Do Not Disappoint Us!

Here, dear Barack Obama, are the expectations, no, the demands, I consider essential for you to meet; and they are mere guidelines, not hurdles, thus leaving you much leeway to surprise me positively, to draw fresh tears of joy from my eyes:

• Continue always to think before acting or speaking and ever to display and explain, as you have so far again and again impressed me by doing, the intricacies of your process of conidering the matter at hand. That for you thought entails listening to other opinions, most intently to those far different from your own view, you have often proclaimed. I greatly admire this and consider it essential to the constant thinking I have here set down as my first demand on you.
• Justice, true justice, fairness, equal and universal civil and human rights must always be the guiding principle of your thoughts and actions. This demand is absolute and I will measure you and your governance by your efforts to attain and preserve freedom and justice for all, whoever they may be, and guaranteeing them all those same rights to think and express those thoughts as freely as I expect you to do yourself. No fiats, no privilege, no seclusion.
• Negotiate with other countries sincerely, openly, honestly, constantly to resolve the common problems facing mankind, to mediate, defuse, obviate conflicts between countries, peoples, regions, to enhance international governance, to respect and adhere to international law, to act in concert with international organizations composed of equal partners to take military actions as a last resort against those who refuse, ignore, violate negotiation in order to maintain world peace and the security and safety of individual countries and their citizens.
• Accept and encourage global authorities for all matters beyond the jurisdiction of any one country to ensure that global operators may not avoid laws and rules of a particular country by simply operating elsewhere. This means abiding by the decisions of such international organization.
• Promote mankind, the worth of each human on this earth, before any fiscal, business, monetary, diplomatic, or political goal. Man IS the measure!
• You will have understood, dear Barack Obama, that I expect, demand, you to adhere to and promote, indeed, Enlightenment and its principles against all forms of fundamentalist or absolutist or totalitarianizing ideology or religion, to shine ever more light into quotidian shadows in order to reveal and promote those principles of Enlightenment on which the US and all world partners for freedom, justice, and human rights are founded. As long as any one of us does not enjoy all human rights, no one of us can be secure in his own. This must never be forgotten.

Is that too much to demad of you, Barack Obama, my President-Elect? I think it is the least I have a right to expect of you.

Please do not disappoint me and all the rest of us.

Free At Last !

Yes, that's how I felt this morning here on our magic island when we turned on CNN to learn that Obama had hit 338 electoral votes; that's also how I feel now: FREE AT LAST ! We probably couldn't have slept at all if the indicators had been any different, and at 4am our time it was already looking good before the west coast came in.

[Hiddensee remains wonderful: new pix now in the slide show in the previous posting below.

From Hiddensee Herbst 2008

This one only to give a jubilant hello to a world with a decent US President-Elect.]

Hiddensee Between Halloween & Election Day

Nice easy arrival with perfect connections from tram to train to train to bus to ferry got us to the island around 3pm Saturday, our landlady Dorina waiting with smiles and the keys to the house we have all to ourselves this time (which also results in infrequent surfing online & blogging as the caretaker has also already left for the season and he had the wlan there, now we're sitting in a café). Went across the street to visit our old friends the Forkerts, who were the ones who used to take care of the house, but now they're at the stage that others must take care of them. Happy faces, though, for coffee & cake with them.
Fireplace heated up for the evening, we lounged around and went to a pitch black coast (cloudy) with ethereal lights of civilization glimmering on the horizons.
Rented bikes and rode to the north end of the island Sunday, today to the lighthouse and cliffs, and it's a WONDERFUL FOG here since dawn... only then was it briefly clear.
Below some selected pics, more as we get back over to the internet café.

AND VOTE FOR OBAMA TOMORROW!

What We Can See Tomorrow ...

... you can get a virtual glimpse of today

Making My Life More Fun

I'm beginning to believe that as of next Wednesday morning it will be a lot more fun being an American in Europe, that it will be a lot easier to explain to Europeans that we can and do think and care about human rights. I think it will then be a lot easier to extoll the great ideals of the American Constiution, the Bill of Rights, the goals of the founding fathers. It will then be a lot easier for people here to believe me and all other Americans when we speak of democracy, freedom, justice, civil rights, human rights, and a better world.

O, my fellow citizens, please help me to wake up Wednesday morning with that new brightness in my life, with that new illumination glowing for the entire world, with a hint of nobility in the human endeavour! Our homeland can again serve as a beacon of hope and inspiration for many noble aspirations worldwide! Please help that shining Wednesday morning dawn!

Think, Be Honest, Face Challenges, Listen, Involve

That is what a man, a good man, is promising Americans: to think constantly and not claim perfection, to be honest with the citizenry and the world, to listen to critics, friends, Americans, and other countries, to involve citizens in decisions and all countries in the effort to find solutions to world problems.

No, he will not be a perfect president, but he will be a good president! Perfection is a dream of fundamentalists, and the playpen was full of such and the world is threatened by such. We need leaders who can think and dare to do so. Think carefully and vote for this man for president of the United States.

Another Endorsement

THE FINANCIAL TIMES: October 26 2008 19:31
Editorial comment - Obama is the better choice:

Obama is the better choice
US presidential elections involve a fabulous expense of time, effort and money. Doubtless it is all too much – but, by the end, nobody can complain that the candidates have been too little scrutinised. We have learnt a lot about Barack Obama and John McCain during this Campaign. In our view, it is enough to be confident that Mr Obama is the right choice.

Hey, folks, even the business world, the often parasitic leech and callous fiend of our age, has discovered that Obama is a better choice, perhaps comprehending that the world must be held together if they hope to continue doing business at all, that the US must regain respect in the world if American companies are to be considered as anything other than the cause of worldwide economic trouble, that loyalty to the principles of freedom and justice are of benefit even to those in search of profit.

So GET OUT THE VOTE - VOTE FOR OBAMA - MAKE SURE YOUR FRIENDS DO TOO

An Endorsement to Remember

Just have to love the playpen at play and relish in the hope they'll all soon only have rattles to shake back down in Texas. (Thanks to the AWESOME Darth Rachel for helping this reach OLD EUROPE !)

Lights of a light nature

Finally, as evidently thousands of others, we yesterday evening went out to see the colorful illuminations on the last night of this year's Festival of Lights. (On the linked site, there are many more and better photos than we managed.)
Once at the tv-tower, we realized there were also to be fireworks at 9:30, so we decided to do the bits from there to Unter den Linden, including the Cathedral with laser painting, take a bus to the Brandenburg Gate, and then again from there to the Siegessäule, farthest on our spontaneous plan, then hop back on a bus for Alex and be there in plenty of time for the fireworks.
But the bus quit at Schl0ß Bellevue, one stop before Siegessäule, as there was also some run of a few dozen people with light rods or such, or whatever, but it was only a couple of hundred meters to walk there, and the bus would have to turn around anyway, so, we thought, we'll still make it back in time.
Well, the sms info service said a proper bus would come at 9:06, 9:08, and 9:14 at the Bellevue stop, which the first two indeed did, but were so full they wouldn't let anyone board. The next one still hadn't arrived at 9:20, so we walked to the S-Bahn station and caught a train at 9:28, through the window saw the fireworks begin promptly at 9:30, and found them over when we disembarked at Hackescher Markt, an ideal vantage point just off from the tv-tower, the area where they were launched. We got off the train, by the way, at 9:37, so the entire firework show couldn't have been more than 5 minutes.
Our advantage: there were such mobs that the tram from there directly to our house was already filled to overflowing at the second stop. We had seats by boarding at the start at the train station. By the Alexander Platz stop, the tram was a sardine can, the second of the two stops on the Platz not possible for anyone to board.
Yep, Berlin is a party, and EVERYBODY always goes on the last night, including us. But we got a seat and had fun. Had we seen the fireworks from closeup we would have had to wait forever to get on a tram home.
Below the meagre personal evidence:

Above, the still photos that amounted to anything; and below, the short video of the laser painting on Berlin's Cathedral at the top of Unter den Linden and at the River Spree

By the way, drunken right-of-way, hooray !

An Austrian drunk driving at double the speed limit (142 kmh) totalled his car and successfully ended his life a good week ago, to the benefit of the world and the troubling grief of his native Austrian state Kärnten, luckily did not injure the other driver and car he raced to pass on his way, one supposes, to uphold rights and decency once more.
Those who rush to uphold values are the ones you'd better get out of the way of when they're behind the wheel, of a car, or, far worse, of a state or country. This is another one whose only suitable eulogy consists of two words: "Good Riddance!"

And the Austrian Nobel Prize Author Elfriede Jelinek has also suitably memorialized her fellow countryman Haider in this text published on her website:

Von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit

NYTimes Endorsement of Barack Obama

Time for the world and the States to move on, move ahead, move up, to move at all !

Editorial - Barack Obama - Editorial Board - Endorsement - NYTimes.com:

Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance.
The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable.
As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.
...
The nation’s problems are simply too grave to be reduced to slashing “robo-calls” and negative ads. This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of those qualities.

Vote NOW, Vote EARLY, Vote ABSENTEE, but VOTE !

You can already vote early or absentee in many states AND abroad. Make sure you do. Make sure you vote for CHANGE. Bring America back to the position of respect it has sadly lost in the world through 8 years of a playpenal bushbaby presidency trampling on American ideals and international cooperation for peace, justice, freedom, and survival on our common planet!

End of a House Slave ?

Just a suggestion: Perhaps we have witnessed, in recent days, a house slave finally managing to escape from the playpen of his master, admitting all he did wrong by ever letting himself be used there, and trying to make up for some horrible actions he took, as at the UN with that fake evidence about Iraq he presented. (I'm talking about Colin P, of course.) Perhaps he's attempting to free himself totally from the shackles of the abusers and lend support to one pointing to the light.
(A question: Is there any chance the Oreo-Cookie-Condy can also make a break from her self-imposed imprisonment? Probably not, since she even considers the Equal Opportunity laws, which gave her one, are unfair. She's got an awful lot to learn.)

Meanwhile, here, the Chairman of the Deutsche Bank announced he would be ashamed to accept any guarantees or equity funds from the state rescue package he helped the German government fashion to rescue the financial sector he and his cronies had a part in steering into the oblivion of trashy investments based on less than a hope and a prayer. He also generally offered to "forego" his bonus payments this year, as if he or any banker anywhere deserved any.
Angie popped a few buttons upon hearing this, and the Finance Minister reminded Mr. Ackermann that he had been involved in the whole thing from the word go and called his remarks out of place.

Whatever happened to hairshirts for penitents? What ever happened to penitence? or shame? or simple decency? What ever happened to the ability to think straight? or to think at all?

Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner 10/16/08

The roast as high art. The winner gracious, the Cardinal red, the loser grinning. May it remain so.

Two More Endorsements

Barack Obama for president - Los Angeles Times:
"We need a leader who demonstrates thoughtful calm and grace under pressure, one not prone to volatile gesture or capricious pronouncement. We need a leader well-grounded in the intellectual and legal foundations of American freedom. Yet we ask that the same person also possess the spark and passion to inspire the best within us: creativity, generosity and a fierce defense of justice and liberty.
The Times without hesitation endorses Barack Obama for president."


Barack Obama for president - THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
"On Nov. 4 we're going to elect a president to lead us through a perilous time and restore in us a common sense of national purpose.
The strongest candidate to do that is Sen. Barack Obama. The Tribune is proud to endorse him today for president of the United States. ...
This endorsement makes some history for the Chicago Tribune. This is the first time the newspaper has endorsed the Democratic Party's nominee for president. ...
It may have seemed audacious for Obama to start his campaign in Springfield, invoking Lincoln. We think, given the opportunity to hold this nation's most powerful office, he will prove it wasn't so audacious after all. We are proud to add Barack Obama's name to Lincoln's in the list of people the Tribune has endorsed for president of the United States."

Barack Obama for President

Barack Obama for President - washingtonpost.com:
"THE NOMINATING process this year produced two unusually talented and qualified presidential candidates. There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president."

The first newspaper editorial endorsement already TODAY !

Debating Raised to Art

Because of the debate last night, I suppose, and, well, cause I've alway thought someone should do it, and these kids did, so I'm posting their video version, though I'd still like to see it with Dustin Hoffman and Raoul Julia, or George Clooney and Brat Pitt, or even more so on the stage with any really excellent actors. So much more illuminating than the typical Q&A session! And if you have never read the text, well, you should....

An Encounter With An Interviewer, by Mark Twain from Mark Keller on Vimeo.

Awesome Revisited

Today the kind librarian of the Carl-von-Ossietzky-Oberschule sent me a CD with copies of the photos he took of John Green and me (and the class and others there of course) during his reading and discussion with the students there on October 2 during the internationales literaturfestival berlin. Apparently, I, as translator, had at least as much fun as John did. Check out the selection below.

Palin(g)

Though she should be Palin(g) with shame, she's probably only Palin(g) with fright that her so very dirty tricks were revealed quickly enough before the election to show the world how long her "moral" and "ethical" "values" have already been Palin(g)! Those who carry their moral virtues around like a banner into battle are always the ones demanding police actions against everyone else and license to abuse for themselves. If you are patriotic, you needn't wrap yourself in the flag; cloth only hides dirt. Shame on you, you ever more Palin(g) mirage of a veep candidate!

The New York Times / U.S. / Politics
Alaska Inquiry Concludes Palin Abused Powers
By SERGE F. KOVALESKI, Published: October 11, 2008
"Gov. Sarah Palin abused the powers of her office by pressuring subordinates to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, an investigation has concluded."

Friday Also Hopeful !

Yes, hope, I added to my own hope and hopefulness in the world with a very practical measure this afternoon:
I received, from the State Board of Elections in NY, my special federal voter absentee ballot, marked it CORRECTLY, thoughtfully, with the conviction that change is possible, sealed it in the inner envelope, that in the outer envelope with the address in Manhattan, and promptly brought the whole thing to the post office around the corner here and paid €1.70 to have it airmailed to the States.
That really felt good !

Félicitations pour un écrivain libre

Le Clézio, always daring to think, never remaining fixedly of one or the other nationality, a great universalist, a model European, a trenchant writer in the French language, of human warmth, once wrote, "I am convinced that we are free. Writing is a way of expressing that liberty." This statement alone is worthy of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Le Clézio won it yesterday for much, much more. Congratulations.

See also Sollers' piece originally from 1995 on the occasion of the appearance of Le Clézio's book of interviews Ailleurs [Elsewhere]:

Le Clézio par Sollers
LE MONDE DES LIVRES 09.10.08

Ces temps-ci, les philosophes et les écrivains nous parlent très peu concrètement de la liberté. Mais c'est qu'ils se croient coupables. Ils ont tort.

©

Friday

Be positive, world, think of something that costs nothing! That bankers have royally mucked it up should not surprise anyone. That anyone still wants to privatize ANYthing in public hands should be a sign of their critical insanity and by no means be acted on. That private companies receiving state aide should be placed to that in extent in public/state/taxpayer ownership is clear. If we all share the risk, then we should all participate in any potential gain.

Peep, Peep, Peep : Cheap Veep

She's full of fun, that maverick of McPain, as long as she gets no nearer presidential power than Anchorage.

In Hommage to Mahmud Darwisch

Worldwide reading in memory of Mahmoud Darwish on 5 October 2008

… Denk an den Anderen
Denk an den Andern
Wenn du dein Frühstück bereitest, denk an den Andern
und vergiss nicht das Futter der Tauben.
Wenn du in deine Kriege ziehst, denk an den Andern
und vergiss nicht jene, die Frieden fordern.
Wenn du deine Wasserrechnung begleichst, denk an die Andern,
die ihr Wasser aus den Wolken saugen müssen.
Wenn du zu deinem Hause zurückkehrst, deinem Hause, denk an den
Andern und vergiss nicht das Volk in den Zelten.
Wenn du schlafen willst und die Sterne zählst, denk an den Andern,
der hat keinen Raum zum Schlafen.
Wenn du dich mit Wortspielen befreist, denk an den Andern
und denk an jene, die die Freiheit der Rede verloren.
Wenn du an die Anderen in der Ferne denkst, denke an dich,
und sage : wäre ich doch eine Kerze im Dunkeln.
- Mahmoud Darwish: 2005 / Übersetzer: : Hakam Abd al-Hadi

The Berlin International Literature Festival is appealing for a worldwide reading of Mahmoud Darwish's poetry on 5 October 2008. The activities accompanying this event are designed not only to honour the poet's body of work but also his commitment to promoting peaceful and fair coexistence between Arabs and Israelis. This appeal is directed at cultural institutions, radio stations, schools, universities, theatres and all other Darwish enthusiasts the world over.
Mahmoud Darwish was one of the best-loved Arab lyricists of modern times and counts among the most eminent poets in the history of world literature. Thousands flocked to hear his readings, and his volumes of poetry have been published in the hundreds and thousands. Numerous pieces have been translated into more than 30 different languages. His poems have been transformed into folksongs and many of his verses have taken on the character of proverbs. Darwish's poetry draws inspiration from the tradition of ancient Arab poetry and Modernist influences and borrows from the style and language of both the Qur'an and the Bible. Few other poets have displayed such dedication to articulating a vision of a meaningful, real and fair peace between Arabs and Israelis, which furthers a dialogue between two voices and two different outlooks on life, while ensuring that one does not impose its view upon the other.
In the tradition of ancient Arab poetry, the poet assumes the role of spokesperson for his people. And despite Darwish's move away from this role since the 1990s, many readers still viewed him as Palestine's literary ambassador to the last.
Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1941 in the village of Al-Birweh near Acre. In 1948, he fled to Lebanon and returned after the foundation of the state of Israel. He worked as an editor for various political and cultural journals in Haifa. After being imprisoned on numerous occasions, he left Israel in 1970 and went into exile. He has lived in Moscow, Cairo, Beirut, Paris and, most recently, in Amman and Ramallah. In 1987, he was elected to the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and helped draft the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988. He left the organization in 1993 in protest against the signing of the Oslo Accords. He received numerous awards, including the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom in 2001 and the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize in 2003. Darwish died on 9 August 2008 following heart surgery. He was buried in the West Bank city of Ramallah and granted a state funeral.

The appeal has been signed by:Hector Abad, Colombia; Tariq Ali, Pakistan; Amal al-Jubouri, Iraq/Germany; John Ashbery, USA; Margaret Atwood, Canada; Daniel Barenboim, Argentina/Germany; Bei Dao, China/USA; Mohammed Bennis, Morocco; Philipp Blom, Germany/Austria; Rachid Boudjedra, Algeria; Breyten Breytenbach, South Africa; André Brink, South Africa; Monika Carbe, Germany; Dilip Chitre, India; John M. Coetzee, South Afrika; Edgardo Cozarinsky, Argentina; Nuruddin Farah, Somalia/South Africa; Enrique Fierro, Uruguay; Jon Fosse, Norway; Antje Grabenhorst, Germany; Nadine Gordimer, South Africa; Ha Jin, China; Qassim Haddad, Bahrain; Milton Hatoum, Brazil; Seamus Heaney, Ireland; Mofidul Hoque, Bangladesh; Jabbar Yassin Hussin, Iraq/France; Nancy Huston, Canada/France; Elfriede Jelinek, Austria; Adel Karasholi, Syria/Germany; Navid Kermani, Germany; Friedrich Kröhnke, Germany; Abdellatif Laabi, Morocco/France; Zakes Mda, South Africa; Pauline Melville, Guyana/Great Britain; Paul Muldoon, Northern Ireland/USA; Charl-Pierre Naudé, South Africa; Claudia Ott, Germany; Michael Palmer, USA; Shailja Patel, Kenya; Jean Portante, Luxemburg; Fernando Rendón, Colombia; Alberto Ruy-Sánchez, Mexico; Joachim Sartorius; Germany; K.S. Satchidanandan, India; Nasrin Siege, Iran/Germany; Wole Soyinka, Nigeria; Shashi Tharoor, India; Lina Tibi, Syria; Tzvetan Todorov, Bulgaria/France; Anne Waldmann, USA; Marina Warner, Great Britain; Eliot Weinberger, USA; Renate Welsh-Rabady, Austria; Yang Lian, China/Great Britain

internationales literaturfestival berlin
5.10.2008_19.00_Haus der Berliner Festspiele Große Bühne
Hommage an Mahmud Darwisch im Rahmen einer weltweiten Lesung

“Mahmud ist fort. Das Exil ist vorüber“, schrieb Breyten Breytenbach kurz nach dem Tod des großen palästinensischen Dichters Mahmud Darwisch. „Für uns alle“, so Breytenbach, „war er ein Maßstab. Vielleicht bleiben wir irgendwo stehen, weil wir über uns Vogelgeflatter hören, und wir halten schützend eine Hand über unsere geblendeten Augen, während wir den Himmel absuchen. In diesem Rhythmus der Vögel wird er für mich fortleben.“ Frank Arnold, Volker Braun, Margarita Broich, Leila Chammaa, Tina Engel, Kathleen Gallego Zapata, Astrid Gorvin, Qassim Haddad, Amal al-Jubouri, Marel Khalifa, Adel Karasholi, Naomi Krauss, Jutta Lampe, Geno Lechner, Marie Löcker, Julia Malik, Chun Mei Tan, Friedhelm Ptok, Joachim Sartorius, Roland Schäfer, Nina West u. a. lesen Gedichte von Darwisch in deutscher Übersetzung. Claudia Ott würdigt den Autor und zeichnet die Stationen seines Lebens nach.

Es werden Übersetzungen von Hakam Abdel-Hadi / Rüdiger Vorbrüggen, Evelyn Agbaria, Mustafa Al-Sleiman / Volker Braun, Christine Battermann, Farouk S. Beydoun, Johanna und Moustapha Haikal, Adel Karasholi, Khalid al-Maaly / Heribert Becker, Stephan Milich, Angelika Neuwirth, Günther Orth, Claudia Ott, Annemarie Schimmel und Stefan Weidner gelesen.

Scritture Giovani

Awesome, as in: made of

You know who I'm talking about: yes, John Green, who read to and discussed with several classes in a Kreuzberg school today, an actor reading excerpts from the published German version of Looking for Alaska, and yours truly translating John's English remarks into German and the kids' German questions into English for him.
And yes, I got the answers to the questions I was charged with by my internet contacts (you know who you are) and accomplished the missions requested.
Berlin is awesome, as is its Kreuzberg borough, according to John.
The school director took some photos which I will try to get my hands on (or my computer bits and bytes onto) and share them with those interested.
One quote from JG to the kids, pertinent prior to tonight's veepbate:
"I have to be honest with you, it's not the politicians or the system alone that has to be changed in America, no, it's the people, the way they think... They have to become more open and tolerant."
The Kreuzberg kids cheered when they got the German version of that one!

Public Transportation as an Outing

With our niece, we rode all forms of public transportation in Berlin yesterday for our special outing with her. No sooner than we got around the corner on the tram was there a passenger with the DTs whom a policewoman accompanied to the driver up front where we were to have him wait until an ambulance could come. Lea, highly interested and a bit nervous at first, remained calm when we told her it's good to know people will take care of you if something happens on the train and it's ok to wait for the shaking man to be taken to the hospital.
From the S-Bahn station Bornholmer Str., we then went to Unter den Linden and came out so she could see why the surface train has to be in a tunnel in the middle of the city and there at the Brandenburg Gate the first marathon participants were coming through to the finish line, so she got a whiff of all that and a baloon from some people advertising something. At York Str. station, we came out again to the street where the big mass of runners was passing by and she could hear and watch everyone cheering for their relatives to pass. On the train, there was another strange passenger, a nut case yelling at everybody, but in the end doing no harm.
And on and on it went, as we found out from her mom later, to Lea's absolute enjoyment and edification. "How do you guys know about everything." We like learning new things, just like you do, was our answer...

Wertigkeit neu erleben

VW hits a new low in mastery of language, taking the word "valence" (Wertigkeit) from specialist fields (chemistry/linguistics) and claiming you can experience it anew with an automoblile: "Wertigkeit neu erleben: der neue Golf". They have plastered half of the billboards in Berlin with this nonsensical claim. I'm not sure if they think the car is valuable, offers value, or contains some strange chemical isotopes with heretofore unknown valences.
Keep on going and no one will be able to understand why they should park their cars and get on a train or a bike or walk before all that shiny metal is turned into temporary housing for the homeless.
Don't get cynical, though, think and defy such misuse of langage. If hopefully defiant, you can survive the morast of unintelligibilty.
The ad people don't know what they're saying anyway...
Dare to value language highly and experience that value anew every day!
Just buy a BOOK instead of a car!

Play Money

Playpenal bushbaby and playmates are going wild with the play money they forbade anyone to regulate or watch over. So now they want to buy up from each other the paper from bad investment decisions they all made themselves and use YOUR money, not their play money, to do it. Rather, let's provide regulation and penalties on play money games and take the bonus money away from those playmates at bankrupt playpenal banks. Lehman playmate chief, for example, got 22 million only a few months ago for the success of his business. Now the playpen is pumping in 700 billion to cover all their losses. Way to go playpen!
(And McPain was always a supporter of these machinations: The economy is fundamentally strong, he claims, and his own playmate the bushbaby pretty much said yesterday that the whole things going to hell in a handbasket if Congress doesn't get scared enough to shower it with cash, though of course giving everyone health care would be socialist.)
Oh well, when I grew up I learned it was bad to try to live on borrowed money. Anyone ever heard of a savings account?

Two Birthdays at Once

Malte and Lea have each had birthdays earlier this month, and yesterday was the party for both with the relatives. Cake and fun playing with the kids for the uncles and all the rest of the clan...

Kein Kölsch für Nazis

As this report in today's Tagesspiegel shows, finally everyone who thinks is concerned about the rightist conference coming up on the weekend in Cologne:

Kein Kölsch für Nazis
Umstrittenes Treffen Kein Kölsch für Nazis [Von Jürgen Zurheide]
Die Wählergruppe Pro Köln hat für das Wochenende Rechtsextreme aus zahlreichen Ländern in die Metropole am Rhein gerufen. Offiziell geht es bei dem Treffen um den Protest gegen den Neubau einer Moschee. Die Stadt wehrt sich gegen den rechten 'Antiislamisierungskongress' – auch die Altstadtwirte.

See my earlier blog post on this so-called "Antiislamisierungskongress"!

By Popular Demand

News Flash:

Koko, a famous resident of Weißensee, whence he can see Poland on a clear day with his telescoping eyes, has turned down a request by the McPAIN team to assist them in achieving a bird's eye view of the world, because, as he chirped it, "They have never shown interest in anything green before and I am not available as a token intellectual to a gang of populist rabble-rousers. I hope the other side wins."

If you can't grow a pair, I'll lend you mine

The veep debate we didn't get to hear.
(Thanks to DarthR for putting me on to this!)

Laïcité !

Laïcité positive
by prochoix

La laïcité ne doit pas plier devant Benoît XVI
Appel autour de la venue de Benoit XVI en France du 12 au 15 septembre

Nous appelons ... à une vigilance vis-à-vis de tous les intégrismes. Cette vigilance passe par une revalorisation du lien social sur un mode laïque, un soutien aux associations de quartier luttant pour le vivre ensemble et la défense de l’école publique. Nous le disons sans détour : dans la transmission des principes de la République, le curé, le pasteur, le rabbin ou l’imam ne pourront jamais remplacer l’instituteur.

Thinking Unnecessary in a Playpen

It's also all about whether Americans can finally admit thinking is something good, rather than something to be afraid of, especially when others think. The ability to think is by far more important in our world today precisely because there are so many out there who believe they are on a mission and therefore sneer at and, depending on their audience, attempt to hinder or eliminate, those who do think. You have nothing to fear but your belief that thought is bad!

Gov. Palin’s Worldview

"It was bad enough that Ms. Palin’s performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness.
What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things — who are so blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls “the mission” that they won’t even pause for reflection — shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country."

The New York Times - Editorial - September 13, 2008

Towers of Light !

light of freedom

light of thought

light of tolerance

light of justice

light of solidarity

light of humanity

light of hope

light of democracy

Let us spread THIS light, shine it deep into the darkest corners of hatred and superstition, convince all how wonderful it is to stand in the light that only we as humans are capable of providing, nurturing, and enjoying.

THINK.

Consider This...

Something to think about

• before the US election in November
• before the Brandenburg local elections on September 28
• before the Bavarian state elections on the same day

Something to think about before you

• deny others the rights you have
• envy those who have less than you
• opt out of systems of social solidarity
• claim you can't be a bigot because some of your best friends are ***.

(If you are looking at this, then someone in your family or among your friends is definitely *** and will be very disappointed in you if you vote for backwardness!)

Es geht allein darum, darüber zu wachen, daß uns die anbrechende Fragwürdigkeit, die Vorläuferschaft für die Größe, nicht entrissen wird durch billige Antworten und Aberglauben.
[MH: Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, GA Bd.31 §15 S.143]

It's all about taking care to ensure that dawning questions worthy of consideration, precursors of greatness, are not ripped from our thoughts by cheap answers and superstitions.

Il s'agit seulement de veiller à ce que les questions dignes d'être posées naissantes, précurseurs de grandeur, ne nous soient pas arrachées par des réponses faciles et des superstitions.

[French & English versions my own]

Birthday Boy Had Fun!

And we don't have a single photo to prove it. But he immediately mounted his wrap-dispenser-cutter, gobbled up his mom's gulash and cauliflower lunch, beat both of us at skat, and giggled and laughed and thoroughly enjoyed the show by Malediva in the tent.
(One of their best jokes, in this tent-venue next to the chancellor's office, was when it thundered outside and they quipped, "Oh no, the Russians are coming and Angie's shooting back and telling them, 'You might get Georgia, but Brandenburg is mine!' After all, she has a house there.")
And we still have apple cake left to enjoy for a couple of days to come.

"Enlighten Instead of Veiling!"

"Aufklären statt verschleiern!"

Gegen Fremdenfeindlichkeit und reaktionäre Islamverteidigung
Kritische Islamkonferenz attackiert Anti-Islamisierungs-Kongress

Sonderveranstaltung der Kritischen Islamkonferenz
anlässlich des sog. „Anti-Islamisierungs-Kongresses“
Redner: Ralph-Giordano, Mina Ahadi und Hartmut Krauss
Freitag, 12. September 2008
Köln, Jugendherberge Riehl, An der Schanz 14
Beginn: 18:30, Kostenbeitrag: 5 Euro
Veranstalter: Zentralrat der Ex-Muslime, Redaktion Hintergrund, Giordano Bruno Stiftung

Köln. Anlässlich des „Anti-Islamisierungs-Kongresses“, der vom 19. bis zum 21. September in Köln stattfinden soll, haben Vertreter der „Kritischen Islamkonferenz“ zum Widerstand „gegen die einheimischen und zugewanderten Rechtskräfte“ aufgerufen. In der von Mina Ahadi (Zentralrat der Ex-Muslime), Ralph Giordano, Hartmut Krauss (Zeitschrift Hintergrund) und Michael Schmidt-Salomon (Giordano Bruno Stiftung) unterzeichneten Erklärung heißt es, den Veranstaltern des „Anti-Islamisierungs-Kongresses“ gehe es nicht darum, „die menschenrechtswidrigen, antidemokratischen und reaktionär-patriarchalischen Grundinhalte und Praktiken des Islam anzuprangern, sondern darum, Einwanderer aus der Türkei, dem Iran und arabischen Ländern pauschal als Bedrohung zu stigmatisieren.“ Diese Anti-Islam-Propaganda diene als Mittel zur „populistischen Ausbeutung begründeter islamkritischer Stimmungen innerhalb der einheimischen Bevölkerung“. Im Verborgenen bleibe dabei die „tiefe weltanschaulich-politische Wesensverwandtschaft zwischen einheimischem Rechtskonservatismus und islamischer Orthodoxie“, die sich etwa in gemeinsamen patriarchalen Werten ausdrücke.
Ähnlich scharf wie mit „Pro Köln“ und ihren Verbündeten rechnen die Vertreter der Kritischen Islamkonferenz jedoch auch mit der Gegenseite der „vermeintlich antirassistischen Islamversteher“ ab. Die Abgesandten Erdogans, Milli Görüs und die Grauen Wölfe würden sich „ins Fäustchen lachen, wenn die deutschen Blockierer einseitig und voller Vehemenz gegen Pro-Köln und Co. demonstrieren“, aber auf Tauchstation gingen, „wenn gegen Islamisten, Ehrenmörder, Zwangsverheirater, Karikaturenschänder, muslimische Mordhetzer und Judenhasser etc. aufzumarschieren wäre“. Gefordert sei heute eine „dritte Kraft“, die sich gegen Rassismus und Fremdenfeindlichkeit ebenso wehre wie gegen menschenrechtswidrige Formen religiöser Herrschaft. Ziel dieser dritten Kraft sei „eine freie, gerechte und solidarische Gesellschaft, in der Menschenrechtsverletzungen von keiner Seite geduldet und verharmlost werden“.
Am 12. September wollen die Unterzeichner im Rahmen einer „Sonderveranstaltung der Kritischen Islamkonferenz anlässlich des Anti-Islamisierungs-Kongresses“ ihre Positionen zu Gehör bringen. Als Redner werden Ralph Giordano, Mina Ahadi und der Islamkritiker Hartmut Krauss auftreten.

For Detti's Birthday We're Going into a Tent

Tipi - Das Zelt at the Chancellorette's Office, for a concert of Malediva, wine, cheese, bread, and a lot of fun!

Under this link there's a short snippet from one of their songs. Exquisitely camp, extravagantly Berlin, extraordinarily gay, exorbitantly cult, extensively fab.

Malediva

Ungeschminkt

A report on the evening will surely follow, Saturday evening that it is, the evening of my wonderful husband-partner-lover-friend's birthday.

Playpen Doubly Redux

I'm sorry, but this all sounds far too playpenal to me. How do you spell her name? Sarah Palin? or is it actually Sarah Playpen? None too canny of Johnny mcCanny, I must say. But oh well, who's expecting miracles here? What would the President of Georgia think about this governor of a US state who wanted it to secede from the country? Remind anyone of South Ossetia? HO HUM! That's why she's down on untraditional relationships, I suppose. Let's redraw some nerve-endings here and let the playpen get nervous for a change.

The New York Times
U.S. / Politics
Disclosures on Palin Raise Questions on Vetting Process
By ELISABETH BUMILLER, Published: September 2, 2008
The disclosure that Gov. Sarah Palin’s daughter was pregnant was one of several revelations that called into question how well John McCain had screened her.

The Washington Post
No Surprises From Palin, McCain Team Says

The Boston Globe
Palin's daughter, 17, is pregnant
ST. PAUL - Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin revealed yesterday that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant - a disclosure made by John McCain's campaign in an effort to stop what it called "out of control" Internet rumors that Palin's youngest child actually was conceived by her daughter and that the Alaska governor faked her pregnancy to ...
Michael Kranish, September 2, 2008

The Christian Science Monitor
Palin daughter’s pregnancy shocks GOP convention
But delegates say situation humanizes the nominee for vice president.

First Day of School with a Soaring Start

So, Lea had her first day of school yesterday, a day which was mostly celebration, while the first day with real schoolwork is tomorrow.
We arrived for the celebration at 3pm, but now the order of events...

• 11:00 Leas's class was received in the school auditorium for a two-hour spectacle (the other 1st grade class had already come and gone). For 25 kids, the auditorium was full, estimates of some 300 people (as many relatives as could), the third-graders put on a show and the teacher did give them their books and lesson plan.
• 12:00 Our niece had lunch with parents and grandparents. Balloons were blown up and the present table prepared (full later!).
• 3:00 We and others arrived for coffee and cake followed by general playtime and chatter.
• 5:00 Lea released the helium-filled balloons to carry her wishes for a colorfully successful school career up to the sky.
• 6:30 Dinner arrived, prepared and set up by caterers, and endless delicious buffet!
• Art gallery of chalk drawings on the driveway pavement (unfortunately NO photos until we get Steffis!) with the kids and the uncles endeavours.
• 8:30 Fire balloons sent up into the night sky to dazzle kids and adults alike.
• 9:00 We left for home, and there were still people at the party when we phoned our thanks after arriving home.

That's how you start a kid off in school here in Germany, below selected photos in a slideshow.

[At least we spent about 15 minutes with Lea looking at the books etc. in her school bag, admiring her lesson plan, what she gets to do now, etc., something no one else had had time to do given all the festivities going on. The interlude was quickly over as the next guests arrived, but Steffi was glad we had told Lea we find the part interesting that she herself has yet to show any enthusiasm for.]

School Begins Dramatically in Germany

Well, our niece Lea has her first school day today. Don't be surprised that first-graders start on a Saturday in Germany, because this first day of school isn't like anything Americans could dream of. It's a party. The kids go to the school with their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts, dogs, cats, everybody in the entire family, dressed up to beat every band known to mankind and carry what look like dunce-caps but held the other way round and filled up with goodies (to bribe them, I suppose) and get to watch a performance about "our school" by older kids there.
It's a song-and-dance show.
Afterwards, everyone goes to the home of their individual school-starter for a big party with the family, including all those (like us) who didn't go along to the school. Then the kid gets presents from everyone and there's cake and ice cream, and in Lea's case a grill party afterwards for supper! And the Berlin mom is concerned that Lea can cope and her little brother deal with daycare alone as of Monday!
Not like the way the Countess (whose birthday is today; she would have become 82) just dropped me off at Fannie Gorham Elementary School for Miss Lewis, the teacher, to take charge of for the school day.

-------------------

Speaking of which, ladies and such, now that McCanny has decide to opt for the inexperienced Alaskan multimother and most unknown vice presidential pick in modern political history to lose the election with, to the great disappointment of cunninglylingual rice banging on the floor of the playpen, he seems to be following the merkel-angie German path: She appointed the "fabulous" Ursula von der Leyne (note the noblility in those prepositions, as from a "fable") as Minister of Family Affairs, who for the beginning of the German school year came out with the fabulous quote that children need a Leitplanke, which translates as a guardrail, and is indeed what is alongside highways to keep the cars from crashing off into the trees. The two women share a silver spoon and a disregard for the plight of those worse off, even if Urusla finally modernized her original Heidi-style braided hair-do. To summarize her "guardrail" notion , she seems to think the kids are like cars, I suppose the teachers are the drivers, but where the steering wheel is may be something we find out today at Lea's festival.

+++++++************+++++++

OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT

CHANGE IS A CHANCE FOR THE WORLD

Finally today, to make sure it remains as accessible to all as possible, Obama's acceptance speech, first some excerpts from that speech that I find particularly important, and then, the video of that speech in its entirety and a link to the full transcript:

"We are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this. [...]
Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but, really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than 90 percent of the time? [...]
You know, Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids don't have that chance. [...]
And -- and as someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most. [...]
And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work, because I want my daughters to have the exact same opportunities as your sons. [...]
If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have.
For -- for while -- while Senator McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats that we face.
When John McCain said we could just muddle through in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights.
You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives. [...]
You don't defeat -- you don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq. You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can't truly stand up for Georgia when you've strained our oldest alliances. [...]
The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans, Democrats and Republicans, have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.
As commander-in-chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm's way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home.
I will end this war in Iraq responsibly and finish the fight against Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts, but I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression.
I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation, poverty and genocide, climate change and disease.
And I will restore our moral standing so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future. [...]
I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in a hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. [...]
America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone.
At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise, that American promise, and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess."

Here, a link to the transcript of his speech as published in The New York Times.

Just Have to Thank Former President Bill

After all, he was the one who promoted German-American friendship during his term in office. I have the poster from the exhibition I helped organize in Amerikahaus in Berlin to prove it. Since then, not only has the bushbaby playpen done enormous damage in the world at large and to the US at home, it has also closed down the cultural center the US had maintained here since the end of WWII and sealed off the embassy behind barricades and designed the new one on Pariser Platz to look as forbidding as possible. Therefore, I find it especially significant that Bill Clinton praises Barack Obama now and appeals for his election to restore American leadership. As he says here so well, "the power of our example" has always earned the USA more international respect than "the example of our power".

And here the link to the eloquent speech of Senator Biden, the next Vice President, making clear what this is all about.

What Are You In This For?

... as she so correctly put it, not just for her, but for the difference driving the Republicans out of the White House can make for the country.
"No way. No how. No McCain. Barack Obama is my candidate. And he must be our president."
Thanks, Hillary, for reminding Americans what it's all about. President Obama is vitally necessary.

Preserving the Words...

...here is only a minute attempt to help me remember and give others a chance to see what the addresses of Ms. Obama and Mr. Kennedy to the Democratic National Convention in Denver yesterday were all about.

They are two impassioned speeches, impassioned with hope.
The world deserves this new chance and this thoughtfulness.

America deserves this possibility to move forward,

to return to decency and humanity,

again to respect freedom and thoughtfulness.

YOU deserve this man as president.

We all deserve this hope,

this change in government to promote American ideals!
Just listen to these two people speak about this chance:

Seven Houses = One Big Playpen

Maßnahmen zur Vermeidung der Feststellung der Persönlichkeit

... or, How to ensure you stymie any measures to determine your personality:
1. often speak in opposites
2. give opinions in languages different from the subject
3. read what everyone else claims not to want to
4. answer surveys with mythical information
5. smile when you answer questions

Angst: keine. Freude: endlos. Denken: immer. Danken: der Welt. Lust: Garten. Träume: teilen.
Joie de jouer en jouissant pour réjouir. Lire écrire rire sourire délire courir. Temps de temps sans temps. Heureux d'être mortel!

Playpen Redux!

For all those who prefer the sassy quip to the thoughtful answer, this revelation may help you prepare to out sass those who can think better than you can.

Despite Assurances, McCain Wasn’t in a ‘Cone of Silence’
NYTimes.com
John McCain’s performance at a church forum raised speculation that he was not isolated as Barack Obama was being interviewed using questions that would later come Mr. McCain’s way.
Mr. Warren started by asking Mr. McCain, “Now, my first question: Was the cone of silence comfortable that you were in just now?”
Mr. McCain deadpanned, “I was trying to hear through the wall.”

More need not be added.

NO NO NO non nein nyet

Russia is not a good guy, nor is Georgia: one overreacted to the other's bite, and civilians of whatever nationality, citizenship, folk, people, ethnicity are caught in the middle and dying or suffering.
The splinter provinces in Georgia are merely attempting what the world has condoned in Kosovo, for example, and it is difficult to speak of territorial integrity of a state when the same has been "overlooked" elsewhere.
The bushbaby should stop baiting Russia and egging on Georgia; Medwedjev should stop taking the bait and grow up. His country is not under threat. The world better wake up and call all parties to a meeting of reason, result-open, and demand that disputes be settled without weapons or other military or invasive actions, even if the playpen has not provide a good role model for that. It, too, is called on to place disputes before the UN and international assemblies for peaceful settlement respecting the interest of all and upholding the rights of the humans at risk.

No Wall Can Stop This Birthday Girl

On one of her birthdays, they began building the Berlin Wall; on this one, our Berlin Mom was celebrating in an Italian restaurant after a successful bout with cancer and returning relaxed the day before from a three-week rehab, laughing with her age old friends, smiling over her two grandchildren and accepting birthday greetings from us all, guests from West Germany, her own neighborhood, and even yours truly from the far side of the ocean, the Atlantic one. All this may have once been unthinkable, but just check out the few photos, and you'll see THIS possibility IS what IS !

Proof of Existence

She's come, she's gone, we saw her, talked with her, ate ice cream with her, Vietnamese cuisine for lunch where Terri had preceded her. She's fine, looks good, and is now winging her way back across the Atlantic to get home again. Photo documentation below.

審查 in China

審查

[the Chinese characters for censorship]

Censorship (according to The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07):

official prohibition or restriction of any type of expression believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order. It may be imposed by governmental authority, local or national, by a religious body, or occasionally by a powerful private group. It may be applied to the mails, speech, the press, the theater, dance, art, literature, photography, the cinema, radio, television, or computer networks. Censorship may be either preventive or punitive, according to whether it is exercised before or after the expression has been made public. In use since antiquity, the practice has been particularly thoroughgoing under autocratic and heavily centralized governments, from the Roman Empire to the totalitarian states of the 20th cent.

This results, for example, in China not allowing you to view this website from within their borders as it is critical of their limitation on thinking and speaking and reading and expressing opinions.

A few apt quotes regarding censorship:

• "Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever."
  -Nadine Gordimer, “Censorship and its Aftermath”, June 1990, Address to the international Writer’s Day conference, London.
• "... censorship often boils down to some male judges getting to read a lot of dirty books—with one hand."
  -Robin Morgan, The Word of a Woman, part 1 (1992).
• "Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."
  -George Bernard Shaw, The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet, preface.
• "I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticise their own public officials."
  -President Woodrow Wilson, letter to Arthur Brisbane, April 25, 1917.
• "C'est le propre de la censure violente d'accréditer les opinions qu'elle attaque."
  -Voltare, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne.
• "Ecrire c'est lever toutes les censures."
  -Jean Genet.

These are thoughts for the entire world to keep in mind during the next days as the Olympics transpire under a cloud of censorship of the press and access to information and a denial of rights to the citizens of that country hosting it. Perhaps we can all do more to ensure that ALL speak freely everywhere.

(And we can also demand TRUE justice for those denied it everywhere: If someone is guilty of a crime, he/she can be tried under rules of jurisprudence applicable to all and his guilt can be proven or his innocence proclaimed. Only the guilty should be punished. This also applies to the inmates of Guantánamo.)

And here is Chinese freedom:

Shitao (1642-1707) "Tous les sens sont convoqués dans un survol et une précision jaillissante de liberté," is what Philippe Sollers says about this great painter, thinker, and poet in Éloge de l'infini.

Hilton Just Became a Class Act

Never cared one way or the other about this poor little rich girl, but after she was subjected to mccainy dumpings, she proved, with the video I simply have to share via the link below, that she's by far more intelligent than that aspirant to succeed the bushbaby as chief-wielder of the playpen rattle! Mccainy only proved how boorish he really is. Let's close the playpen forever!

Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad
An ad for The Paris Hilton Presidential Campaign. Paid for by Funny Or Die.

Berlin Mom Rehabilitating...

This is how it looks when they try to get the Berlin mom to relax and rehabilitate for three weeks after cancer treatment. She's here with a fellow inmate, Gisela, as they were shocked by some guy who organizes hikes through Saxony and Southern Brandenburg who wanted to snap them for documentation of his Lubben-Spreewald hike.

Memory Assistance

Remember canny McCain's remarks to David Letterman on the latter's show on October 18, 2001? A little refresher: He opened with a truly funny joke saying, "What is bin Laden gonna be for Halloween? Dead!" Then he went on to say the anthrax sent through the mail that autumn could well have come from Iraq and that they've got to take out that terrorist there. And if you don't believe how playpenally stupid this mcCainy mind can be, below is the little interview preserved by youtube.

More on the still unsolved anthrax attacks can be found summarized by Glenn Greenwald on salon.com in an entry (link in the title) excerpted below with subsequent updates from August 1 entitled:

Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News

The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. [...]
The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters -- with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 -- that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax -- sent directly into the heart of the country's elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and other leading media outlets -- that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism. [...]
Critically, ABC News never retracted its story (they merely noted, as they had done from the start, that the White House denied the reports). And thus, the linkage between Saddam and the anthrax attacks -- every bit as false as the linkage between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks -- persisted.
We now know -- we knew even before news of Ivins' suicide last night, and know especially in light of it -- that the anthrax attacks didn't come from Iraq or any foreign government at all. It came from our own Government's scientist, from the top Army bioweapons research laboratory. More significantly, the false reports linking anthrax to Iraq also came from the U.S. Government -- from people with some type of significant links to the same facility responsible for the attacks themselves.

Dealing With Disruption

You can even get protesters at at speech to calm down and wait for the question and answer session following, give them a chance to speak, and address their concerns.

Or you can follow the recent German political model of trying to silence any and all who don't agree with you (even inside your own party), as the SPD is trying to do by seeking the expulsion of the former Minister of Economics, a 40-year member of the SPD, for his, admittedly unhappy, criticism of the Hessian SPD candidate in that state's election early this year. The problem is his new position as lobbyist for nuclear energy concerns. But try to discuss intelligently, and you'll only get snide remarks from the partner party in the coalition, the CDU. Whining Pohfalla will claim success as his party now has more members than the SPD, but not resulting from NEW members, but from fewer people quitting his party than the other. Proud pride!

And Angie just keeps right on doing and saying as little as possible, claiming to be the environmental Chancellor while coming up with CO2 emission formulas for the EU that provide heavier German auto models with a better environmental rating than lighter more fuel-efficient models from elsewhere. See the report from Frontal21 last Tuesday! And even better, this concluding satire TOLL! in which the chancellorette says, "Something might happen!"

Playing Olympic Repression

Amnesty International

Beijing authorities' broken promises jepordize Olympic Legacy

'By continuing to persecute and punish those who speak out for human rights, the Chinese authorities have lost sight of the promises they made when they were granted the Games seven years ago,' said Roseann Rife, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific deputy director at a press conference in Hong Kong. 'The Chinese authorities are tarnishing the legacy of the Games. They must release all imprisoned peaceful activists, allow foreign and national journalists to report freely and make further progress towards the elimination of the death penalty.'

Amnesty International Deutschland
Menschenrechte bleiben auf der Strecke

Am 8. August 2008 beginnt das größte Sportereignis der Welt: Die 29. Olympischen Sommerspiele in Peking. 10.500 Athleten werden um Gold, Silber und Bronze kämpfen, 25.000 Journalisten über die Wettkämpfe berichten, Millionen Menschen werden sie am Fernseher verfolgen. Doch während die Welt zu Gast in China ist, erleben viele Tausende Chinesen die Kehrseite der Medaille: Sie sitzen im Gefängnis, in Umerziehungslagern oder stehen unter Hausarrest, und das nur, weil sie sich für Menschenrechte wie Meinungs- und Religionsfreiheit eingesetzt haben. Bei der Vergabe der Olympischen Spiele hatte die chinesische Regierung noch eine Verbesserung der Menschrechtslage versprochen. Doch schon seit Monaten gehen die chinesischen Behörden verstärkt gegen Menschenrechtsaktivisten vor. Und das nicht trotz, sondern gerade wegen der Sommerspiele.

Rehabilitating Mom

So, the Berlin mom made it to the rehab center, specialized, as it turns out, on post-treatment for oncology patients, and is doing fine. It also turned out the whole thing was her own idea, though with some mysterious caveat that it's what everyone says you have to do. Anyhow, they're massaging her swollen feet, not bothering her unduly, she's going for walks, refusing any and everything she's never done before, and went on a short bike ride around the gigantic estate with us on Sunday when we visited, ate lunch there and played some cards in the afternoon with her. Of course she's counting the days until she can go home, the day before her birthday. Then comes that event and at the end of the month Lea's first day of school, a true German ceremony and total family celebration.
And here's a link to the beautiful facility Edith decided to spend three weeks in.

Obama's Speech at the Siegessäule in Berlin

Difficult to get good pics in such a crowd, but hopefully these give some idea of the pheonomenon of Obama speaking to a crowd of some 200,000 people in front of the Siegessäule in Berlin yesterday evening.

Again, his speech impressed with rhetoric and the clear ability to think he demonstrates in his observations and appeals.
That he admitted past US failures and shortcomings, appealed for cooperation rather than confrontation, demanded respect for and promotion of the rule of law and justice as well as an end to torture and nuclear weapons was all very welcome after the dismay Europe has felt at the playpen's manner.

It was amazing how many people endured the intense security checks to enter the near perimeter. It took us from our arrival at just before 4pm until just after 5pm to make it through. The speech didn't begin until about 7:20pm, so there was a lot of standing and waiting as the crowd continued to grow, but the mood was always very pleasant. The stands for the press circus (CNN with white-clad Armanpour and Fox with black jacketed slick haired guy, for example) helped provide entertainment for the wait.

Here, a link to the full text of the speech, and the pertinent video from youtube/obama:

Obama Prepares to Take Berlin

US-Wahl: Medienliebling Obama Nachrichten auf ZEIT ONLINE:
Verliebt in Obama
VON SILKE TITTEL © ZEIT online 23.7.2008 - 16:48 Uhr

Barack Obamas gut inszenierte Auslandsreise bekommt Beifall von allen Seiten, während John McCain daheim verzweifelt nach Aufmerksamkeit heischt. Dabei steht
der Höhepunkt noch bevor: Berlin!

My translation of this first paragraph from the cited article in Die Zeit:

In Love With Obama

BO's well staged foreign tour is reaping applause from all sides, while back home JMcC is desperately trying to get attention. And the climax is yet to come: Berlin!

Home Again

1. Weather cooler and rainier than what we left behind in Ireland, but they're threatening with 30°+ again by the weekend.

2. Schools are out for summer holidays, so the city is calmer and has less traffic than usual.

3. The Berlin mom is packing for her rehab of 3 weeks beginning tomorrow and let us take her out to lunch today.

4. Obama is going to deliver his European speech here at the Siegessäule, a very fitting location for as many as possible to get to see him. But bushbaby-sliming Angie, who first criticized the idea of him speaking at the Brandenburg Gate, now is popping buttons and claiming this to be a politically incorrect location as it stands for Prussian victory over France in 1871 (as if she'd have preferred a victory of the Communards!), finally making clear to the last idiot in town that she's simply playpenally averse to Obama speaking anywhere and would prefer a mccanny playpen substitute if she can't stay stuffed up the back end of a bushbaby.

5. We're looking forward to seeing and hearing him speak here, a wonderful chance for Europe to see there's a good America to root for and for expat Americans to see the candidate of change up close.

6. We still have a few more days before the daily trot reconvenes.

7. The Siegessäule is by now primarily and simply a symbol of the wonderful city of Berlin.

It Doesn't Rain in Ireland

Even today, as they predicted showers and fog, we had the sun shining down on us and blue skies up above (ok, with some clouds, too, but that's fine) in the old port town of Youghal (pronouned yawl) and ate a truly fine meal of fish in the inn our B&B host here in Cork had recommended to us at breakfast. Now it's too hot to go out, so we're resting till later in the evening for another walk in town. Tomorrow will allow leisurely preparation for a late afternoon/early evening flight home.

Blarney is NOT baloney

As it says on a sign in the castle there, Blarney is highly varnished truth; baloney, an unvarnished lie; Blarney, flattery thinly applied and appreciated; baloney, flattery spread so thickly as to be disgusting.
I might add, Blarney seems to have more to do with style and baloney with that strange lunch meat circle my mother put in our sandwiches when we were kids.
Anyway, only my nose smacked the stone well, my lips by association, as my gab needs no improvement.