e-mail from london. pimi sent two fine links to me: august shift cover made by soda. and douglas rushkoff’s “open source” novel “exit strategy”.
once i really thought the "alpbacher mediengespräche" would be interesting. this year you can listen to representants of mesozoic bigcos like bertelsmann and pro7 talking crap about "entgrenzte medienwelten" (media worlds unlimited), or: on the quest for making even incredibly much more money sucking the juice out of the eastern neighbours.
at least there are some guys allowed to picture the media landscape in yugoslavia and russia as quota exotics...
i wonder what money juggler helmut kohl will be talking about at the political symposion. donation party unlimited?
for the sake of pretending political awareness: nazi and east german propaganda guide page.
certainly, my week-end in berlin was great fun, though. it was a nice wedding in wedding – although the official part at the civil registry office was more than a good reason not to get married at all. i mean, why do germans always have to point out that everything must be "ordentlich" (orderly)? it's such a pain in the ass. introduced and still propagated from the right as a german "prime virtue" it even reached out to the left as the fundamentalism of political correctness. but i digress.
the wedding party took place at the allotment colony "ideal 3" where we got stuffed with yummy cakes, bratwurst, salad and grilled meat. many pictures were taken and accompanying tales were written on these for documentation. makes me reconciled again <g>. best wishes and a very more thank you to heike, walid and all their relatives and friends.
on sunday i went through almost all the bars and pubs in mitte, starting with "keyser soze", having the cabaret intermezzo at "kalkscheune" mentioned before, back to "strandbad mitte", some indian food at "nan" (kastanienallee), a staroprama at "bar roberta", then heading for "die assel" as meeting point and finally getting the blues at "alea iacta est". many thanks to claudia and tibor for hosting me, to martha, elke, haugi, darius and last but not least my sister milli for being around. i've had a fine time.
it accidentally happened that i was in berlin during the commemoration of the berlin wall or "anti-fascist protection wall" (western / eastern version). and it makes wonder why there is hardly any of my favourite blogs mentioning it, resp. mentioning it as "wall blahs" ("mauergefasel") at the utmost.
here in austria the development of a software product is more sensational although austria was one of the first countries to pick up the gdr refugees in 1989. but also the german bloggers remain silent, even those i would have bet they would write a little anecdote.
e.g. this one i was told by dr seltsam: in those trembling sixties, the german minister of defense, franz-josef strauß, planned to bomb an eastern-german city with a "pre-emptive nuclear first strike" (that was a common terminology at that time). sounds like nonsense, but i was reassured it is to be found in strauß's autobiography.
strauß needed the approval of the usa to produce and control nuclear weapons in germany. because some us-american cia hotspurs considered the idea interesting and contacted strauß to aks him which city he was thinking of, the german chancellor konrad adenauer and the president of the states john f. kennedy, both knew that they are coping with maniacs. so kennedy decided to urge the russian president chrustschow to solve this problem and to abandon the menacing war.
the solution was that lethal bolchevist stronghold that divided "berlin (west)" and "the democratic berlin" and it should endure 28 years until the people of eastern-germany left their doter government behind (another story).
if it is very likely that things happened like that? who knows. fact is, the times of being on the run is over. at the moment, the view is quite one-sided. but just as the successors of the eastern-german regime cannot escape its legacy and responsibility, the western world will have to face history once again one day.
"keine atempause geschichte wird gemacht es geht voran." – fehlfarben, "ein jahr (es geht voran)".
my father escaped from east-berlin shortly before the wall was built but already at a time when caught refugees ended their lifes in prison.
i am almost off to berlin to wittness the second part of the german-arabian wedding (in wedding, btw.) of heike and walid. have a nice week-end, too.
misconception or intention? telepolis promotes georg paul thomann.
this is a test entry posted with helma using the blogger xml-rpc api.
tip of the day: if you should have problems with your chello connection (or invoice or whatever), don't call the official support hotline
"voll irgendwie dit literarische buch, alta." – "aba wenigstens voll dünn, alta. alta, so dünn musste erstma sein als buch." – "haste ooch wieda recht."
certainly, the talk is about salbader, volume 29 just being out now.
very nice, i was lucky to hear some of the stories live at kalkscheune (e.g. "mehr vom tag" by horst evers or andreas scheffler's "warum ich dauernd in kneipen hocke") the last time i was in berlin. and bonus! next week-end i would be able to attend dr seltsam's frühschoppen again!
henryk m broder has something to say about dr seltsam and his fellows, too.
on the week-end i watched a documentation on tv about the closing down of dienststelle marienthal, a bunker as "alternative quarters of the federal constitutional organs" of germany. although treated as top-secret, the facility located near former capital bonn was quite well-known.
however, its end in these days which is somewhat unfortunate almost had been unnoticed by the public if photographer andreas magdanz would not have made efforts to put the 83.000m2 areal under monumental protection and meanwhile create a large amount of pictures from inside the "bundesbunker" for documentation.
the deliberate ignorance of the former and also now politically liable to exhibit this relic of the cold war, very well illustrates the embarrassment of a nation that in the 1990s still spent tax money to improve a dugout built for a self-proclaimed elite of 3000 people to survive a nuclear bombing desaster or the like.
at the same time, the nonsense of such a bold venture becomes clear. although the facility was supplied with enough fresh food, power and other material for 30 days periodically, the question what would happen to the inhabitants after a month being sheltered from a nuclear fall-out was taboo.
in summary, dienststelle marienthal sketches what being deutsch typically stands for: overestimated gigantomania, superimposed correctness, smug engineering, accurate administration, ubermensch belief.
it's yet another shameful example of bureaucrating the horror of death in the tradition of prussian warfare and racial cleansing. it's still sticking in our bones...
obviously, i missed the coverage in telepolis, neither did i know that ingo hinterding was involved in the creation of the website. thanks for the information, kris.