal. No way am I going to miss the game, though.

I am not placing bets for real money this time but if you ask me hypotethically, I would say that the champ is going to be either Turkey or Germany, which ever wins that half final. But I must apologize to German and Turkish supporters for saying so because I have mistaken so many times during Euro 2008. It is a tournament full of surprises.

This jungle test is about survival skills. I was truly amazed of my score. Makes me almost look like Tarzan.

Did I cheat? I certainly did but not as much as you are thinking.

via Arni and Kukupai

Brought To You By Favorite Sex Toys

Firefox 3 was allegedly launched about 45 minutes ago. The launch has been marketed as a bid to make a World record on number of downloads during 24 hours.

Just as I suspected, I have been unable to even access the site for the last half hour, much less downloading anything. It does not matter whether I try firefox.com, mozilla.com or click to the e-mail link the campaign sent me. Linking to the site would be pointless right now.

If you want to make a World record as a marketing fuzz, you need to have a World record holding server park. Otherwise you just create a World record of collapse and customer frustration.

Edit: I just managed to access the Mozilla blog. Melissa Shapiro writes that the 24 hours will be clocked at the moment they consider their servers hold up. Those fortunate souls who have managed to get the goody through mirror sites apparently do not count for the record but everybody trying desperately to access the official site certainly count for a frustration World record.

Ballack just scored and a fine goal it was. I would obviously be happy if no more goals were scored.

The first half offered little to be seen. Gomez was unfortunate with the ball just bouncing high as he had an open goal at sight. The ball is round as they say.

I did not see what happened with the coaches as I was in the kitchen fetching more coffee. Maybne they were discussing the Anschluss of 1938 as I suggested in Thomas’s live post.

I am going to have a long TV night since, unlike yesterday, I am unable to watch both games in parallel. I did that by watching one game through the Estonian TV and the other from live streaming of the Finnish TV. Can’t do that today.

I suffered another significant computer mishap this morning apart from my laptop being unaccessible for a week. As I was trying to fix a driver bug with my wireless USB adapter, the system crashed and since I urgently needed web access, I decided to make a clean install to my desktop. Unfortunately I just had an Ubuntu 6.06 install CD at hand so it is going to be a long way until I have upgraded back to 8.04 and re-installed all softwear, including everything to make video watchable. No data was lost, though, since I have all of it backed up in the web. Which would make it a good idea to buy a disk tomorrow and make another clean install direct to Ubuntu 8.04 rather than upgrading through all the versions in between.

Meanwhile I am going to watch Poland vs. Croatia on tape through the Estonian TV so please do not tell me the result during a couple of hours after Germany vs. Austria.

A splendid come-back by Turkey and loads of dramatics. What we saw was the best of football. It is not over until it is over. What a game and what a match hero in Nihat Kahveci.

Sending out Volkan Demirel was a harsh call by the referee although justifiable by the rules. The Turks were ever so lucky that the ball was out of the pitch at the moment. Turkey is going to have a very hard day in the quarter final against Croatia with so many players excluded, including their number one goalie. But they have already survived a hopeless situation twice in this tournament so I would not be surprised if they pulled it through for a third time, against all odds.

In the other group A game, Portugal seemed to have a day off in an unimportant match, thus allowing the Swizz hosts to celebrate in front of their home audience. And they played well, too.

I am sure we are going to see a far more effective Portugal in the quarter final, presumably against Germany.

I spotted (via Marko Mihkelson, MP in Estonia) an extremely interesting testimony before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Roman Kupchinsky. Mr Kupchinsky testified before the committee just a couple of days ago, on 12th June 2008. He used to be the director of the Ukrainian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 1989-2002. He is currently a partner in the risk analysis firm AZEast Group. He immigrated to Brooklyn, NY in 1949 from a refugee camp in Austria; served in the US Army as a rifle platoon leader in Vietnam in 1968 and has a BA in political science from Long Island University.

As Mr. Kupchinsky testified, World’s largest gas company Gazprom, owned by the Russian state, is connected to the organized crime in Russia through a large number of middle man companies. Gazprom currently supplies about 25 % of Europe’s gas. The current Russian president Dmitri Medvedev was Gazprom’s board chairman prior to being elected as the President of Russia. Former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin must have been informed of Gazprom’s dubious connections.

Here is a quote of Mr. Kupchinsky’s testimony:

Some American experts downplay the lack of transparency and the dubious methods used by Russian state-owned companies to conduct business by saying “Companies in the US and Europe also do crooked things” and point to the Enron affair and recent accusations of wide scale bribery by the German company Siemens. The argument is that American “Russophobe’s” are holding Russia to a higher standard.

The difference however, is that the U.S. and Germany arrests and prosecutes criminal behavior while in Russia the crooks not only go scot free - they are awarded state medals for their actions, while individuals like Mikhail Khordokovsky, who opted to run a clean shop and refused to bow to Putin’s will, wind up prison.

One gas trading intermediary company, RosUkrEnergo, based in Zug, Switzerland, is owned 50 percent by Gazprom and 50 percent by two Ukrainian businessmen who hid their identities for years and who are alleged to be linked to Russian organized crime. This is a classic case study of how the Kremlin and Gazprom conspired to protect what was believed to be a criminal enterprise.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, was directly involved in creating this company along with former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma in July 2004, and has publically defended RosUkrEnergo on a number of occasions saying: “Believe me; we don’t know the identities of the hidden Ukrainian owners [of RosUkrEnergo].”
Putin’s statement raises an important issue. Is it common practice for Gazprom, the world’s largest gas company, to sign multi-billion dollar contracts with individuals whose names they do not know? How can this state-owned company possibly conduct due diligence?

To make matters worse, Gazprom vehemently denied allegations in the world press that its partners, whose names they claimed not to know, were in league with Russian organized crime figures. Later when the public evidence became overwhelming, Gazprom and Putin accused the Ukrainian government of “forcing” the Russian side to accept the Swiss-registered company into the Ukrainian-Russian gas contract signed in 2006.

Who can believe that Ukraine can force Russia to do whatever it wants!

All of the testimony as a four page pdf-file is available here.

The current and former president of Russia connected to organized crime through World’s largest gas company? Well, that is what I certainly suspected but this is the first time I am able to point at so prominent evidence to confirm it.

The Euro 2008 tournament is about to proceed into the interesting phase where you have a hunch who is going to be promoted to quarter finals from each of the groups. While the greatest surprises may still remain to be seen, some of the groups look like pretty settled by now.

In group A Portugal is certain to proceed while there is no way for Switzerland to be promoted. Ergo, the game between Switzerland and Portugal has no importance and Turkey and the Czech Republic settle the second place in their mutual game. Both need to win and I have a hunch it is going to be Turkey although this might be one of those surprises to be seen.

Croatia does not necessarily need to win Poland in group B but Germany loosing to Austria would be a long shot. So it is Croatia against Turkey or the Czech Republic in one quarter final and Portugal against Germany in the other.

The Netherlands are already certain to win group C but judging from their hitherto performance they are not very likely to help out Romania. This tournament already smells a bit like the orange revolution of 1988. It could go either way between France and Italy, I would give a slight advantage to Italy.

In group D Spain do not need to win but they would be very unlikely to loose, baring in mind that they certainly do not want to face the Netherlands in the quarter final. This would leave it for Russia and Sweden to make up the second place. A draw would be sufficient for Sweden which would give them a slight advantage, baring in mind their defensive approach to the game and the fact that Russia need to win and would eventually have to take chances if the game is still tied in the second half.

This would make the second half of quarter finals as follows: the Netherlands vs. Sweden (or Russia) and Spain vs Italy (or France). Remains to be seen if this could lead to a final between Portugal and the Netherlands which would at the moment look like the two teams who deserve to be there.

Schweinsteiger looks like a Schwein.

Croatia is leading Germany by 2-1. Neither have shown a splendid game and the Croatian goals looked quite accidental. It is certainly a surpise if Croatia wins but they will have deserved it: the German team is still not putting their heart onto the game.

I bought a wireless card with USB access to enable using my home wifi network on my desktop computer. There are directions in detail on how to make it work under Linux but the card seems to be able to connect without installing the driver. Which is fine because this enables me to move both the desk and the desktop to a more sensible place in my apartment. 18,90 € is not much for a refurnish which makes sense.

I spent most of today in court, sued by the City of Helsinki, also counter suing the city. The issue as such is of little substantial importance but principles sometimes cost as well. Once in a while somebody needs to stand up and defend their rights in the interest of the general public.

My first choice lawyer was unable to attend due to a considerable geographical distance which is why I did not even ask him. I hope he still considers himself as my first choice in German jurisdiction and geographical locations convenient for himself. Not that I would expect to be sued or sue in Germany or nearby.

My local lawyer made a splendid performance. He displayed an outstanding ability to make difference between relevant and irrelevant without failing to point out the most essential arguments of my case. I am glad to say that we had a very good mutual understanding in and outside the courtroom. Half a word or even an unspoken gesture prompted an adequate response in our mutual performance.

The court is expected to issue a ruling within two weeks. Should it be against me, I am very likely to appeal. I presume the same goes for the counterpart.

Apart from the actual court room drama, I suffered a significant loss. My laptop worked fine until near the lunch break. There was a wifi network which allowed me to reply a couple of e-mails and consult my notes during the proceedings. But just before the lunch I detected that the battery was dead although I thought I was using the AC.

I was unable to charge the battery during the break and I just had to make it without my computer during the afternoon. The judge was understanding about the unfortunate fact that I had no access to my preliminary notes when I was in the witness box myself. This might have been a blessing in disguise, though, because the cross examination might have gotten some unnecessary fuel if I had testified everything that was recorded in the memo on my hard drive.

At home I discovered that not only is the battery empty, in addition to that the laptop is unable to get any cord power. I hope the only reason for this is that the wire looks somewhat suffered. I need to take a trip to computer junkey yard ASAP and hope it is just he cord. Meanwhile I am unable to post screen capture pictures from the Euro 2008 matches as my desktop lacks some of the essential software.

As for the case per say, I prefer to wait out the court ruling before commenting it. I wonder, however, how come a witness managed to produce a third person onto an meeting where I remember that only the witness and myself
were present. And could her testimony have something to do with her unsolicited statement that she would not have been legally entitled to fire me without presence of her boss? Which was not even an issue at the trial.