Politics

Posted by yseult on Mar 9, 2005 in Politics/History

This is the first time that I will make an entry that is specifically political in a blog that I know all sorts of friends are reading. The reason for not doing it before is easily understood. Since the first time my political self has started to articulate itself – around the age of 14 – I have found to be on the wrong side of the majority. I was -and still am in a way -quite clear about my views and I think that my studies in History and Philosophy entitle me to be so. But the bottom line it that my family and myself have encountered a lot of mean thoughts towards us and heated discussion eventually leading to losing the friends engaged in that discussion (I am talking about one specific question about two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall where a long family friend left our dinner table in protest because my father told him that he was wrong to believe that the communists just had vanished into thin air and that Gorbatschow was a fraud).
When I entered the political dialogue on various levels and environments I learnt that discussing this with your friends is an unnecessary (well maybe not unnecessary) possibility yet again for dispute and bad feelings. The simple truth is: when your opinion is part of the mainstream – no pun intended – you never will be disputed as harshly as when you’re on the side the majority claims to be ‘wrong’. And I don’t know by what Law of Dr. Murphy I always end up being on the wrong side when it comes to following my intuitions and political insight.
When I entered University and my philosophical foundations became real foundations, I adopted a new ‘engagement protocol’. I entered dialogue only as either an ‘advocatus diaboli’ or in the role of an antithetic speech partner, making clear that my personal opinion had not much to do with my job.
In the course of things after 9-11 this discussion technique has become a basic survival protocol. And Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ has of course made things worse. I just told a friend in an email the other day that I sometimes feel like a para in enemy territory: you never know if you’re going to be shot down any instant by an irrational argument or not. You could of course just trip on one of the various ‘moral’ mines scattered all over Europe.
[See what can happen to a Bushie in Germany]And then Beiruth started protesting. Just a few days before, the Spiegel - the worst German journal – had at last seen the light.So here start my thoughts of the moment:

If you feel that you cannot possibly stay in contact with me if you know that I am a fervent European Bushie or that you think you will respect for me and my views after hearing that I am and always have been for the down bringing of Saddam Hussein by all possible means, then please do not continue to read on…

It seems that Washington has finally managed a turn around. Right since the beginning of the Iraqi Operation or even before, when the rift between the USA and Europe has started to build within the halls of the UN, I have only ever seen them reacting to the European Left criticisms. Abu Graib is only the peak within a whole category of these ‘react only’ occurrences.
And now? Syria is slowly giving in. And who is a step behind? ‘I will pressure the Swiss into the EU’-Schröder and ‘I am a criminal, but I have the power’-Chirac… It’s simple look at the time stamps of the communiqués… not only has the Angry left missed the call to the new dance floor, but they wont manage to dismiss this last step towards a stability in the Middle East.
In the political blogosphere it has been mused for quite some time that invading Iraq could be the only thing it would take to turn around the Middle East. And for the first time since I am taking part in this discussion – or since I am in this world – I am starting to feel confident. It’s a small feeling… but it’s there nevertheless.The irrational musings of the Angry Euro Left have finally ended up where all irrationality must lead to: a dead end.And what concerns the shooting of N. Calipari and the next phase of the mass hysteria concerning the involvement of the European Coalition with the US in Iraq.
I have two things to say:
- Calipari was a high ranking Intelligence Agent, he knew the risks of his job. It was an unfortunate incident, but we don’t even know half of the facts by now. And I doubt that Sgrena – the communist fundamentalist writer with a clear agenda – can even remember properly what happened after she was held captive for several weeks. For me, all she is saying now is a reconstruction on how she would like things to have been rather than they really were.
- The comparison between Bush and Hitler has been making me angry for quite a while now. The funny thing is that mostly Germans draw that comparison and of course as linguistic mechanisms go, nobody really can tell them off… if anybody should be allowed such a comment, it would be the Germans, no? But, people, let’s get real. Have you seen how many thousands went to see the coffin of an Intelligence Officer KIA? [I'd be interested why the Italian Secret Service even allowed that, since official burials of the Sec. Service are usualy done quite differently...] How many will again protest against the Italian involvement this weekend – fuelled by Sgrena and her boyfriend? Look at the pictures and ask yourself again what the people behind those movements have in their agenda and then find one of the many documentaries on the History Channels on the Mass movement that walked behind Hitler…
… and then tell me that there are not similarities. Manipulation is not exclusively a prerogative of the right. And the European Left has been manipulating the masses at ease since Bush became American President.

As for the ‘frightened boys with too big guns’ [cf. Sgrena's boyfriend in an interview]… here’s what I would have to say to him:

courtesy of David Kasper’s Mediacritics

But I have hope that if the Cedar Revolution will manage to turn around another country of the Middle East, the protesters will finally see the light of what democracy really stands for. And that it is worth being defended by all means possible. Even if it means that sons and fathers will have to die for it.

Oosterbeek

Posted by yseult on Mar 8, 2005 in Personal

Dr. Hal Sasobowski – son of the famous Commander of the Polish Paratroopers in WWII – is visiting Holland on a tour of talks. 18th of March in Oosterbeek,Hartenstein Museum I have decided yesterday that I will go. Or let’s say that I am planning on going. 4 hours of train ride, no room and no idea on how I will get back since the sncf.fr site does not offer me any train ride back, either during the night, nor on Saturday/Sunday… Odd.

I talked to my mother when B. had given me the news some days ago and I told her that I’d love to go. When I told her yesterday night that I would go, it did not suit too well with her. I think it’s the fact that I am not going home for Easter weekend that is still annoying her. You can bet that this is a bad for me as for them. Still. I cannot fit my work here, my parents, my sister’s trouble all in one. I can’t. And when I went to bed yesterday I thought for the first time, that I am really starting to take decisions on my own without needing consultation with anybody first. Took me long enough.

Anyway… we’ll see on how I am going to manage the trip to Arnhem. It’s two days after my talk. And then I will go back to Switzerland when I get the four weeks off by the end of April. Well, not ‘off’ but at least there are no lectures binding me here. My parents just will have to accept that. So will I for that matter…

Losing

Posted by yseult on Mar 8, 2005 in Poetry

I sometimes wish I could completely lose myself,
give my ‘being me’ out of hand,
lose track of my raging thoughts,
go down with complete surrender,
get drowned in love -
and at last find some centered position
between enthousiasm and desolation.And then – from time to time -
I wish I could tell somebody…
anybody.
Or at least myself.
How afraid the future makes me,
how much trouble I am having to face up,
how unsure I am about everything,
how I am moved by the uncontrollable,
how I am unworthy of all the things around me.

Today is the day when I will either face or bury my love forever…

Currahee…

Posted by yseult on Mar 6, 2005 in The Odd Philosophical Question

We stand alone together…
It’s funny I have contemplated this line of words for a while now. Certainly since I saw ‘Band of Brothers’ for the first time, but I think reading them in Dr. Ambrose’s book some years before that already started the cycle of my thoughts.
Within the setting of the Military in General and WWII or Easy Co. specifically these words summarize a basic rule and truth.
And I wonder how fitting it is to our modern times.
We’re realising ourselves in a varying number of groups, communities, clubs of interests and associations. At first it satisfies our basic human need for closeness, for sharing a passion, a simple interest or uniting under whatever reason… Then there are the friendships and relations, heartily contacts that come out of that bond. Some are for a lifetime, some are just for a moment. It all serves a purpose. And in my line of work researching the Human mind it is a common description of the ‘social being’ that articulates itself in that way.
And then there came the Internet and a communication that bonds people wherever they are, no matter how many miles there lie between them.But as we grow closer one to the other, as deep connections are forged, as we start to know each others real lives, meet, drink together, share our inner feelings and views, there still remains this distant feeling of removedness. Like college friends that have gone off to be spread all over the place.

“We stand alone together…”

For me these words are not just the translation of an Indian name for a mountain, the challenge phrase of an Infantry Regiment or a military truth.
They express one main aspect of our ‘oh so modern’ communication and contacts.

With all the love and the understanding I get from either my family, my friends or my online contacts, I cannot hide from the fact that I am alone in this city and in this life. I remember when my final exams approached some years ago that I went to bed the night before the first written exam. I was nervous of course, but not as nervous as I had anticipated. And I recall thinking “everybody is standing beside me tomorrow… they’re all thinking of you…”.
I feel the same way today. I know that there are so many nice thoughts sent my way, so many loving words in my mind. Nevertheless… ‘we stand alone together…’

Ice

Posted by yseult on Mar 3, 2005 in Poetry

Pale blue icy figures are moving over the sky,
A strong wind whispering of the snow to come,
ratteling on the windows,
The air is thick with unvoiced comfort.
My thoughts are not mine.
Never have been.I though I just heard a raven call me now,
or was it only the wind?

Where have I been all those years?

Steely silence all around me
and your voice in my head…
… all but calm.

—

“Words are flowing out like endless rain…”

Frozen rain on eyelashes above pools of pale blue,
looking at me in my sweet desolated mood,
burning me like some unfamiliar summer sun,
fixing my every move,
immobilising me.
I turn around as if it was the last thing to do
before falling dead to the ground.
Locking into the stare.
Silence above the treetops.
Stillness.
I’m burning myself up in this last look.
There is no message in these eyes.
No warning. No sign at all.

I can hear the sound of me falling,
landing on the floor,
no movement. No help.
No way of ever getting up again.

Ashes.