New island pix from today so far included in the slide show in the previous post below, which you should keep checking for more during the week.
And we've had chocolate cake.
And this evening we're going to the puppet theater on the island for a preview of the new Edgar Allen Poe Life & Work play opening on Friday evening. We don't need the premiere, we just want the play, for the play's the thing.
The Washington Post video, link here, of the two speeches cut into "replies" to each other makes amply clear how determined Mr. Cheney is to torture some and endanger many out of a distaste for liberty and justice and a love of "security" cost it what it may, while Mr. Obama is determined to combat the enemies of democratic principles of justice and liberties while upholding those very same values. The first is more populist, perhaps easier at first, more dangerous for the world in the end; the latter is the more difficult and the more honorable method of securing the nation and the world.
Those suspected of a crime are to be tried before a fair and impartial court and judged by a jury of their peers. It says so in the constitution and all laws of jurisprudence in the US. Even the Magna Carta granted the right to a trial and to hearing the evidence against you. So, try them if their is sufficient cause and evidence, otherwise release them. That is the price of a free society. And yes, if they are not guilty of any crime, they should indeed be admitted to the states. I believe they've already been held long enough on US controlled territory for them to qualify for naturalization. Besides, Hillary has asked other countries to accept some of them because they are not dangerous. So what are we supposed to think in Europe this time?
KEEP YOUR PROMISE MR. OBAMA.
Close Guantánamo even without funds. Perhaps some human rights groups would be glad to provide boats to ferry the illegaly held out of that Cuban swamp!
Obama moves to regain initiative on Guantanamo closure - Los Angeles Times
Funds to Close Guantánamo Denied - The New York Times
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN, May 20, 2009, WASHINGTON
The abrupt decision by Senate Democratic leaders to strip out the money for closing the Guantánamo detention center amounted to a strong rebuke of the Obama White House, which lawmakers in both parties have criticized for not providing a more detailed plan for what will be done with the 240 detainees currently held in the prison.
Senate Democrats had initially hoped to preserve the financing for closing the prison. House Democrats, however, had already stripped the money from their version of the military spending bill, saying they could not authorize funds without first reviewing Mr. Obama’s plans for the prisoners.
Mr. Obama is scheduled to outline some of those plans in a speech on Thursday in Washington.
Robert S. Mueller 3d, the director of the F.B.I., told a House panel on Wednesday that he is concerned that Guantánamo detainees could foment terrorism if they are sent to the United States. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that the United States could continue to hold some detainees at the base indefinitely without charges.
Even so, Mr. Obama has faced growing demands in recent days, from both parties but particularly from Republicans, to spell out in detail how he plans to close the Guantánamo detention center and to provide assurances that detainees would not end up on American soil, not even in maximum security prisons.
The move by Senate Democrats to bar, for now, any transfer of detainees to the United States, raised the possibility that Mr. Obama’s order to close the camp by Jan. 22, 2010, may have to be changed or delayed.
“Guantánamo makes us less safe,” the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said on Tuesday at a news conference where he laid out the party’s rationale for its decision. “However, this is neither the time nor the bill to deal with this. Democrats under no circumstances will move forward without a comprehensive, responsible plan from the president. We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States.”
Where were the outraged reports? Why did not one of the cloned superstar plastic idols pretending to sing songs make any reference to what had happened outside their bubble? Why did Eurovision go on with the broadcast? This Eurovision Song Contest would not even exist without the wild support of gays in Europe, and then Moscow has the balls to forbid gays from even demonstrating for the rights that Russia so vehemently denies them! How many of the contestants were gay themselves? (At least the German entry was professedly gay; many of the others were visibly so.) I am not only disappointed that no one spoke up; I am also totally disgusted that yet another country has hijacked an international event based on multicultural, multiethnic culture and tolerance for what is different and tried to hamper any expression of what they consider "other" during it.
Moscow Police Crush Gay Rights Rally - NYTimes.com:
Police officers in Moscow quickly suppressed a gay rights demonstration on Saturday, detaining dozens of protesters who hoped to showcase discrimination in Russia ahead of the Eurovision song contest final on Saturday evening.
[...]
No mention of the gay rights protest was made at the Eurovision final Saturday night, which was won by Norway’s Alexander Rybak.
Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, said, "the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 -- well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion -- its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida." [Washington Note, May 13, 2009]
Journalist Paul Krugman said of the mounting evidence: "Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.
"There's a word for this: it's evil." [Paul Krugman Blog, May 14, 2009]
(CNN) -- Finding a "smoking gun" linking Iraq and al Qaeda became the main purpose of the abusive interrogation program the Bush administration authorized in 2002, a former State Department official told CNN on Thursday.
The allegation was included in an online broadside aimed at former Vice President Dick Cheney by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it, Wilkerson wrote that the interrogation program began in April and May of 2002, and then-Vice President Cheney's office kept close tabs on the questioning.
"Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda," Wilkerson wrote in The Washington Note, an online political journal.
Dear President Barack Obama,YOU can do something here, so don't just wait for others to fix this mess.
The time has come to end discrimination in our armed forces. We, the undersigned, ask you to stop
the discharge of Lt. Dan Choi and any other soldier as a result of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. We ask that you uphold your pledge and push Congress to quickly put a bill on your desk to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Sincerely
Here, with no further comment, are links to three US newspaper articles concerning one of the points Caroline Fourest pointed out as one of the important accomplishments of Mr. Obama so far in the article quoted in my previous post, below. The response to her article in Le Monde, by the way, has been one of unanimous praise and expressions of the need for Americans to read her piece. Should I translate it for you here? Let's leave it in French for a while and hope those who have broader horizons get it. But, if there is demand....
So, here the links to the US news stories:
Obama to be prayer day no-show - President to sign proclamation, observe privately -The Washington Times, May 6, 2009
Obama's Prayer Day observance subdued - UPI, May 7, 2009
Obama plans a scaled back National Day of Prayer - The Washington Post, May 6, 2009
Obama ou l'incitation à la raison, par Caroline Fourest - Le Monde.fr
A l'extérieur, Obama a d'ores et déjà réhabilité le principe du multilatéralisme, et fait preuve d'une fermeté nouvelle envers le gouvernement israélien. En interne, il a mis fin à l'embargo décrété par son prédécesseur George Bush contre les centres de planification familiale à l'étranger, et s'apprête à profiter du départ à la retraite d'un juge de la Cour suprême pour
le remplacer par un ou une juge libéral(e). Mieux, il vient d'annoncer que cette année, contrairement à la tradition, la Maison Blanche ne fêtera pas la journée nationale de la prière... Un vrai sacrilège dans cette nation en principe laïque mais toujours "Under God" (placée sous Dieu).
[...] Il est temps de dire que "l'Amérique n'est plus une nation chrétienne", déclarait-il en 2006 : "Nous sommes aussi une nation juive, musulmane, bouddhiste, hindoue, et une nation de non-croyants." A l'issue d'une campagne où ses adversaires ont régulièrement invoqué Dieu pour tenter de le délégitimer, il invitait les politiques à "traduire leurs préoccupations en langage universel plutôt qu'en valeurs spécifiquement religieuses".
[...] Avec lui, les Américains réapprennent à regarder la réalité en face. Tous ceux qui confondent un chef d'Etat avec un messie ou un prophète seront déçus in fine. C'est pourtant cette modestie, pleine d'un espoir rationnel, qui devrait rassurer.
Reason acknowledges what is and welcomes it, flees the shadows of credulity, and stands in the light. C.Fourest's article is an appropriate measured praise of the first one hundred days of Mr. Obama's presidency.
al elections throughout the country, and to the right you can see a campaign poster used by the "national front" as only party alliance permitted on the ballots. Voters only had the possibility of crossing out names or otherwise making the ballot invalid, as they were required to go to the polls. Manipulation of the results was proven by civil observers who had managed to monitor the counting under a provision of GDR law and then file charges of election fraud against those responsible. This was a major step by the civil rights protesters in the GDR and led to protests on the 7th of each following month to demand free elections and civil rights for citizens of the GDR.
ongoing demonstrations held there and in many other towns and cities of the GDR until the Wall finally fell on November 9. This is a link to the English version of the website on that peaceful revolution culminating in the fall of the Wall. And also a press shot of one of the demonstrations at Alexanderplatz, now simulated with posters and transparencies on poles at the very location where they occurred twenty years ago.Yes, and these few seconds of video can hardly give you the feeling we had as thousands shared the spectacle of light arranged for our special day:
Yes, 13 years ago today we met and fell in love; and Detlef and I have been enjoying a life of constant bliss ever since.
The immense joy of such a fulfilled and fulfilling love is the fuel with which we light up all around us.
And this flame is in fact brighter than ever, so intense indeed that it will tonight ignite endless fireworks at the horse track in Hoppegarten where, after coffee and cake with the nearby Neuenhagen relatives (especially niece Lea & nephew Malte), we are going to celebrate our anniversary at a gigantic pyrotechnical extravaganza!
