About Tobias Schwarz

German, turned 30, balding slowly, hopefully with grace. A carnival junkie, who, after studies in business and politics in Mannheim, Paris, and London, is currently living in his hometown of Mainz, Germany, again, working on a phd when he's not too busy writing, composing, or supporting his home side Mainz 05. Turned New Labourite during a research job at the House of Commons, but difficult to place in German party-political terms. Liberal in the true sense of the term. His political writings are mostly on A Fistful of Euros these days. His personal blog Almost A Diary was a predominantly political blog in 2002-2003 but is now usually living up to its name, even though it can also be reached through the promising URL www.ichbindeutschland.de. Other bloglike activiy includes his musicblog www.tapsmusic.de, his musician account at myspace.com (myspace.com/tobischwarz), where you can listen to some of his songs..

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Recently, Samuel Huntington laid out his reasons for being afraid of Mexican immigrants to the US in an essay in Foreign Policy. You should read it. But even more importantly, make sure to read our AFOE co-editor Scott Martens’ most excellent three part (one, two, three) point by point refutation of Mr Huntington’s effort over at pedantry. While the case study is about the US, there are important lessons to be drawn for European immigration, too – “It’s all Tim Berner-Lee’s fault.”

Al Quaida, a Learning Organisation?

Spiegel Online claims to be in possession of a 42-page arabic language document that, according to the magazine’s author, Yassin Musharbash, suggests not only that Al Quaida had strategically targeted Madrid just before the elections, but, moreover, that the organisation’s intellectual and thus strategic capacities seem to have risen significantly. According to Musharbash’s article (in German), international experts who analysed the document – which was allegedly found on the internet by a Norwegian defense research agency in December 2003 – assume it to be authentic.

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Digitally Scared.

No doubt about it – revolutions are truly scary. Whether you think of the French one, the ones that freed Eastern Europe, or the digital revolution that is currently changing much of the transactional structure of our economies, and in particular the music industry. But contrary to most people, I do pity major label executives who never even stood a chance of understanding just what happened to them. After all, this is an industry where the average person?s desk had not seen a computer in 1996, as some insider once said.

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