seems the self-absorption has now even caught those who recently appeared to be a little bit more deliberate: lately, dave winer talks about "thoughtlessness and arrogance among europeans", europeans "not getting" that this is "not like an earthquake or hurricane" or "acts of god", that "this is a war".
and he links to an article in the london sunday times stating "they [the us-americans] saved europe from barbarism in two world wars. after the second world war they rebuilt the continent from the ashes. they confronted and peacefully defeated soviet communism, the most murderous system ever devised by man, and thereby enforced the slow dismantling – we hope – of chinese communism, the second most murderous. america, primarily, ejected iraq from kuwait and helped us to eject argentina from the falklands. america stopped the slaughter in the balkans while the europeans dithered".
thanks for reminding me. and i apoligize already for getting a little bit upset now. but for me as an european, although i agree upon that they freed germany from the nazis, the usa appear as suspects in any other of the military actions mentioned in the article. suspects, not culprits. i suspect them to be gone to war too often as aggressors and not defenders, fighting because of power and pecuniary reasons, for oil, hegemony and whatever (this is probably how the little word "primarily" could be interpreted as well). ask some victims, ask some of those who are not mentioned in this very paragraph, but don't ask me if you want to investigate.
this article leaves out so much (if not all) of the reasons why they really hate america, no matter whether this is reasonable or not. this article is full of self-evident self-denial, it's the exact contradiction to the one in the guardian titled "they can't see why they are hated" which was linked on scripting news just a few days ago.
today, well-behaved dave says "thank you" for black'n'white journalism. and just like the sunday times author, however in a more subtle way, dave is asking for the decision: "whose side are you really on?" – a stupid question by the way, because it suggests that there is no real choice and that it's all about the usa. and darn! it's not! and there is certainly more to this than just taking side in an actual conflict.
from my point of view, the chance that americans "get it", that they understand those who in fact know and suffer or suffered from terrorism and its consequences for decades (just think about ireland, spain or corse just to name a few western european countries), the option of the usa understanding the role of this country as opportunist of terrorism, decreased to a minimum.
just look how they are making the same mistake again, abusing pakistan as ally against afghanistan. but the enemy of one's enemy does not necessarily mean to be one's friend.
and who said that this was the (first) wakeup call?
clubspotting: kassablanca, jena (reload yourself).
fun with unicode: haboglabobloggin' in the hall of mirrors (sort of).
for the rationale: "nonzero, the logic of human destiny" by robert wright.
"the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." – steven weinberg.
while tony blair got inspired by thornton wilder's book "the bridge of san luis rey" (and the guardian explains why), i was thinking about another of wilder's plays, "the skin of our teeth" (dt. "wir sind noch einmal davongekommen").
therein, wilder "depicted five thousand years in the lives of george and maggie antrobus, a suburban new jersey couple, who, with their children gladys and henry and their maid sabina, struggle through flood, famine, ice, and war only to begin the series all over again" (quoted from pegasos).
on the one hand, this illustrates how knee-deep mankind had and has to wade through the morass of history's desasters as well as of self-inflicted odds and ends; fighting merciless struggles for bare existence in a world of the unknown. on the other hand, the plot certainly arouses hope for every human being that no matter what will come, there still remains a view and a path to the future – at least for the species as a whole...
"it's when you're safe at home that you wish you were having an adventure. when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home." -- thornton wilder, 1897–1975.
thttpd is a simple, small, portable, fast, and secure http server.
Q33NY, yeah, yeah... "towers" – or what do you call these sheets of paper again, used to store writing?
however, this way i found out that google can find street maps (at least in the us of a).
telepolis: "vom kommenden jahr an sollen deutschlands raucher nämlich pro zigarette etwa vier pfennig mehr zahlen. ein betrag, der dann komplett und millionenfach dem schutz unseres landes vor terroristischen angriffen zufließt".
interesting connections also in the accompanying picture. i was not aware of the oriental motif on that very cigarette package...
"the top sample sources list ranks the most popular movies, tv-series and other similar kinds of sample sources based on how frequently spoken lines from these sources have been sampled and used in some sort of musical context".
vskm: der richtige titel für jede gelegenheit.