For The Enlightenment, against the powers of darkness and unreason, information as a tool against all forms of fanaticism, to promote human and civil rights everywhere, freedom in all forms, and justice for all !
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...
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!
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?
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...
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.
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."
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.
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!
"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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.]
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."
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".
... 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.
...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:
It began when I grabbed a pen and a notebook... You thought there was nothing more than these few blog entries? Yes, the notebook exists... Don't think you can wrest it from me now! I've been writing it for so long... You've even helped. Yes, you're in the notebook, too, on nearly every page. And there are so many of them... But I didn't lie: There's always only been one big notebook. The one that's lying on my desk in one form or another. Has it never occurred to you that the notebook might be blue, green, and any other color, simultaneously, and continue forever? It will be there endlessly.
