Patriae, Quo Vadis? [- quo usque tandem]

The plan was to make some time and write this nice and thoughtful and elaborate note on whatever it is that happened or did not happen in Romania, 20 years ago.
But plans are there to fail us. Reasons are irrelevant.
So here are some links, meant as mementos:
the BBC's On This Day's 1989's mention of the re-opening of the Brandenburg Gate and the meanings carried within;
the disputed Wikipedia article on the Romanian 1989 Revolution and the fall of Ceausescu, on this very day, 20 years ago;
the Diplomat - Bucharest's article regarding the 1989 Romanian Revolution, titled 'Justice fails for one thousand dead';
and the History Channel's tiny feature for those with a bit less patience, at this very link.

Make your pick. Yet whatever you'll be deciding to look at, simply recall December 1989 in Romania.

Dear Mr. Neagu Djuvara, Thank You

The first and most easily discernible thank you is for the storytelling: being a storytelling aficionado since I know myself, I need to be grateful and express my appreciation on this level: Mr. Neagu Djuvara is an amazing storyteller, and I thank him for it. I've seen his words but, most importantly, I've heard them: I've heard their intonation, their fluency, their subtle notes - they are storytelling in form and content, a harmony of meanings.

The second layer in this thank you note is for who he is and all the implicit along the explicit that comes along his presence.

And the third is a very particular one - which makes it even more special: this is to thank you for voicing out loud on the Romanian National Television that which I only have the chance to tell to my friends, the opinion that the necessary condition for Romania's real change of attitude rests with the establishment of an independent tribunal invested to judge communist and post-communist crimes. The opinion that as long as impunity will continue to be the rule rather than the exception, only sadness and hurt can come about. Of course, Mr. Neagu Djuvara had phrased it differently - but I am his most grateful fan still.

20 Years On..

Romania's opposition Social Democrat party says Sunday's presidential election was rigged and plans to contest the result.
Official results showed incumbent President Traian Basescu with a winning margin of less than 1%.
Earlier, exit polls had predicted victory for his Social Democrat rival, former Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana.
Both candidates had claimed victory on Sunday night in what correspondents describe as a bitter contest.

Keep reading on the BBC, here.

P.S. Whilst the Portuguese national channel mentioned the RO presidential elections news yesterday [as briefly as possible..], there was no continuation to that today; the Bolivian elections, Brazilian football & Christmas preparations in Russia won their attention instead.

It's the Media

As opposite to many of my Romanian friends [manifesting on blogs, e-groups of various sorts, and Web 2.0's social networking in general], the current presidential elections going on in the home country have passed me by almost entirely: it's for the first time since I am rightfully entitled to my voting rights that I did not use that, nor am I planning to.
Now, other than the fact that my limited knowledge of the present home country presidential debates doesn't add up to make enough of an informed decision on the matter [yes, I do take this into account] - one very significant contribution has been that of the media. Here it is, I'm writing it down:
The Portuguese media couldn't care less about what is or what is not going on in Romania. Including the elections and everything else having preceded them over the last months or even the entire year.
Do you think the politically-involved Portuguese had any idea about the governmental crisis a while back? - Nope, no idea at all.
Do you think there's been any coverage of however you want to refer to what's been going on in Moldova earlier this year? - Answer's the same: nay.

The above are all facts, or more precisely lack of them. Consequently, my point: How is one European citizen supposed to give the European brotherhood spirit [in a very political sense] any credit when the media of one European country has absolutely no coverage over events in another European country? Enlighten me.

[a Reminder]: 40 years On

The Apollo 11 mission was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. It was the fifth human space flight of Project Apollo and the third human voyage to the Moon. Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried Mission Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above.
The mission fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s, which he expressed during a speech given before a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961:
"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

Keep reading the Wiki entry :)

Tagline: "They Changed The Way Campaigns Are Won." [1993]

Finally seen it! Yesterday night was the dedicated night - and here I am, sharing it with the world:
It was The War Room, and here's its IMDb entry and here the Wiki one.

At the start of the 1992 Democratic primaries, D.A. Pennebaker, a revered documentary filmmaker, pitched the idea to the Clinton Campaign to allow for access into the campaign strategy sessions [...]. The Clinton campaign agreed, and allowed Pennebaker to focus on Communications Director George Stephanopoulos as well as Lead Strategist James Carville. [...]
There was a media revolution during the 1992 presidential campaign. The Clinton camp embraced the new news phenomenon while the rest of the country was being flooded with character, competence, and image press rather than platform and political information. The 1992 campaign exemplified the shift of United States political coverage from platform information and traditional press to what it is today: a character and celebrity focused popularity contest. Voters were getting their information from outlets such as late night talk shows, Donahue and MTV. Citizens were gaining perceived knowledge from these outlets and feeling satisfied that they had the information they needed to vote. Many argue that voters were not receiving important information about candidates’ platforms but because of their perceived knowledge, voters were not seeking additional information.
The historical context surrounding this film is important to note because the film is intertwined with history: the access granted to the filmmakers was unprecedented and the type of campaign the Clintons were running was entirely new, especially by focusing on the new news. The War Room not only documents the campaign history as it unfolds but it makes history in its access to the campaign.

To me, both James Carville and George Stephanopoulos are simply brilliant after having watched this: Just take a look at the Quotations section on Carville's page :)

Here's a taste:

Consider this

Green parties celebrating their success in last week's European Parliament election are gearing up for a fight over nuclear power.
The coalition of green parties, who are unanimous in their anti-nuclear position, increased their presence in the European Parliament from 5.5% to 7.1% (52 seats). Although not enough to force any changes, science-policy experts anticipate a major battle on the issue in the next legislature.
The European Parliament does not currently have the power to legislate on energy production in the European Union's 27 member states. But if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified later this year by the remaining few member states that have not yet signed up, parliament's power will extend into new areas. "If the Lisbon treaty is approved, it will give the European Union responsibility for energy security," says Ulrike Lunacek, who is president of the European Green Party and a newly elected member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Austria. "We will use this opportunity to make a stand in the European Parliament against nuclear power," she told Nature.

Brought to you by NatureNews, as Green boost in European elections may trigger nuclear fight.

To remeber = [v. intr.] To have or use the power of memory

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 culminating in the Tiananmen Square massacre (referred to in Chinese as the June 4 Incident, to avoid confusion with two other Tiananmen Square protests) were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China (PRC) beginning on April 14. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world.
The protests were sparked by the death of pro-market, pro-democracy and anti-corruption official, Hu Yaobang, whom protesters wanted to mourn. By the eve of Hu's funeral, 1,000,000 people had gathered on the Tiananmen square. The protests lacked a unified cause or leadership; participants included disillusioned Communist Party members and Trotskyists as well as free market reformers, who were generally against the government's authoritarianism and voiced calls for economic change and democratic reform within the structure of the government. The demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which remained peaceful throughout the protests.
The movement lasted seven weeks, from Hu's death on April 15 until tanks cleared Tiananmen Square on June 4. In Beijing, the resulting military response to the protesters by the PRC government left many civilians dead or severely injured. The number of deaths is not known and many different estimates exist. There were early reports of Chinese Red Cross sources giving a figure of 2,600 deaths, but the Chinese Red Cross has denied ever doing so. The official Chinese government figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded.
Following the violence, the government conducted widespread arrests to suppress protesters and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the PRC press. Members of the Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were purged, with several high-ranking members placed under house arrest, such as General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. The violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protest caused widespread international condemnation of the PRC government.

From Wikipedia: Tiananmen Square protests of 1989

You might have heard by now that:

... At a scientific conference on climate change held this week in Copenhagen, four environmental experts announced that sea levels appear to be rising almost twice as rapidly as had been forecast by the United Nations just two years ago. The warning is aimed at politicians who will meet in the same city in December to discuss the same subject and, perhaps, to thrash out an international agreement to counter it.
The reason for the rapid change in the predicted rise in sea levels is a rapid increase in the information available. In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change convened by the UN made its prediction that sea levels would rise by between 18cm and 59cm by 2100, a lack of knowledge about how the polar ice caps were behaving was behind much of the uncertainty. Since then they have been closely monitored, and the results are disturbing. Both the Greenland and the Antarctic caps have been melting at an accelerating rate. It is this melting ice that is raising sea levels much faster than had been expected. Indeed, scientists now reckon that sea levels will rise by between 50cm and 100cm by 2100, unless action is taken to curb climate change....

More on the actual studies which had been carried out in supporting the above in The Economist's article.

When "What's Your Type?" translates to "bura-hara"

In Japan, "What's your type?" is much more than small talk; it can be a paramount question in everything from matchmaking to getting a job.

By type, the Japanese mean blood type, and no amount of scientific debunking can kill a widely held notion that blood tells all. In the year just ended, four of Japan's top 10 best-sellers were about how blood type determines personality, according to Japan's largest book distributor, Tohan Co. The books' publisher, Bungeisha, says the series - one each for types B, O, A, and AB - has combined sales of well over 5 million copies.[...]

Even Prime Minister Taro Aso seems to consider it important enough to reveal in his official profile on the Web. He's an A. His rival, opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa, is a B. [...]

Matchmaking agencies provide blood-type compatibility tests, and some companies make decisions about assignments based on employees' blood types. Children at some kindergartens are divided up by blood type, and the women's softball team that won gold at the Beijing Olympics used the theory to customize each player's training.

Not all see the craze as harmless fun, and the Japanese now have a term, "bura-hara," meaning blood-type harassment. And, despite repeated warnings, many employers continue to ask blood types at job interviews, said Junichi Wadayama, an official at the Health, Welfare and Labor Ministry.

More here, thanks to Physorg.com & AP.

meanwhile, the legal conundrum - part 2

In Israel, Prime Minister Olmert told a weekly cabinet meeting that soldiers who had put their lives on the line for their country need not fear prosecution for war crimes overseas. [...]
Israel's military tactics have come under intense scrutiny as evidence has emerged of the high numbers of Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza.
Among complaints made by human rights groups are accusations of indiscriminate firing and the use of white phosphorus shells in civilian areas.
Israel has admitted using white phosphorus in Gaza but says it did not break international law in doing so.
White phosphorus is legal for creating smokescreens in open battleground. But rights groups and journalists say it was used in crowded civilian areas.
The weapon sticks to human skin and will burn through to the bone.

[source: BBC's Israeli PM in war crimes pledge]

meanwhile, the legal conundrum

John Ging of Unrwa has raised the question of whether Israel's government should be investigated for committing possible war crimes against Palestinians.

"For all those innocent people who have been killed in this conflict, were they war crimes? International law obliges is to get an answer to that question," he said.

Mr Ban has been more cautious, saying it is not for him to determine whether a war crimes investigation should take place. However, he has stressed the importance of accountability, where necessary.

In reality, a war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) is unlikely. The court's prosecutor and pre-trial chamber can only instigate their own proceedings against a state that belongs to the court. Israel is not a formal member.

The UN Security Council has been known to refer cases against non-members to the ICC, but the US, staunch ally of Israel, could well block such a move. A state party to the court can ask for a referral to the ICC, but there is no Palestinian state.

[source: the BBC's UN chief's impact on Gaza truce]

Burn after Reading

The Coens spend the bulk of the film putting the players into place; it’s a complex, multi-character set-up kept going by a martial tick-tock score, which instills Burn After Reading with a gravitas to which it never quite lives up. Set in and around the corridors of power, Burn is a comedy of errors, full of sex-obsessed jokers, in which two gym employees (Pitt & Frances MacDormand) stumble upon a CD-R with the working memoirs (mem-wahz) of a recently fired CIA agent-slash-alcoholic (John Malkovich, wandering hilariously from scene to scene, repeatedly moaning, in a muttering whine, “what the fuck?”). The personal trainers mistake the files for important when they’re merely self-stroking, and the duo’s consequent shenanigans set off a chain reaction that ends in violence and murder.

On a basic level, Burn After Reading is a spoof of the paranoid conspiracy thriller, the type popularized in the post-Watergate ‘70s; here, the Washington backrooms are full of clowns and Princeton alum garbling old college singalongs in black-tie drunkenness. These nitwits would be incapable of concocting and carrying out a conspiracy even if they wanted to. It’s a portrait of the American government as wholly dysfunctional, paralleling the characters’ sexual dysfunctions (see: the wild dildo-equipped rocking chair that George Clooney builds in his basement.)

[above equally written here]
It was the trailer that dragged me to the Cinema and the film that determined me to post this up..

theme: post-Thanksgiving reflections

10 Things To Be Thankful For This Year! [from globalexchange.org]

1. The Bush Era is over, we were spared a McCain sequel
   
2. The US elected its first-ever African American President - Barack Obama
   
3. 350,000 young people signed onto Power Vote - pledging to vote for candidates who support clean renewable energy
   
4. The Green Economy is the fastest growing sector of the US economy
   
5. The Iran War Resolutions were defeated - people power won over AIPAC
   
6. U.S. consumers are choosing hybrids over hummers and other gas guzzlers
   
7. Chevron is being brought to justice in a US law suit for human rights abuses committed in Nigeria
   
8. Democrats admit NAFTA needs to be amended
   
9. Green Festival has expanded to five major US cities and reaching more than 100,000 people every year
   
10. GX has been a leader in the social justice movement for 20 years, and is committed to continuing the struggle for 20 more

funny how globalisation goes...

Kenya has declared Thursday a public holiday to celebrate the election of Barack Obama to the US presidency.

[...]

In January, Kisumu was the scene of running battles between members of the public and police after riots broke out over the Kenya's contested elections.

But correspondents say the US election seems to have healed some wounds, with people reported to be saying that Mr Obama's victory is a victory for all Kenyans.

[from: here]

The Commonplace Shock

This week's been too strange to be true, and yet it happened: every single day bringing about more shock, forget about readjusting!
Monday's email read:

Astazi dimineata (27 oct), colegul si prietenul nostru Stefan Paun a incetat din viata datorita unui cancer la colon; nu a mai putut fi salvat in ciuda celor 3 interventii chirurgicale.

Dumnezeu sa-l ierte !

Inmormantarea va avea loc joi, la Botosani. Sa-i fie tarana usoara!

it left me muttering some Can-you-believe-that's to myself and a strange bitter taste surrounding the day.
Afterwards, I just stopped trying to keep track of it, whilst the BBC headlines kept going:

...'Human catastrophe' grips Congo...

...India explosions death toll rises...

...300 feared dead in Pakistan quake...

...Cleric held over Somali car bombs...

...West Africa slavery still widespread...

...Car bomb targets Spain university...

And they just keep coming, no room for breathing out of this, no time to give it a thought, almost no reactions spurred.
Well, I find it horrifying.
Truly so, too 'ordinary' to believe it any longer, and still happening Every Single Day.
The fact that "everything's possible these days" stopped being a novetly long ago, and still...
I'd like to wake up to a day without Shocking News, would that please be possible?

counter-intuitive & a tad ironic

Remember Jörg Haider? The guy in the photo? [image from here]
Clue: a while ago, he scratched the image of Austria amongst European friends due to certain accusations of Nazi sympathy.

Yet this is not the entire story;
from what it appears, Haider's recent death revealed a handful of 'dirty lil secrets' [sorry to be the one wrecking this bubble but it was simply too ironic to be true...]:

Haider, who voted against a parliamentary motion to lower the age of consent for homosexuals, had presented himself as a family man who drank sparingly. But after the car crash it was revealed that he had been driving at twice the speed limit, his blood alcohol level had been four times the legal limit, and he had spent his final hours in a gay bar in Klagenfurt, the capital of the southern state where he was governor.

[entire article in The Guardian].
... and such was today's lesson on strong views and retribution...

Just as I was turning my eye of appreciation towards the Times' editorials, their depiction of the ICC's viewpoint (or better said, lack thereof) left me rather disappointed.
Monday's title, "Choosing Justice over Peace in Darfur" not only seemed to oversimplify but equally to choose a very odd perspective, along the lines of:

Khartoum does not recognize the ICC and says that any case against al-Bashir — who seized power in a military coup in 1989 and has ruled Africa's biggest country ever since — or any other Sudanese citizen will jeopardize ongoing peace talks over Darfur.

And to obviously reinforce that, Tuesday's "Sudan: Retaliation Against the Hague?" went further on to argue that:

Even more lethal, a presidential adviser said Sudan's government might encourage Arab and African states to withdraw from the ICC entirely. Just two-thirds of the world's governments are signatories to the Rome Statute that recognizes the ICC's jurisdiction, and neither Russia, China nor the U.S. is among them.

.... I am astounded. How can such politicised standpoints pass for unbiased editorials?! How about the opposing viewpoint?
Not only have some bothered to actually provide for evidence as to why the ICC's actions are thoroughly supported by facts, but even from a philosophical outlook this begs the question: Does anyone find the idea of a politically-backed or driven Court desirable? ... Cause that doesn't sound all that appealing to me, in particular when it comes to crimes against humanity and such!...

in the eve of the Olympics, Beijing Orders Pollution to Vanish, by

[...] government-decreed industrial and traffic crackdowns. Beijing has announced work stoppages on July 20 for construction sites, mines and chemical plants. A group of polluting factories in Beijing will be required to cut emissions by 30%. [...]
The biggest element of the short-term cleanup efforts will be a restriction on car traffic that begins July 20. On that day government-vehicle traffic will be ordered to cut back by 70%, and private vehicles will be permitted to drive only on alternating days. Although police cars, emergency vehicles and taxis will be exempt, the government estimates that up to 50% of Beijing's 3.3 million vehicles will be cleared from the streets. [...]

[...]
But while cleaner skies will be a welcome sight for the Olympic hosts, Beijing's residents won't have long to enjoy it. The restrictions will be kept in place for the Sept. 6-17 Paralympics, then end on Sept. 20. "The measures are only a short-term fix," says Wen Bo, China director for the NGO Pacific Environment. "I think the current Beijing government couldn't have the time and energy to think of long-term solutions for fixing air pollution."

... Should it then be that the original meaning of temporary peace settlements for the duration of the Olympics now also applies to our relationship with the environment?... [Time's article]