oneness

A year ago, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Reunification of Germany (Tag der Deutsche Einheit, die Wende) local artists installed an exhibition in a nearby community. Unfortunately, we never got around to seeing the display last Autumn, but taking advantage of the empty roads during for what is for most a holiday afternoon, I took a round-about route home and happened on this Blue Gate framing a religious sculpture, the only piece remaining of the art work commissioned to commemorate German unity.

Like a Japanese torii, the blue glass structure is very striking against the field, and I believe symbolizes a passageway through the Wall (die Mauer) and the Bildstock, the religious waypost, inside, I think, represents the historical context of Germany that transcends division. I think it was pretty neat to find this just today, especially after taking time earlier to read up on the events of this day—how opinion was not as homogenous as remembered or portrayed: Britain under Thatcher and France under Mitterrand were opposed to reunification, and demanded at the very least a five year probationary period, the Soviets surprised everyone by allowing Germany to choose its own destiny with minimal interference, and Bush was laudatory (I think that was the only version I was privy to) but with the forceful proviso that Germany remain in NATO, even though an overwhelming majority of Germans saw the reunification as the chance for further demilitarization and to claim neutrality. The course of human events is not usually an affair to be compartmentalized and the spoils of history admit to interpretation, like the art that captures a glimpse of it.

revolution number nine

I suppose an individual's definition of freedom (as in the same insurrectionists being called both rebels and freedom-fighters) can be as varied as one's definition of vanity. Visitor-counters, like philately or Ken Jennings' brilliant Slate article about how Wanderlust and country-collecting have turned into a highly-competitive pastime for those with the means, are rather vain things--since one's sponsors track this data already to a fault--but the service that I adopted before I realized that the same features were already built into Blogger is reliable and endearing, and Flag Counter made me smile yesterday when I saw that our latest, newest visitor was from liberated Libya--represented by the new flag of the caretaker government. Maybe the visit was for something completely random and unhindered image-searches was only among the least of freedoms tenaciously fought for. I am very happy for their achievement, nonetheless, and all the small and grand victories of the Arab Spring--and hope that it's catching. Given the opportunity, I would have visited those countries in person before the revolution but now, with the chance to support the new leadership, one has even more reason to go.

transparez

No place has a monopoly on greed, corruption and bribery, and Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has been doing important work to expose the lobbyists in Brussels and how business motives translate to political agendas within the European Union. The organization has compiled an extensive list of the ties that bind, available for downloading on their site, in addition to all the other reporting they do on influence-peddling. Such work is vital, I think, because there is a gentrification and formalization in the culture of corruption and the EU, which further shields those courtiers from the press and public backlash.

wallet inspector or nickel-and-dimed

Rarely I think new policies are introduced without calculated unpopularity, and I think that this is the case with the announcement of one of the biggest banks of America (recursively named) that it will begin charging its customers a nominal monthly convenience fee for using their point of sale debit cards.

All the outrage and resentment that have been generated over this relatively harmless move might be the final straw that causes the public to move their money and quit enabling these too-big-to-fail. If such a mildly unsettling PR failure can bring about revolution, then I am happy for it, but I think the message was instead designed to make the public at large forget about all their past transgressions and focus on this new tangible and across the board policy: never mind all the billions in tax-payer bailout assistance, predatory loans, aggressive and faulty repossessions, casually firing tens of thousands from its own workforce, being generally unrepentant about abetting the whole global financial , and now they have the nerve to nickel-and-dime people for the privilege of using their own money (merchants already pay a premium for renting debt-card machines), which the banks profit from by holding it. I think it will backfire.  One would do better to always use cash: all those electronic trillions in sovereign debt and corporate assets the world around could not fit physically fit into all the bank vaults of the world, if this trend snowballs and that’s quite something for cash-on-hand.