frankenschulz.de :: blog

…Zaun drumherum und zum Naturschutzgebiet erklären:

[Tagesspiegel vom 25.02.2009]

Demographie: Berlin rettet Brandenburg

Eine neue Prognose sieht für 2025 Bevölkerungsverlust in Brandenburg, aber starken Zuzug in stadtnahen Kreisen voraus.

Berlin rettet die Mark. Nach einer dem Tagesspiegel bereits vorliegenden Demographie-Prognose für die Hauptstadtregion, erstellt vom dpa-Dienst Regiodata, muss Brandenburg in Ostdeutschland mit Abstand die geringsten Bevölkerungsverluste infolge von Abwanderung und Geburtenmangel befürchten. Bis zum Jahr 2025 werden die Einwohnerzahlen in Sachsen um 13 Prozent, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern um 15,1 Prozent, in Thüringen um 15,2 Prozent und in Sachsen-Anhalt sogar um 18 Prozent dramatisch sinken, während sie in Brandenburg nur um 4,65 Prozent auf 2,41 Millionen Einwohner zurückgehen werden. Berlin kann leichte Zuwächse von 0,17 Prozent auf 3,4 Millionen Einwohner erwarten, so dass die Hauptstadtregion gut dasteht. Grund für die Ausnahmeentwicklung Brandenburgs sind massive Zuzüge in den „Speckgürtel“, die allerdings im Land auch das Bevölkerungsgefälle zur Peripherie verschärfen.

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Great sequel to German news magazine’s DER SPIEGEL 2002 cover:

The Bush Warriors… end of the show!

A fake special edition of The New York Times was distributed on Wednesday in several US cities. Read the full issue here.

…and it’s gonna be a long walk home

Congrats!

The reason I’m running for president is because I can’t be Bruce Springsteen.

(Barack Obama, 2008-10-16, “Change Rocks” benefit concert NYC)

That’s my man!

photograph by William Borner

Five years into a national economic recovery, the share of Americans living in poverty finally dropped.

But Kalamazoo and Flint are among the nation’s most impoverished cities.

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Kalamazoo’s poverty rate is among the highest in the nation and rising, according to new Census Bureau statistics, though its status as a college town is a factor. One in three Kalamazoo residents was living below the federal poverty line in 2006, according to figures released Tuesday.

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Recommended for everyone interested in American music, its business, and politics. This documentary is awesome!

The cameras captured the infamous Dixie Chicks event (“We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”) and its aftermath. The band suffered from radio boycott, personal insults and threats to their lives. Blind U.S. patriotism on the verge of the Iraq war in 2003 revealed how frail the right to freedom of speech is in America.

Besides, we get as close as one can get to the band on tour, in the studio, at home, and even in the labor room… Fascinating, funny, infuriating and emotional!

P.S. The Dixie Chicks defintely ARE the worst dressed girl group in the world! Whatever…

Saw this very interesting PBS documentary on TV. You can watch this online and read interviews with some top rank politicians involved in the Iraq disaster.

In the first weeks after the statue of Saddam Hussein fell, a group of young American bureaucrats led by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III set off to establish democracy in Iraq. “We had an ambitious goal,” Bremer tells FRONTLINE, “to try to bring better government to Iraq and help them rebuild their economy [and] their country.” One year later, as Bremer made a secret exit to evade insurgent attacks, the group left behind a thriving insurgency, economic collapse and much of its idealism. “Our grand initiative there [was] to bring democracy to Iraq,” says Rajiv Chandrasekaran, former Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post. Instead, says Chandrasekaran, “we were leaving with our tail between our legs.”

“The Iraqi people were, if not the enthusiastic, liberated populace that some of us had anticipated, were at least open-minded, and, on balance, prepared to work with the United States,” says James Dobbins, the administration’s former special envoy to Afghanistan and adviser to the Defense Department. “And that has largely been lost, and was largely lost over that first year.”

Just recently, I saw something about Banksy on TV. Didn’t knew him before. But what a great artist! Political graffiti with a fine sense of humor and sarcasm — finest urban street art… Banksy kicks ass!

Last reports on Noah came from Palestine (no pun here), where he had lived in 2003. After enrolling at Arizona State University in a doctorate program in Ecosystems Ecology, he returned to Hebron on the West Bank with the Christian Peacemaker Teams in 2004.