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 !
Read this piece, a lecture on individual liberty by Julia Kristeva in China in February of this year, published in the latest issue of L'Infini, n°107. Here, only short extracts, perhaps later to be anglicized in this blog:
A l’horizon du monde moderne, il importe aujourd’hui d’insister sur cette deuxième conception de la liberté – qui se donne dans l’Etre de la Parole à travers la Présence du Soi à l’Autre
[...]
celle qui privilégie la quête identitaire indéfiniment reconstructible, ouverte et favorisant la singularité, à l’encontre des certitudes et impératifs identitaires, économiques ou scientifiques.
[...]
Cette singularité de chaque homme, de chaque femme dans ce qu’il ou elle a d’incommensurable, irréductible à la communauté, et en ce sens de « génial » ; cette singularité dont l’émergence et le respect sont parmi les acquis les plus étonnants de la culture européenne, et qui constitue le fondement ainsi que la face intime des droits de l’homme.
Since it's CSD in Berlin today, I have no time to post anything more than this statement that today is the day for every one to strut their stuff in Berlin and show that LGBTs are here to stay and have a right to every right that anyone else has. Love is where the heart is!
We watched as Lea swelled with pride when her dad, Heiko, came across the finish line today in the Skoda Velothon, managing 60 kilometers in 1 hour and 50 minutes. And here some photographic evidence:
Ergebnisse ŠKODA Velothon Berlin 60km Name Siegel, Heiko (GER) Platz 1355 Pl.AK 419 Nr. 14502 AK MSEN1
Repression stepped up yet again as Iran becomes world’s biggest prison for journalists Published on 20 June 2009 The Islamic Republic of Iran now ranks alongside China as the world’s biggest prison for journalists. The crackdown has been intensified yet again following Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s endorsement yesterday of the result of the 12 June presidential election and the opposition’s decision to call another demonstration today. Iran now has a total of 30 journalists and cyber-dissidents in its jails, while journalists who could not be located at their homes have been summoned by telephone by Tehran prosecutor general Said Mortazavi. “The force of the demonstrations in Tehran is increasing fears that more Iranian journalists could be arrested and more foreign journalists could be expelled,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The regime has been visibly shaken by its own population and does not want to let this perception endure. That is why the media have become a priority target.” The press freedom organisation added: “The international community cannot continue to ignore the situation. It must have a clear and unanimous reaction that is proportionate to the gravity of these events. And there will never be any question of recognising the results of the 12 June election.”
Trying to access most of the sites linked in the Reporters Without Borders piece linked here will simply leave you in an internet nivana of "oops broken site" or "inaccessible". Tear down the walls!
... SEE what's going on in Iran. And may all there be spared violence and soon enjoy freedom in all its facets and slowly emerge from the shadows of fundamentalistic fearful religiosity into the bright light of contemplative thought, love, and joy in life!
Here you can add your voice to a UN petition calling for the Secretary-General to undertake all necessary steps to ensure that a truly free and legitimate election takes place in Iran. Certainly, the charges of misconduct and electoral fraud MUST be examined and appropriate measures taken to make the choice between the 4 candidates (of more than 200) even allowed by the "council" truly legitimate!
For those demonstrating for more democracy, justice, and human rights in Iran, we should all express our support. This is my frail effort to express my admiration for their courage and my encouragement for them to continue their struggle against the manifestations of tyranny - religious and secular - in Iran.
WHERE IS MY VOTE?
And for everyone else: when you see their slogan, you should ask yourself where YOURS is if you didn't bother to vote in whatever election you were last entitled to have participated in. Hang your head in shame if you didn't vote!
The welcomed arrival of L'Infini n° 107 today was my present upon returning from classes yearning for something beyond the bounds of English and German. There it is, next to this keyboard, and the post will be short, the reading long, the enjoyment infinite....
The Russian National Holiday yesterday coincided with the opening of the German-Russian Folk Festival in Berlin Karlshorst. And we enjoyed the pelmeni, the blini, the sashlyk, the kwas... And the entertaiment was fab: nice to have this festival that offers so much culture on the stage!
And as birthday wishes to Russia and its people:
Equal rights for all its citizens, including homosexuals...
Though I had never before thought too highly of the highly commercial(ized) film, theater, and opera director Doris Dörie, I have now recognized the ARTIST she is, evidenced in this moving film which we finally watched Saturday evening:
Kirschblüten - Hanami Cherry Blossoms - Hanami
The trailer shown here will, I hope, entice you to watch this film, if you haven't seen it already, but it does not really give a good idea of the incredible aesthetics of the film, apparently instead going for a mass commercial audience by emphasizing pathos and humor and sentimentality, which are indeed all there,
BUT
this film also and primarily is a perfect composition of pictures and movements which move the story, which are explained by and explain the story, images and plot essential complements to one another. The incredible beauty of the images is made all the more so by their interspersal with images of the ugliness of our age, of family spitefulness, of urban hideousness, of stuffy provincialism. Here the serene simplicity of Japanese high culture is captured on film and will captivate anyone who sees it.
Let the cherry blossoms rustle in this movie for you, observe the subtle motions of characters learning to live on the edge of death, and watch for the shy mountain to reveal itself !
Today is election day for the European Parliament in most EU countries and concludes the vast election that began earlier in the week in some countries with other traditional voting days.
Parliamentary democracy is the vital key to human rights and justice, places legislative power firmly in the hands of the electorate through those representatives they choose.
Vote if you can and watch the results and refer to other information on this election and the EU Parliament under this link.
The words in the title of this post alone will be used by the current Chinese government as grounds to block access to this blog by anyone accessing the internet from China. Still today there are no reports available there about the 1,000,000 people who protested on that square in the center of Peking, for freedom, justice, democracy; no reports about the at least 2,600 people killed there as the Chinese "People's" Army crushed the protest with tanks. The Chinese did not attain what was achieved here in Germany later that year, where, luckily, some officials in the GDR, enough, refrained from using violence against the protesters in Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin, and the Wall fell. In China, freedom of opinion, access to information, equal justice, and human and civil rights are still denied the population by a "Communist" party run commando-capitalist authoritarian state. And the world let these despots host the Olympic Games last year in the "hope" that there would be progress on human rights. There has been none. May that flame of freedom and human rights, which flickered on Tiananmen Square from April 15 to June 4, 1989, finally illuminate the path to freedom, justice, and human rights for the Chinese!
President Obama has proclaimed the month of June LGBT Pride Month, in recognition of the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. From drag queens using handbags to fight off brutal policemen trying to harass a gay bar in Greenwich Village, gays & lesbians have advanced greatly in their achievement of rights enjoyed by the rest of the population. There is still a ways to go, and civil unions are just one step to the full equalization of gay relationships with hetero pairings.
It is wonderful that Barack Obama has taken the time to express his solidarity with this large segment of humanity. I would like to thank him expressly here.
We are proud to be gay and determined to achieve equal rights in all aspects everywhere around the globe!
Forty years ago, patrons and supporters of the Stonewall Inn in New York City resisted police harassment that had become all too common for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Out of this resistance, the LGBT rights movement in America was born. During LGBT Pride Month, we commemorate the events of June 1969 and commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans.
LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American society. There are many well-respected LGBT leaders in all professional fields, including the arts and business communities. LGBT Americans also mobilized the Nation to respond to the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic and have played a vital role in broadening this country's response to the HIV pandemic.
Due in no small part to the determination and dedication of the LGBT rights movement, more LGBT Americans are living their lives openly today than ever before. I am proud to be the first President to appoint openly LGBT candidates to Senate-confirmed positions in the first 100 days of an Administration. These individuals embody the best qualities we seek in public servants, and across my Administration -- in both the White House and the Federal agencies -- openly LGBT employees are doing their jobs with distinction and professionalism.
The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress, but there is more work to be done. LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect.
My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans. These measures include enhancing hate crimes laws, supporting civil unions and Federal rights for LGBT couples, outlawing discrimination in the workplace, ensuring adoption rights, and ending the existing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security. We must also commit ourselves to fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic by both reducing the number of HIV infections and providing care and support services to people living with HIV/AIDS across the United States.
These issues affect not only the LGBT community, but also our entire Nation. As long as the promise of equality for all remains unfulfilled, all Americans are affected. If we can work together to advance the principles upon which our Nation was founded, every American will benefit. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.
Home again are we and Koko is, too, hand-delivered by Lea and her dad Heiko, arriving hardly 15 minutes after us. Koko was as usual vocally happy to see us, and Lea was visibly sad to have to return him, but she has exacted from us the promise to let Koko spend all our vacations in future with her and in her care, of course their schedule coinciding. She really enjoyed having a parrot for a week, and received a little pendant with amber stones from the Baltic fashioned on our island of Hiddensee as a thank-you present for babysitting.
More photos have been added to the slide show in the first post from the island, so take a look again or click it to access the picassa album.
Tomorrow will see a return to the routine, but you know what? We're glad to be home again, because it really is the site of our great life in love together! Love and you live a lot better.
Concluding the birthday with the puppet theater new production of their own new play on E.A.Poe's life of love and death was a really good idea. This stage brings surprisingly profound and thought-provoking subjects to its little stage and entertains all the while. Now we want to read all of Poe's poems again and his last story as well.
Here a link to the Hiddensee theater in the picture from the new production:
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.
Koko is off to spend the week with our niece Lea (under the supervision of her parents and envied by her little brother Malte) and will hopefully prove to be the "goody" he says he is.
And we will spend that week in our usual abode on the enchanted island of HIDDENSEE, pictorial map to the right, clickable for lots of information in English about how wonderful it is. Read and be jealous! Some of what is most enviable we will try to post up during the week, but we do have to spend most of the time simply enjoying ourselves and celebrating the true pastoral calm of this island accessible only by sea.
Tomorrow the German consitution, and the Federal Republic itself, celebrate their 60th birthday. The postwar German constitution, substantially modeled on American principles, opens with a list of human and civil rights, the first: Human dignity is inviolable. All others derive from that simple right and guarantee. They form the unalterable section of the German constitution.
The US Constitution, 220 years old, concludes, in the first ten amendments, with the list of rights constitutive of the republic, already includes in the text itself, however, the principles and institutions of justice, essential to the division and balance of powers with the legislative and executive branches. Yes, this is all to protect the people.
Barack Obama's speech on these principles and the danger, the insecurity for the American people and the entire world resultant from the violation of those principles, is an essential lesson on the rule of law and due process.
There is no protection against terrorism possible that contradicts the very freedoms, principles, justice, and democratic institutions that the terrorists themselves seek to overturn!
Security through elimination of principles of justice and human rights is the greatest insecurity imaginable!
Therefore, I must applaud Mr. Obama's speech and, once more, again point out what misguided dangerous ideas Cheney is fomenting in the mere attempt to avoid being prosecuted for illegal actions himself!
CLOSE GUANTÁNAMO!
Here the link to the text of Mr. Obama's speech on May 21 and below the video of that speech, held in the presence of the original copy of the Constitution in the National Archives.
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.
Clearly, the world is a safer place today than it was a year ago, simply because the playpen has been closed down. With the closure of each aspect of its legacy, the world will become safer yet and the light of freedom and justice may indeed again be able to attract others to the cause.
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!
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.”
Human rights and principles of justice are in danger for each of us if they are not available and applicable to all of us.
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.
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.
A BIG BOO FOR RUSSIA !
A BIG RAZZ FOR MOSCOW !
And sincere hopes for the welfare of the 40+ arrested and all lgbt's living in or passing through the country.
(Gays and Lesbians should refrain from going there as tourists at all. They should not get one cent of our money, since they consider us abominations and satanic.)
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.
