While not being an outright example of a clash of civilizations in the Huntingtonian sense, elements of cultural misunderstanding and fears about the system-challenging tendencies of Iran do affect Western perceptions and influence Western behavior toward Iran. Furthermore, these kinds of reciprocal identity-based fears and projections of the other side’s presumed malevolent intentions tend to be mutually reinforcing. The risk is that they eventually become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Iran and the West - Regional Interests and Global Controversies [PDF]. [more inside]
posted by klue on May 23, 2011 - 4 comments

The UK Government has published extracts from COINS, the Combined Online Information System used by the Treasury to track all public spending by the Government. Together, the files constitute about 11Gb of data in delimited text format containing consolidated financial information for each department and account type. [more inside]
posted by Electric Dragon on Jun 4, 2010 - 3 comments

The UK has released the secret UFO files held by the Ministry of Defence under the Freedom of Information Act.

Their conclusion: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena exist but should no longer be monitored.

US UFO files here and Russian spottings discussed here

Time to break out the foil hats!
posted by dogsbody on May 29, 2006 - 29 comments

The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the Justice Department's database on foreign lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system.
posted by wsg on Jun 30, 2004 - 19 comments

On the Public's Right to Know or another reason why I hate John Ashcroft.
posted by zedzebedia on Jan 8, 2002 - 25 comments