There is an unresolved debate regarding bringing the fugitive Edward Snowden (whom I am still unconvinced is not an industry-shill and distracting factor when it comes to leadership) out of Neuland to Germany to testify on espionage activities by his former employers. Quite a few double-buffs seem to be influencing inaction.
Friday 8 November 2013
merrily we roll along
Wednesday 6 November 2013
pogrom and defenestration
This Saturday, 9 November, known as the German Schicksalstag, the fateful day, marks the 75th anniversary of individual persecution and prejudice becoming something systematic and institutionalised when on Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) a minority lashed out violently against Jewish citizens and other minorities, importantly with a majority of by-standers who did little to nothing to prevent this. Several initiatives have been launched in memory of this date, including many prominent (and sometime successor) retail outlets respectfully having made their storefronts to look vandalised with shattered decals, in addition to perennial and ongoing reminders of these tragic events.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ✡️, ๐, holidays and observances, Wikipedia
chimera
My dear sister sent me this wonderful objet d'art in this little ceramic Jackalope—which does have a practical purpose too as a cotton-ball dispenser, one plucks cotton-balls out of its tail. H shared with me once that there was a taxidermy specimen on display at the neighbourhood butcher's shop and he was convinced that such fierce hybrids existed—in America.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐บ, antiques, language, myth and monsters
remembrance or apocalypse no!
As European nations are preparing for solemn ceremonies to commemorate the upcoming centennial that marks the beginning of the outbreak of the Great War, each in their own way and surely the conflict was not spontaneous and the reach-back to the chronology is as important to understanding and reconciliation, though such horrors, falling from living memory evade the senses and imagination, another quite different war, half as old, is being remembered in a muted fashion.
American engagement grew in response and after an alleged attack (which many historians agree was either an outright fabrication or so-called Tonkin Ghosts, false radar images, and a pretext to escalate action courtesy of the No-Such Agency) on its patrol ships, all out war with North Vietnam broke out. The causes of World War I are no less abstract, a backlash against imperialism led to the rise of fascism. History is written by the victors, though there are no real winners in war, and while the character of these enmities may be different, limited by the irrefutable bounds that there is no difference in suffering and loss nor in pride and greed neither, the bitter old specter of propaganda that turns patriots to rebels, depending on which side one is on, still haunts.
catagories: ⚛️, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, ๐, foreign policy, holidays and observances
Tuesday 5 November 2013
through the looking-glass II
The reconnaissance regarding the depth of US spying on friend and foe and the ties that bind has accelerated to such a pitch that it is becoming difficult to keep up.
To advance at such a clip is worrying to me, as rather than addressing known issues first, plaintiffs are becoming magnanimous. Bringing surprise and outrage over cadet affiliates' actions, delegations outremer for damage-control, and testimony in the form of a private audience to stir more strife, though perhaps bidden and needed, before putting a halt to current activities and assuaging public fears seems to me like simple envy—for all parties, and maybe a gracious way to bow-out. Rather than curtailing communication and cooperation, it seems to me that Germany has aspirations for inclusion as a member of the exclusive Five-Eyes Club, treated with the same respect as the anglophone snitching-network and with the same dues—already paid. Europe as a whole would never be accorded the same courtesy. It remains to be seen how sore Germany is over surveillance in general and what to what degree the outrage touches attempts to divine or second-guess her economic leadership.