Get to work

Now that the Democrats have titular control of both houses of the US Congress, Americans (concerned thinking ones) and Europeans (those committed to liberty and justice) are looking forward to advancement in the areas of human rights and application of justice, to more cooperation internationally, fewer attempts at hegemony, and a relighting of the light of freedom that the bushbaby playpen, under the guise of fighting terrorism, has done so much to dim, so that the US may again become one of the countries recognized as bearing the beacon of enlightened democratic concepts of liberty and justice
The world is waiting for the US again to be a partner.
Live up to the challenge, Democrats. The clock is ticking.
Berlin can look like this...

and shouldn't look like this photo of the playpenned US embassy

STOP THE NAZIS EVERYWHERE !!!

Wie Ihr vielleicht schon den Medien entnommen hat, wird die NPD morgen im Fontanehaus im Märkischen Zentrum (Reinickendorf) in Berlin tagen.
Daher haben die BVV-Fraktionen Reinickendorf zu einer Gegenkundgebung aufgerufen, an der Die Grünen sich mit den anderen demokratischen Parteien anschließen.
Also Sonnabend in den Norden fahren:

Die im Abgeordnetenhaus vertretenen Parteien rufen auf zur

Kundgebung gegen die Feinde der Demokratie am

Samstag, 11. November 2006, ab 11.00 Uhr

vor dem Fontanehaus (Märkisches Zentrum)

Wilhelmsruher Damm 142c, 13439 Berlin (Reinickendorf)

S- und U-Bahnhof Wittenau (S1, S85, U8)

von dort alle Buslinien Richtung Märkisches Viertel, Haltestelle Märkisches Zentrum

Zeigen wir, dass die Nazis in Berlin nicht willkommen sind.

Take a look... Remind the Dems to CHANGE THINGS

How America defeated itself in Iraq -- by believing its own spin.

From the non-profit Center for Media & Democracy.

http://www.thebestwarever.com

Bush manoeuvering...

Bush à la manoeuvre
LE MONDE 09.11.06
Robert Gates, pas plus que Donald Rumsfeld, ne peut gagner la guerre d'Irak. Pour protéger la renommée du président, sa mission est d'éviter de la perdre dans des conditions humiliantes.

©

Guy Debord: Commentaires sur la société du spectacle, Paris, Éd. Gérard Lebovici, 1988 / Éd. Gallimard 1992---

Cette démocratie si parfaite fabrique elle-même son inconcevable ennemi, le terrorisme. Elle veut, en effet, être jugée sur ses ennemis plutôt que sur ses résultats. L'histoire du terrorisme est écrite par l'État ; elle est donc éducative. Les populations spectatrices ne peuvent certes pas tout savoir du terrrorisme, mais elles peuvent toujours en savoir assez pour être persuadées que, par rapport à ce terrorisme, tout le reste devra leur sembler plutôt acceptable, en tout cas, plus rationnel et plus démocratique. [IX]

Democrats Control House - Senate Depends on Virginia and Montana

Bye bye playpen; give up your rattle, bushbaby; get ready for hardtimes, playpenalers!
Get to work, Democrats. Live up to what you've been selling folks. Change the US for the better!
Respect the constitution, human rights, civil rights, liberties, freedoms, democracy, equality, and justice!
It's about time!

House: 227 Dem / 195 Rep
Senate: 47 Dem / 2 Ind / 49 Rep
as of this moment.

Stop Internet Censorship

24h Against Internet Censorship ... support this action of
Reporters sans frontières .
Reporters without borders organises 24-hour online demo against Internet censorship Help to combat online censorship by taking part!
Everyone is invited to connect to the Reporters Without Borders website (www.rsf.org) between 11 a.m. on 7 November and 11 a.m. on 8 November.

A Fate Worse Than Death...

is my proposal for a hard sentence for Saddam:
Force him to spend all his waking time (but let him sleep 8 hours a night - no cruel or inhuman treatment, please) with the following activities:
watching videos of the most recent Berlin Christopher Street Day Parade;
reading Gore Vidal, Casanova, and Philippe Sollers;
explaining passages from Martin Heidegger's works;
listening to Mozart's operas;
attending multicultural festivals in Baghdad;
identifying one female, preferably lesbian, opinion per day to assume as his own.

This would cause the old puffed up potentate more concern and make him more miserable than a death penalty which he can conceive of as martyrdom with heavenly recompense.
(I'm sure the bushbaby would also opt for death if the above activities posed the only alternatives to it for him to choose from. And you?)

----another fate worse than death (for the USA and the world) would be if the Republicans are allowed to retain a majority in the House of Representatives in the US bi-elections tomorrow!
But their continued misgovernment would certainly be a welcome relief to Saddam H!

Your More Secure World - by the bushbaby playpen

Not only has the New York Times reported the story, the world press is enjoying more evidence of the incompentence of a US administration curtailing rights and bombing countries for protection against terrorists while itself providing instructions for anyone on how to kill us all...

This time, the playpen published documents online on how to construct nuclear weapons (albeit only "a small atomic bomb") on a Web site intended to be used to make a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war available to the public. The plans were placed online in March; the site was shut down November 2 after the NYTimes questioned Negroponte's office (Director of National Intelligence) about complaints from arms-control officials to the newspaper. All information will now be "reviewed" before putting the site back online --- though this was already required by the law for publishing the documents!

This is the link to the NYT article.

Here, some links to world press reactions:

Le gouvernement américain a mis en ligne un manuel de fabrication de la bombe nucléaire
LEMONDE.FR 03.11.06

©

This is what the Berliner Zeitung reports.
Les Etats-Unis ont publié la recette de la bombe atomique, comments Le Figaro.
The Guardian discusses the idiocy here.
And, finally, even PRAVDA cannot comprehend the playpen incompetence.

No Known Path...

«Im wesentlichen Denken sind keine zum voraus abgesteckte Pfade. Erst dort, wo es fährt, ist ein Weg; und sein Fahren ist die Er-fahrung des Seyns. Und der Weg hinterläßt kaum eine Spur.»
[MH: GA Bd.69, Geschichte des Seyns, §172, S.170]

»There are no paths staked out in advance for essential (ownmost, utmost) thinking. Only where it passes is there a route; and its passing is the encom-passing of Being. And the route leaves hardly any trace behind.«

[my own feeble attempt at anglicizing this path of thought]

Black Out - It Sure Isn't Halloween!

American Blackout

Watch the Trailer for GNN's Latest Documentary:
American Blackout Trailer

Directed by GNN’s Ian Inaba, American Blackout chronicles the recurring patterns of voter disenfranchisement witnessed from 2000 to 2004. Told through the life of Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney who took an active role investigating the scrubbing of the Florida voter roles and then found herself in her own election debacle after publicly questioning the Bush Administration about the terrorist attacks of 9-11. American Blackout travels from Florida to Georgia to Ohio examining the contemporary tactics used to control our democratic process and silence political dissent.

Winner – Special Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival 2006

Winner – Best Documentary Feature, Cinequest Film Festival 2006

Winner – Stand Up Audience Award, Cleveland International Film Festival 2006

Winner – Special Jury Prize, Independent Film Festival of Boston 2006

Winner – Audience Award, Columbus Alive Deep Focus Film Festival 2006

Winner – Best Documentary Feature, Urbanworld Film Festival 2006
“One of the most important docs of the past several years.” -Earnest Hardy, LA WEEKLY

“Impossible to Ignore” -Jeanette Catsoulis, NEW YORK TIMES
“Engrossing, fast-paced, stylish… a powerful examination of voting rights in America.” -Sura Wood, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
“…a muckraking indictment of … the systematic disenfranchisement of African American voters…” -Kenneth Turan, LA TIMES

Credits
Directed by Ian Inaba
Produced by Anastasia King
Edited by Liz Canning, Jean-Phillipe Boucicault, Ian Inaba
Graphics by Anson Vogt
Music by DJ Shadow, Soulsavers, Thievery Corporation, Michael Bierden, Mark Batson

United States Central Command Says Irag Moving Towards Chaos

A slide from the briefing of the Central Command on October 18, 2006, shows that the playpen's military staff don't agree with their bushbaby cheerleader on what's happening in Iraq:

Festival of Lights

Alles klar?

Entendu?

Got it?

No Country Should Be Ruled by Faith

The New York Review of Books: A Country Ruled by Faith
By Garry Wills
"The right wing in America likes to think that the United States government was, at its inception, highly religious, specifically highly Christian, and even more specifically highly biblical. That was not true of that government or any later government—until 2000, when the fiction of the past became the reality of the present."

Read the whole article!

In Berlin, two Members of Parliament, Ekin Deligöz (Grüne) and Lale Akgün (SPD), both women themselves of Turkish origin, have called on all women of Islamic faith to take off their veils, considering them only a sign of Islamic fundamentalist repression of women. They call on female Muslims to discard them OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL, reminding them they do nothing for an integrative, integrated society, but instead merely increase animosities.
The result for the two has included death threats. The Green representative had to be place under police protection, and now many other German politicians are calling for respect for their right to free expression of their opinions.

I would like to add an appeal for the faithful of ALL RELIGIONS to cease wearing any symbols of their belief in public, remove the crosses, the crucifixes, the clerical collars, the nun's veils, the hairshirts, the dreadlocks, the yamulkahs, ALL MANIFESTATIONS of RELIGION should be kept in private.
Best, everyone would confront and speak with each other as HUMANS THINKING and not as potential objects for missionary work and conversion through blatant symbols.

STOP WEARING RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS - EVERYONE - EVERYWHERE - ALWAYS !!

What is a no-brainer?

Scott Hennen, WDAY: Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President "for torture." We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that. And thanks to the leadership of the President now, and the action of the Congress, we have that authority, and we are able to continue to program.

Source: Office of the Vice President, October 24, 2006

Next question, from me:
Would you agree the chained up current holder of the office of the Vice Presidency of the United States is a no-brainer?
Answer:
If that means someone without a brain (in the sense of something one employs to THINK), then the answer is an unequivocal YES.

Here's for some waterboards for Chainy and his entire chaingang!

Das Seyn

« Das schlechthin Unvergleichlichle, durch jeden Bezug Untreffbare und daher im Wesen los-gelöste, in solchem Sinne Ab-solutum, ab-solut, aber weder das Höchste noch das Geringste, sondern nur einzig seines Wesens. »

[MH: GA Bd.69, §79, S.96-97]

Oedipus vs Sphinx

Anfänglicher anfangen!

Initier plus initialement!

Originate more originarily! mit einem Sprung in die Geschichte des Seyns
with a leap into the chronicle of Beyng
d'un bond dans l'histoire de l'aître.

Our parrot acts just the same!

Le journal de Trêve

Here, an excellent opportunity to make the acquaintance of a different writer, unfortunately already dead, and his exquisite NEW written work just published by Gallimard, in the Collecton L'INFINI, under the auspices of Philippe Sollers.

Frédéric Berthet : fragments d'un testament
LE MONDE DES LIVRES 19.10.06

©

JOURNAL DE TRÊVE de Frédéric Berthet. Edition établie par Norbert Cassegrain, Gallimard, "L'Infini", 640 p., 25 €.

A brief extract from the review which is to be found in full under the link above:

On rêverait de convaincre les lecteurs de romans bien ficelés que ce livre en fragments est plus important que tous ceux qui vont recevoir bientôt des prix littéraires. Et qu'il est passionnant d'entrer, avec Berthet, dans une oeuvre majeure en construction, avec des allers et retours, des listes de chapitres, des plans parfois contradictoires, des échappées, des repentirs, des scènes isolées dont on ignore encore la place dans la narration finale, des interrogations sur ce que doit être le livre à venir, le temps qui convient au récit, les pronoms, l'éventuelle "valeur humoristique de l'adverbe"...

Bushbaby Signs Un-American Military Commissions Act - Undermines Due Process and the Rule of Law

American Civil Liberties Union : President Bush Signs Un-American Military Commissions Act, ACLU Says New Law Undermines Due Process and the Rule of Law:
The following is attributed to Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director:
"With his signature, President Bush enacts a law that is both unconstitutional and un-American. This president will be remembered as the one who undercut the hallmark of habeas in the name of the war on terror. Nothing separates America more from our enemies than our commitment to fairness and the rule of law, but the bill signed today is an historic break because it turns Guantánamo Bay and other U.S. facilities into legal no-man's-lands.
"The president can now - with the approval of Congress - indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions. Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act."

Wiedereröffnung des Bode-Museums in Berlin Reopening

Adding a crown jewel to Berlin's exquisite Museumsinsel, the Bode Museum reopened yesterday after long years of restoration and renovation. Here a link to the reports on the opening on German "cultural" tv-channel 3sat.
This link is to a virtual tour of the entire complex (with German commentary) in flash and with 360° panorama pictures.
It is well worth while, as this image of the grand dome with the equestrian statue may help to indicate.

To spend time on the island, at the colonnade to the Alte Nationalgalerie for example to read and write, is always envigorating, enlightening, encouraging. Now, with the (re)addition of this spacious museum with sculptures and paintings grouped together by period and theme, Berlin can offer yet more luxuriant spots to BE in the very heart of the city.

Take a look - and visit in person when in Berlin.