The Fox Blog

No one needs to introduce Adolf Hitler, Germany’s World War II Fuhrer and founder of the National Socialist Party which headed Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Countless movies about the war were produced ever since the late 1940s up to nowadays, the legacy doesn’t seem to be stopping. Just think about the number of box office movies you saw about WWII: Enemy at The Gates, Shindler’s List, Life is Beautiful, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line…
Americans, Russians, British or French were the heroes, fighting the common enemy: the Nazis. Rare are the movies where you could watch a version of the war from the opposite perspective, from Hitler’s own perspective, an issue movie director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, was able to achieve majestically.

Critics viewed “Der Untergang” (German original title of the movie) as an attempt to humanize Adolf Hitler, a person who has mood swings in the movie when he learns about high ranking officers’ treasons and direct orders that were not carried out. Regardless of the inevitable defeat, he remains Fuhrer until he shoots himself and orders his soldiers to burns his corpse. The story is based on testimonies of people who actually served under Hitler – which include his personal secretary, Traudl Junge - and didn’t unleash the secrets that tied them with the Fuhrer until recently (when they reached the last couple of years of their life). With the release of this movie, the last political taboo in Germany falls.

The plot: Downfall relates the last 10 days of Hitler’s life, retreated in a claustrophobic bunker in Berlin with his loyal Generals, his mistress Eva Braun, Joseph Goebbels - chief of Propaganda – and the personnel. He faces his final defeat against the Russian Army marching fiercely in direction of the city. The situation seems so chaotic, the enemy is getting closer and there doesn’t seem to be a way out of it this time. Human madness reaches its apogee with the Fuhrer executing people runners, Magda Goebbels killing her children for them not to live in a country where National Socialism has collapsed, Eva Braun partying and “having a walk” under Russian artillery. In the middle of it all, Traudle Junge is living a dream which doesn’t seem to be stopping…

The cast:
Adolf Hitler: Bruno Ganz, played in similar historical box office movies such as The Manchurian Candidate and Luther
Traudl Junge: Alexandra Maria Lara, played in several German movies and TV series.

The movie received Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, it’s a must-see. Europeans have once again proved themselves as being able to match American movies especially when it comes to narrating their own history.

By the weirdest of coincidences, someone mentioned that people on the internet have been broadcasting an International Language. So as usual, pointed the browser to Google and typed “International Language”. Results returned by the search awkward, since the term “Esperanto” appeared several times. Well turns out that that International language is called Esperanto (I recall seeing this term several times on some sites such as Wikipedia.org – 10 000+ articles in Esperanto), I always though it was talked in some Latino country probably in Southern America – well I obviously was wrong!

Esperanto is a constructed international language spoken by 100 000 to 1.6 million people worldwide. It was initiated by Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof (born in the Russian Empire in 1859) who wanted to create an international language with a relatively simple grammar but at the same time very rich by the use of suffixes – in order to make new words. The language can be classified as Romanic (Spanish, French, Italian, Romansh…) and best of all it’s easy to learn – considerably easier than other languages.

The language is regulated by the Akademio de Esperanto, based in Germany. Although the language has a flag, la verda stelo, representing it, it’s a language for peace and is not related to a single region, country or ethnic group in the world. Consequently, some international organizations have declared it as the official language.

You can learn the language for free on the internet on Lernu.net. The learning material is high quality, just great. I tried to read some of it, it’s really easy and you can learn it fast. I’m actually thinking about learning the language, 30 min a day or something – well I need to find the time first! People learning the language today could contribute in setting the bases of the language… think about Esperanto literature hehe
Maybe someday, it’ll be known by 500 Millions people and English or French will become forgotten language just like Latin and Ancient Greek are today.

I have just released a new version of Cafepress Shop for Xoops. This small module allows anyone with a Cafepress.com Basic account to display his store directly on his Xoops web site instead of having to link to the Cafepress.com web site. The release (v1.02) has a new item page, which displays the product description, and is clean of some bugs reported in the earlier version.

Development Site
Download Module from Files Dump

Finally, 9 month after the assassination of P.M. Rafic Hariri (on 14th of February 2005) and numerous political and social events in Lebanon, the truth was finally revealed today by Judge Detlev Mehlis.

Mehlis, heading the U.N. investigation team in this matter, delivered today the report about the assassination to Secretary General Cofi Anan.. A 60 page report that covers everything (not only what you should know) about the situation, the assassination, the investigation during several month in Lebanon and most important the conclusions reached.
The report implicates high officials of the Lebanese and Syrian government in the assassination. Emile Lahoud, current president of Lebanon, is said to have received a phone call minutes before the blast occurred killing P.M. Hariri and twenty others.

Also appears on the list of accused Gen. Rustom Ghazali, head of the Syrian military intelligence service in Lebanon and Brig. Gen. Jamil al-Sayyed, head of a Lebanese security force (who was arrested by the investigation team earlier) and Gen. Mustapha Hamdan, head of the presidential guard. Relatives of Syrian President Bachar Al Assad are also believed to be part of the assassination plot, an issue that was planned “between Beirut and Damascus” as mentioned by a senior security official. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, who “officially” committed suicide last week, was not mentioned in the report.

Read the official version of the Mehlis Report

Photos by Reuters

As part of an Artificial Intelligence course I’m currently taking, I’ve been confronted to an interesting logic problem called “Cannibals & Missionaries”. It’s a kind of Jigzaw that we could solve using a specific algorithm. Anyone with some logic can solve the problem, not just computers, so I though someone might be interested in taking a look at it.

The problem: There are 3 missionaries and 3 cannibals on the left side of a river. We want to move them all to the right side of the river. In order to do that, we have a boat that can move two characters maximum at the time. Your job is to move all characters considering that:
- The number of cannibals cannot be greater than the number of missionaries at any time on either side of the river (character on the boat are included in the count). If this occurs, the cannibals will eat the missionaries - Miam!
- The boat can move 1 or 2 people at the time, it cannot move if it’s empty
- The boat can be driven any of the characters no matter in what combination they are placed

Instead of solving it on pen on paper, you can play a flash version of the problem, as well as other logic problem, on Plastelina.net
Play Cannibals and Missionaries

The Syrian news agency SANA announced earlier today that the Syrian Interior Minister, General Ghazi Kanaan, committed suicide. It was not specified whether he shot himself or took poisonous pills. He was questioned three weeks earlier by the U.N. investigation team on Lebanese Prime Minister – Rafic Hariri - assassination. The final report of the investigation is to be released next week.

Kanaan was the head of the Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon from 1982 to 2002. He was believed to be the first responsible for the security regime in the country during the presence of Syrian Troops. Four pro-Syrian generals were arrested earlier this year, in the process of the U.N. investigation, and many Lebanese people say that the Syrian government is involved, an accusation fiercely rejected by Damascus.

A plausible explanation of the event: Syria plotted and executed the assassination operation against P.M. Rafic Hariri. Feeling they would be uncovered and held responsible by the international community, they decided to liquidate Ghazi Kanaan, or worse he decided to kill himself – not too far from the terrorist act - so that Syria doesn’t have to be involved directly. The whole thing would become a huge scandal inside the Syrian government instead of evolving into an international affair against Syria.

Photo by Reuters

I was truly amazed by how good this book was. When I first got it, I though I would be reading a documentary with nothing but dates and names. You do find dates and names, but the interesting part in the book is the analysis behind all those events, based on the own experience of the author and on hundreds of press articles.

“The Russian Mafia” is the only book by Federico Varese, a scholar at Oxford University, currently holding the chair of the Criminology department. Believing his words, it took several years of work and multiple trips to Russia. Although the issue is covered in a general perspective at some point, Varese emphasized on a specific region: Perm. He personally interviewed people directly involved in the process of the Russian mafia: criminals, company managers, security officers, journalists and so on.

Perm is one of the ten most populated areas in Russia and most importantly the refuge of dozens of criminals and gangsters. As explained, the rate of crime is related to the location of nearby prisons. During the Soviet era, prisoners were sent to low populated regions in the country (ideal for setting up a prison); once the sentence served, the prisoner was not allowed to move back to major cities so he usually lived in a nearby place. Consequently, towns were established by ex-prisoners; in our case towns located in the Perm region.

The collapse of the Soviet Union caused thousands of K.G.B. agents, government officers, sportsmen to be out of job. Simultaneously, demand for security increased dramatically since capitalism was just overtaking communism. Thus, security agencies (lots of which are considered mafia) were constituted to serve the most prominent political and economical agents (oligarchs plays a big part) but also the less influential people in the country.

When talking about mafia, we insinuate organized crime. If three robbers organize a robbery and succeed, is this organized crime? The author argues that the notion of monopoly comes in hand. A group of criminals controlling for example the distribution of drugs in a specific region are considered to be part of organized crime. Thus, they will not allow anyone else to sell drugs on their territory and will respond by violent means if someone does. Here comes the second characteristic: being in hold of a physical force and using it when needed.

The organization and the origins of the mafia constitute another part of the book. A particular aspect I found very interesting is related to the ancestor of the Russian mafia, the vory-v-zakone, a community constituted by criminals respecting certain laws related to how one should live his life and defining what he should (eg. Live by stealing and gambling) and should not do (eg. Never execute an order given by a governmental authority). You also find a comparison with other worldwide criminal organization such as the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the American Mafia and the Hong Kong Triads.

In a nut shell, this book is a must-read. You will definitely not get bored reading - it doesn’t exceed 200 pages. I even read some parts 5 or 6 times in order to understand the smallest details. Too bad there isn’t any other crime-related book by the author.

Before we even start, OOS stands for Out Of Service.
ProjectW.org is a huge forum where people share software, movies, music, anything you can think about. Well not any kind of software: illegal software aka Warez – nothing is perfect. The good thing about it is that it’s regularly updated and dead links are often removed. At first look, its chaos, but you can still find piece of software you won’t find anywhere else, you can even request applications, games and someone could share it.
The site is restructuring the databases, a process that takes a couple of hours usually in “normal” forums. The process has been going on for almost a week now on ProjectW.org, it just reached 75 %, and they must have something like 100,000 users and probably as much posts.

Note: downloading Warez is very bad; proceed with caution – Duh

Update 24 Oct 2005
ProjectW.org has been online for a couple of days after database restructuring was over (that was a week ago). It’s been down again ever since without any notice from the administrators of the forum.
In the mean time, you could try visiting one of the following similar ProjectW.org sites:
Warez-bb.Org
Puzo.Org

Read my lame excuse (if you have free waste time):
I only heard of these sites, with one ear not even both LoL
I haven’t visited them, my browser (I.E.) is equipped with anti-warez technology
I didn’t download anything: my ISP doesn’t provide a download option
I am innocent of any charge you might accuse me of!!!

What the sites l@@k like at night! - hehe

Update 26 Oct 2005
Good news! ProjectW.org is back on track.
It’s online once again and working properly.

Update 16 Nov 2005
The site is currently OOS. It’s been in that situation for the last couple of days.
The admins are probably facing more problems related to the server stability.

Update 21 Nov 2005
ProjectW.Org is back once again.
ForumW.Org seems to be a good alternative; but for the time being, let’s stick to ProjectW.Org.

Update 17 Apr 2006
ProjectW.Org is OOS. Downtime started yesterday.
I have no information on whether they’ll be back soon or not. They probably will at some point, they always do come back.

Update 20 Apr 2006
Back on duty (once again)!

Update 24 Jun 2007
After a couple of weeks of uncertainty, it really seems ProjectW is dead.
Use Torrents!

Saturday the 1st October of 2005, Tiësto played at the “Forum de Beyrouth” in Lebanon. 14 000 clubbers (I was there!) came from all over the Middle East to watch the event. Tiësto has been ranked the #1 DJ in the world for three years in a row by DJ Mag. He also is the only DJ to ever have played at the Olympic Games opening ceremony, Athens 2004, in front of a crowd of 70 000 people and nearly 4 billions viewers worldwide.

The stage was warmed up by DJ Mad Jam followed by DJ Amadeus for nearly 4 hours before the man himself, Tiësto, entered the stage at 1:00 am. He mixed “Adagio for Strings”, “Just be”, “Traffic” as well as other hits and on-the-moment mixes. He was really good, for once I was really surprised by how good this DJ could mix, good thing he didn’t cancel his trip because of the recent events in the country. Some fireworks and 14 dancers - too bad no belly dancers!! - were also part of the show; well nothing too exceptional but it was ok though.

I found a nice place just facing the stage, not TOO crowded thank god. Nice thought of going to the concert – I really enjoyed it – and Tiësto will not probably be back in Lebanon for a decade or so.

Concert notes:
- Tickets were priced $35 for regular (facing the stage), $70 for VIP (you get a chair to sit your ass on it) and $125 for VVIP (some extra drinks). Lots of people had fake tickets, so they got stuck at the entrance.
- The “Forum de Beyrouth”, faithful to its reputation of disgusting location, became a huge garbage dump minutes after everyone started getting drinks, there wasn’t a single dust bin in the whole area – not a good image of the organization. On top of it all, the heat reached 50º C.
- DJ Mad Jam really performed well, he should have his own world tour. Quoted: “My washing machine is not working, someone fucked my washing machine”.

You should check Tiësto’s Official Web Site for a schedule of his upcoming worldwide concerts.

Another explosion occurred on the 25th of September 2005 in the Jounieh area, north of Beirut. The attempt was on May Chidiac, a well known anchorwoman who has worked at the local LBC television for the last 20 years where she presented the 8:00 p.m. news and hosted political shows. The bomb was detonated in her car, a ranger rover which is now completely wrecked.

International media discuss that she was “Anti-Syrian” or a “sympathizer of the Lebanese Forces”, whose leader, Dr. Samir Geagea has been released a couple of month. This might be the case but first of all, she was a member of the media doing her job and there was no room for her political affiliation in what she did.
By targeting May Chidiac, free press and free speech is targeted, an issue that cannot be accepted in Lebanon, the sole country in the Middle East where the government doesn’t “truly” control the press.

May Chidiac is currently treated at Hotel Dieu de France Hospital in Beirut; doctors reported that she is in a “stable” condition. Although she’ll make it out of this nightmare, she paid an excessive price: she might lose her leg. A physical disability that doesn’t even come close to the wound the accident caused in the mind of the Lebanese people and certainly on her, a wound that might take time to heal.

This is the second time in a couple of month that free press is targeted in Lebanon, the latest attack of this kind of on Samir Kassir, a writer and journalist for An Nahar newspaper, another leading institution of the Lebanese media.

“Don’t’ Kill the Messenger”