Asian Tsunami Compilation Video

10 minute Tsunami Compilation music video titled "Gaia Shuddered". A memorial video by Chris Valentine from his video gallery at www.chrisvalentines.com

5 years in the 21st century: what has or hasn't your country learnt?

The 21st century officially started on January 1st 2001, but I think that the real new year's day was September 11th 2001.

We practically lived the first 8 months of 2001 still in the 20th century entering the new millennium full of hope, curiosity, challenges and even humanity, thinking that the world was a better place to live in and that was going to get better and better, with even the toughest people being available to learn more about the others.



Today is September 23rd 2006 and after 5 years and 12 days we are almost running out of battery power with 93 years or so in fromnt of us to change ... what we realy wanted to change during last century.

The new millennium was a new threshold for us. A challenge we underestimated because we are now crying in fears mostly because of our mistakes.

western people are notoriously not humble and when 9/11 happened instead to think about "why it happened", we mostly thought "We are good people, why these "brutal" people did this to us?".

The problem is that in our being "good" people we tend not to think about other people's miseries and problems, so thinking in black and wait with almost no sound it's much easier in the wealthiest countries, rather than thinking in color, cinemascope and dolby surround.

We were just coming out of the closet that they forced us to quickly go back there.

So, now we are facing topics we wouldn't want to face at this very high pace ... and we have to anyway:

• terrorism
• religious integralism
• secure traveling
• bigotry
• gay marriage
• separation of state and church
• immigration
• multi-language countries
• global warming
• nuclear proliferation
• border security
• health care
• social security
• worldwide isolation
• oil crisis
• privacy invasion
• lack of diplomacy
• tortures and human rights
• AIDS spreading

I live in New York and I believe the people here felt a little bit more close to what the Europeans felt after the end of World War II: "we need to rebuild it quickly and let's try not to forget the importance of diplomacy not to come back in this hell again".

But what do you think each country in the world has or hasn't learnt during these last 5 years so to go back quickly to the right path? What we have or haven't understood about other people thinking and acting?

GERMANY AND RUSSIA

The Trans-European Waltz

By Uwe Klußmann, Christian Neef and Matthias Schepp

Irritated with the United States, Russian President Vladimir Putin is turning his attention to Germany. But during a planned visit to Germany next week, Putin may discuss proposals with Angela Merkel that she is likely to reject -- including the idea of a European-Russian free trade zone.


REUTERS
Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany's values are more American than Russian. The comment "was a blow to Putin."The Russian political world has never had problems with women, historically speaking. Four Czarinas ruled Russia in the days of the monarchy, including Catherine II, a German who steered the Russian empire for 34 years. But in post-Soviet Russia, where women outnumber men by a figure of 11 million, women are almost completely absent from the political ranks.
"Having a woman occupy the country's highest office is currently about as unimaginable as having a Chechen in that position," says Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociology professor. But that's not the only reason why patriarchal Russia has found it so difficult to deal with Angela Merkel, who became Germany's first female chancellor last year. Moscow is troubled by a new sense of seriousness that has characterized German-Russian relations since she first visited the Kremlin in mid-January. The Russian giant -- rich in treasure and resources, but with a sluggish economy -- also has ambitions in Europe that Merkel could frustrate.

(see the article in: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,441107,00.html)

Google ready to buy YouTube for $1.6 Billion

Google in talks to buy YouTube for $1.6 Billion

Deal Could Put Search GiantIn Top Spot for Online Video;A Front Door for Web Visits

By KEVIN J. DELANEYOctober 7, 2006
The latest prize in the great Internet land grab, online-video company YouTube Inc., could soon be snapped up by Google Inc.
Web-search giant Google is in talks to acquire YouTube for roughly $1.6 billion, a person familiar with the matter says. An acquisition of the closely held company would catapult Google to the lead spot in online video at a moment when consumers are rapidly increasing the amount of time they spend viewing video clips online, and Internet video advertising is booming.
The discussions between Google and YouTube are still at a sensitive stage and could break off, says the person familiar with the matter. Other technology, media and entertainment companies have expressed interest in taking stakes in YouTube this year, according to people familiar with the matter. Google rival Yahoo Inc. earlier this week expressed interest in holding acquisition talks with the video start-up, these people say. YouTube also turned down a lower proposed value from Google earlier this week, before commencing discussions about the possible $1.6 billion deal.
A YouTube spokeswoman and a Google spokesman said they don't comment on "rumors and speculation." Rumors of such talks were reported on the TechCrunch blog.
The discussions come amid a flurry of acquisition talks initiated by media and technology companies looking to broaden their online presence. Yahoo and other companies have recently held discussions about buying social-networking site Facebook Inc. for around $1 billion or higher, say people familiar with the matter. The Yahoo talks with Facebook are continuing, says one of those people. Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures Entertainment in August said it paid about $65 million to purchase closely held video-sharing site Grouper Networks Inc. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought social-networking site MySpace last year for $650 million in a landmark transaction.
ALL EYES ON YOUTUBE

See a chart comparing YouTube's traffic with other top video sites.
YouTube's 29-year-old CEO, Chad Hurley, and its 28-year-old chief technology officer, Steve Chen, started the company in Mr. Hurley's Menlo Park, Calif., garage last year, along with another former colleague from eBay Inc.'s PayPal electronic-payment unit. Early videos on the site prominently featured the cat of Mr. Chen.
Like Web browsers and search engines before them, YouTube and social-networking sites are recognized as front doors to the Internet where companies can grab users' attention, and to try to link them to other services or hit them with marketing messages. News Corp. has already turned MySpace into a lucrative ad and promotional machine; in August, Google guaranteed MySpace and some other News Corp. sites a minimum of $900 million in ad revenue over the next 3½ years under an ad-brokering deal. Media companies have also been keeping a close eye on YouTube as a test case at a moment when consumers' online-viewing habits and corporate strategies are in flux.
A deal between YouTube and Google would combine Google's massive online ad system, which handles ads from hundreds of thousands of advertisers, with the top online-video site, according to several research firms. YouTube, San Mateo, Calif., says consumers view videos -- which range from short home videos of household pets to clips recorded from TV shows -- more than 100 million times daily through its service.
WALL STREET JOURNAL VIDEO

WSJ's Kevin Delaney reports that Google is in early talks to acquire YouTube and that Yahoo has also expressed interest in a possible deal.• Plus, MarketWatch's Bambi Francisco explains why a deal between Google and YouTube could soften the blow of potential copyright lawsuits for the video sharing site.
A purchase by Google, Mountain View, Calif., would also bring YouTube into a company that doesn't compete with other media concerns by producing or broadcasting its own video. That likely would make it easier for YouTube to continuing cutting deals with media and entertainment companies to carry their videos. General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal signed an advertising and content deal with YouTube in June, and Warner Music Group Corp. last month said it is working with YouTube to make its music videos and other content available through the site.

(See the article in http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116014813857884917.html?mod=home_whats_news_us)