Sing little bird,Sing to me

No kidding: Drongo ,mate!

Drongo:
This soundscape features the dawn chorus from an Australian tropical highland rainforest, recorded in the World Heritage listed highland rainforests of the Atherton Tableland.

The recording begins with overnight dew falling from leaves, a Spangles Drongo, distant Boobook Owl, and the last nocturnal crickets and frogs. Gradually this gives way to a dawn chorus of Riflebirds, Catbirds, Rufous Fantails, Wompoo Fruit-doves and other rainforest birdsong.

http://www.listeningearth.com.au/AlbumGalleriesNS/01AthertonDawn/01AthertonDawnAlbum.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spangled_DrongoTrack time: 20min

http://rainforest-australia.com/Bird_Index.html

P.S.

A person seemed to be, in some form or another, stupid. Drongo is a typically australian word and is part of common australian dialect.

Food for Thought : About what Art does to You

"Art is important because it stimulates young people's creativity. If you see great art it makes you ask questions and if you ask questions it makes you seek answers. It's always been in my mind that this is something I wanted to do."- Anthony d'Offay,London art dealer
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2260249,00.html

The Search:No Laughs, No Thrills, and Villains All Too Real

I am following with great interest the latest developments regarding the remembrance of the Holocaust.As,I myself the only daughter,the only remnant of two large Jewish families turned into ashes.

BERLIN — The other morning Jens Augner, slight and owlish, a schoolteacher in his 40s, quizzed his eighth-grade class of 13- and 14-year-olds at the Humboldt Gymnasium, a local school. As part of a trial program, he has just introduced a new history textbook into the curriculum: to be exact, a comic book about the Holocaust, called “The Search.”
“The result, I find, is that interest in the subject is actually increasing,” Mr. Augner later commented. “These students don’t have the same discomfort we did talking about it.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/books/27holocaust.html?hp

Beauty in the Mind:The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan

flowers from Bhutan



(dance)photo by heloisa oliveira

A furious dialogue ensued in Dzongkha, the Bhutanese language, among the priests, the owner, the government official overseeing the country’s cultural properties and the curators’ Bhutanese driver over how to interpret this ambiguous sign. (Even numbers are bad, ascending numbers are good, and nine is great, the most auspicious number of all.)http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/arts/design/24emer.html

The kingdom’s remoteness allowed it to remain isolated for centuries. Snow-clogged passes kept out foreign marauders; the only invader was Buddhism, imported by Guru Rinpoche, the founder of the earliest school of Tibetan Buddhism, in 746. Before Rinpoche’s arrival, the Bhutanese practiced a nature- worshipping form of animism called Bon. The absorption of Bon’s earthly gods and goblins into the new religion created a uniquely environmental form of Buddhism that has defined the culture to this day.http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200710/bhutan

http://www.theatlantic.com/slideshows/bhutan/

Las memorias de Marcos Ana. "Decidme como es un árbol"

Sus esperanzas frustradas y las que tienen que venir. Porque este tipo de memorias lo que rebosan es optimismo. Optimismo frente a la adversidad, que es el mas necesario.

Ellos ya hicieron su trabajo, ahora nos toca a nosotros.
Hace tiempo que conozco la figura de Marcos Ana.
Las razones son varias pero una era poderosa.

http://fraternidaduniversal.blogspot.com/2007/10/las-memorias-de-marcos-ana-decidme-como.html

Fiat Lux: Northern Light in Sweden

This area is an untapped secret known only to Swedes,' said Putte Eby, the brains behind the hotel.
'But with enlightened management that will change.one of nature's greatest spectacles. Naked.





http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/gallery/2008/feb/17/sweden.northernlights?picture=332528544

Pandas: A documentary

I love pandas and here photos of pandas in China
by James Fallows
http://www.theatlantic.com/slideshows/pandas

The Rape of Europa and the Fragebogen begins

drawing by marguerita
"It takes a great many shovelfuls to bury the truth."
German proverb recorded for posterity by H.L. Mencken

TAKING office in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt confronted a country in crisis. Four in 10 working-age Americans were jobless. Banks were collapsing. There were long lines outside tellers’ windows as people rushed to withdraw their savings.
On March 4, Roosevelt gave his now famous inaugural address, promising that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Within days he had secured legislation guaranteeing the banks, and on March 12, he took to the radio for the first of his fireside chats. “When the people find out that they can get their money — that they can get it when they want it — the phantom of fear will soon be laid,” he soothed an anxious nation. “I can assure you, it is safer to keep your money in a re-opened bank than under your mattress.”

And across the Atlantic

After the elections of March 5, 1933, the Nazis began a systematic takeover of the state governments throughout Germany, ending a centuries old tradition of local political independence. Armed SA and SS thugs barged into local government offices using the state of emergency decree as a pretext to throw out legitimate office holders and replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners.
Political enemies were arrested by the thousands and put in hastily constructed holding pens. Old army barracks and abandoned factories were used as prisons. Once inside, prisoners were subjected to military style drills and harsh discipline. They were often beaten and sometimes even tortured to death. This was the very beginning of the Nazi concentration camp system.
At this time, these early concentration camps were loosely organized under the control of the SA and the rival SS. Many were little more than barbed wire stockades know as 'wild' concentration camps, set up by local Gauleiters and SA leaders.
For Adolf Hitler, the goal of a legally established dictatorship was now within reach. On March 15, 1933, a cabinet meeting was held during which Hitler and Göring discussed how to obstruct what was left of the democratic process to get an Enabling Act passed by the Reichstag. This law would hand over the constitutional functions of the Reichstag to Hitler, including the power to make laws, control the budget and approve treaties with foreign governments.
The emergency decree signed by Hindenburg on February 28, after the Reichstag fire, made it easy for them to interfere with non-Nazi elected representatives of the people by simply arresting them.
As Hitler plotted to bring democracy to an end in Germany, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels put together a brilliant public relations display at the official opening of the newly elected Reichstag.
On March 21, in the Garrison Church at Potsdam, the burial place of Frederick the Great, an elaborate ceremony took place designed to ease public concern over Hitler and his gangster-like new regime.

Thus the Terrible Secret,as Walter Laqueur details in his book, and other historians,Europe become the scapegoat,meaning the Jews of Europe,along with who was in harm's way.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/weekinreview/17zernike.html?hp

“It is ignorance — not knowledge — that leads to the repetition of abominable situations,”

Hitler in the box by Marguerita

I must congratulate Mr.Sarkozy for this initiative.

Being the only child of two Holocaust survivors,who are not alive anymore,both sides descendants of large and prominent Jewish families totally murdered by the Nazi,I am aware every moment of my life about the tragedy.
At this very moment I am facing an eviction,after years of struggling to have a roof over my head.

Who can I turn to?

In the home that would be mine,of my ancestors,strangers took possession.

My dignity challenged,no family to turn to.
My two sons,now realizing and feeling the exact agony that I have endured so far.
I am sorry that Simone Weil disagrees.
We must all come to realize that the rampant indifference to human suffering and disrespect to human life reached the lowest point through the horror of Hitler.
He opened the Pandora's box and since the world catapulted to the ongoing and increasing violence in the world all over.
The human race is in fact blase,and hypocrite mostly for being afraid to teach children about violence,thus condoning the repetition as Mr.Sarkozy mentioned.
Children need innocence as well as adults. And it is in childhood that one is able to learn which direction to chose later in life.The character of a child is there in observation.
As one should know,Hitler was indoctrinating the youth,thus the Hitler-Jugent,which many known German
personalities were too,like Gunther Grass and many politicians after the II War.

Fear to deal with historical truth is maybe the cause of so much unhappiness.

Thanks to technology we are now able to see faster,the immediate transparency of any manipulation of truth.It also enables us to learn the facts and bring all of humanity together to evaluate our threats.We should benefit from the speed of information to transmit messages of peace and harmony,and try with all our hearts to learn from the innumerous mistakes that occurred and still about.Invasions ,intimidation,Murder.

Why don't we all realize and learn about our limitations?

Not reading and learning History and Geography is exactly where the world is at fault.

One reads and hears constantly why is that all bad things happening,expecting to get answers.

Well it comes from individual efforts,one by one ,a consciousness of good and evil.

Ask yourself before hurting someone else,why should I?

And spend more time learning.It certainly gives one peace of mind and instruct oneself how to conduct himself or herself to to be able to change the world 's status quo.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/hitler_youth.htm

PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy dropped an intellectual bombshell this week, surprising the nation and touching off waves of protest with his revision of the school curriculum: beginning next fall, he said, every fifth grader will have to learn the life story of one of the 11,000 French children killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust
“Nothing is more moving, for a child, than the story of a child his own age, who has the same games, the same joys and the same hopes as he, but who, in the dawn of the 1940s, had the bad fortune to be defined as a Jew,” Mr. Sarkozy said at the end of a dinner speech to France’s Jewish community on Wednesday night. He added that every French child should be “entrusted with the memory of a French child-victim of the Holocaust.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/world/europe/16france.html?hp

photos by jill pakenham

Point of View: The Real Thing Michelle Obama

Photo: AP/Charles Rex Arbogast
“My statements are coming from my experiences and my observations and my frustrations.”
I can go along with these lines.
Michelle Obama :Outspoken, strong-willed, funny, gutsy and sometimes sarcastic.Mrs. Obama has also had to learn to tamp down her sometimes biting humor because it too often leaves Mr. Obama as the punch line. (It has been a long time since she has talked publicly about her husband of 15 years being smelly in the morning, as she told Glamour magazine, or forgetting to put away the butter.)
“What I’ve learned is that my humor doesn’t translate to print all the time,” she said in the interview. “But usually when I’m speaking to a group, people understand what I’m trying to say, they get the humor, they understand the sarcasm, they get the joke.”Her audiences do laugh. Talking about how long it took her and Mr. Obama, 47, to pay off their student loans (they did so only in the last couple of years), she told a church audience in Cheraw, S.C., “I’m still waiting for Barack’s trust fund.” They cackled. She continued: “Then I heard Dick Cheney was supposed to be a relative! Thought we might be in for something here.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/us/politics/14michelle.html?hp

Of Dinosaurs and Penis to a Kiss

A fascinating speculation on the evolution of emotion in humans and other animals.
“The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex,” includes a huge compilation of the sexual decorations and displays of animals, from the jaws of stag-beetles to the tail of the Argus pheasant, which far exceeds that of the peacock in absurd magnificence. From his study of all this, Darwin began to elucidate systematic patterns and principles of the evolution of courtship and sexual behavior. In particular, he developed the concept of sexual selection, which is the idea that cumbersome ornaments like big tails can evolve, even if they make the bearer less likely to survive, if the opposite sex (usually the female) finds them attractive.
In doing so, he founded one of the most important and successful branches of evolutionary research. We now have a robust understanding of how sexual pressures — the pressures to find, impress, and seduce a mate — influence the evolution of males and females.
http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/a-tyrannical-romance/index.html

Galaxy A1689-zD1

Astronomers at Nasa found the galaxy A1689-zD1,considered the most distant one so far.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Astronomos/descubren/galaxias/lejanas/Universo/elpepusoc/20080213elpepusoc_7/Tes

Amazing moment the world's biggest Christ was struck by lightning

Fernando Coelho dos Santos: Talk to Her(Sequel)

So,if one says that miracles do not happen,I must contradict that one.

This is a story about feelings.

On today's cold, grey and snowy day in New York,my mind crisscrossing with ideas,worries,pain,thoughts,laughter,hope and dreams,I could not believe hat was happening.
First I get a call from someone who likes me a lot,wondering about me.
A few hours later,to my surprise I receive an e-mail from Brazil.
And in the evening a friend of mine in Argentina sending me an e-mail asking about me.
Three Latin hombres.Ha! Que caliente.

A class friend of mine,from kindergarten days finally writes to me,after I had sent him a number of messages through the years.
Only that it was not a response to my messages.
He must have heard or seen the posting from last year....
http://atireugram.blogspot.com/2007/07/fernando-coelho-dos-santos-et-tubrutus.html
It kind of goes on a parallel with Australia Apologizing to Aborigines,only that in my case,
without a comprehensive and moving apology for past wrongs and a call for bipartisan action to improve my life.And with a play on words“The Parliament is today here assembled to deal with this unfinished business of the nation, to remove a great stain from the nation’s soul, and in a true spirit of reconciliation to open a new chapter in the history of this great land, Australia,” Mr. Rudd told Parliament.

My kindergarten friend,after years of us not seeing each other,in fact about 10,as I left the school in 1966,when I last run into him,in 1975 appeared on my front, like a vision,when I was on a vacation in Guaruja,the beach resort in Sao Paulo.He was screaming at me about the publication of an article in GRAPHIS 179 about my artwork.He also warned me that there was trouble ahead for me,as a result of that??? !!! and he fizzled into the mist of the waves and sand,leaving me puzzled forever.
Many years later,about 20 or more I saw a piece of news on the internet and I figured out the connection of Fernando and his absurd and surreal 1975 outburst.
It is simply a freaky story which could serve for a comics plot,the only downside being that my professional life suffered a surreal setback crossing continents and causing me great hardship.
So today's e-mails by Fernando are quite amusing and fodder or inspiration for a Pedro Almodovar movie....
Hello Pedro,can you hear me???????????
By the way, I must confess,that Latin men,with many of their shortcomings are more emotional and earthy then the anglo-saxons.For at least,Latin men,with the exception of the bad apples that can be found in every place ,shape and form in this life,at least have a sentimental streak, and certainly preserve in a charming way their memories of desires and seduction.
Fernando tells me that he remembers how the two of us,both kids in school,were running up and down the stairs and would stop on a landing in between..... and that he had a crush on me.
It certainly brings to my mind something that Balthus would have painted.
How nice to hear over 40+ years later that I was a femme fatale.Sarava!
He also tells me how he was involved in the the coordination of the Comics expos in Sao Paulo and Piracicaba,although he has no recollection of the episode on the beach.....
So here our dialogue dated 2/12/2008.(today)

Marguerita,

faz tempo...

Somente hoje vi seus comentários na internet.

Com nossa foto de 66 e tudo o mais, o que foi muito legal.

Confesso que não me lembro do nosso encontro no Guarujá em 1975, muito menos de qq comentário que possa ter feito a voce.

Minha índole não "casa" com o comentário que voce se lembra de eu ter feito na época. Me perdoe.

Em relação a convida-la para participar do Salão Mackenzie, em 1973, o convite foi para todos os artistas brasileiros, inclusive para voce. A mídia da época foi muito positiva levando nossa mensagem e convite para todos.

Em 1974 e 1975, de forma paralela, ajudei o Salão de Piracicaba. Em 1976, o primeiro salão realmente internacional, fui contratado para coordenar o Salão(embora meu nome não apareça no site do salão)

Em 1974, fui para o Salão de Lucca, Italia, (salão de quadinhos e cinema de animação) representando a Fundação Bienal, ocasião em que conheci todos os principais artistas e profissionais da área, inclusive o Moliterni.

Naquela ocasião conversei com todos sobre o projeto de levar para a Bienal uma grande exposição de quadrinhos e apresentação de filmes de animação. Também conversamos sobre o Salão de Piracicaba.

Não trabalho na área. Minha área é seguros, há tempos...

Mas consegui convencer o Mackenzie a registrar a história do Salão, e ajudei a elaborar um documentário em DVD de 15 mins, que foi muito bem recebido. Espero que voce o tenha visto.

Minha colega de primário, um grande abraço, Fernando

Marguerita,

fiz 58 em 13 janeiro.

Boa essa, 1956 !!! Voce realmente é guardadora de lembranças !

Casei duas vezes, não tenho filho, e estou solteiro, mas não deve ser por muito tempo.

NY ? Nâo, embora o Zelio quisesse que eu fosse com ele, pois vai casar uma filha semana que vem, e vai comemorar os setentão por aí.

Minha vida por aqui é boa, mas a parte profissional está ficando difícil com a globalização. Operadores mundiais chegam com muita grana, muito nome, muita estrutura, e nóis brasileirinhos sifu. Mas continuo na luta bravamente, e vou superar essa avalanche.

Voce continua a desenhar ? Artes ?

F

Vou tomar a maior liberdade !

Vendo o desenho do beijo, me lembro que no primário subíamos, e descíamos as escadas. No meio sempre tinha uma parada. Nesse momento, quando estavamos na parte que dava para ver a parte de baixo, voce se debruçava e eu que estava atrás me debruçava também.

A LIBERDADE: essa sempre era uma hora indescritível na ocasião, porque eu sempre dava uma encoxada em voce !

Êta nóis !

F

Desculpe, escrevi errado. Vi seus desenhos, e continuam bacanas.

O que queria perguntar era o que estava fazendo. Site e blog é um canal

Acabo de ler, e me lembrar, que voce desenhou para apresentação de novela da Rede Globo. (Rebu)

(Marguerita is an artist who is best known as an illustrator, but also works in painting, sculpture, jewelry and comics.)

Agora sei que continuas a mesma, exceto quanto a escultura e jóias, que não sabia.

Seria legal nos encontrarmos novamente, mas agora não vai dar. Tenho que ficar por aqui, cuidar da "lojinha"

F

Velhinho, o escambau !

Sábio !

The First Australians alive Again

Samantha Maiden, Online Political Editor | February 12, 2008

A TRADITIONAL Aboriginal welcoming ceremony that marked the opening of the new Parliament today could become permanent.

For the first time in the Parliament's 107-year history, the ceremony marked the opening of the first parliamentary sitting of the year.

"With this welcome comes a great symbolism: the hope of a united nation, through reconciliation," Ngannawal elder Matilda House told MPs and Senators.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was handed a message stick during the ceremony which told "the story of our coming together" and Liberal leader Brendan Nelson backed the ceremony becoming a permanent feature.
The moving ceremony also touched on the issue of the Stolen Generation, the subject of the historic formal apology
Earlier today, Mr Rudd defended the controversy over his failure to release the text of the planned apology to the stolen generations arguing getting it "right" for indigenous people is his main concern .
"We are dealing with a matter here which goes to how we, as a nation, heal and that is best done if we, as parliament, can act in unanimity on this question," he told ABC Radio today.
"But the core part of making sure this apology is effective is to make sure it is done right and proper with Aboriginal people.
"They are the most important people in this equation today not politicians be it the Government or theOpposition."http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23200332-601,00.html http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23196221-28737,00.html

The Woman d'un Certain Age...Ha!

drawing by marguerita

French Women Don't Get Fat and Do Get Lucky

By Pamela Druckerman
Sunday, February 10, 2008; B02

PARIS

If I have to get old, I want to do it in Paris.

It's not because of the dank weather, the constant personal snubs or a fetish for unpasteurized cheese. It's because, quite frankly, I'd like to keep having sex.

In the United States, my odds would be grim. Through our 40s, we American women manage to arrange romps on a fairly regular basis. But the latest national statistics show that by our 50s, a third of us haven't had sex in the last year. By our 60s, nearly half have gone sexless in the previous year. Once we hit our 70s, most of us might as well hang up an "out of business" sign. (Needless to say, men fare much better.)

So much for the gym-bodied baby boomers who promised to make 60 the new 40, using Botox as an aphrodisiac. Among today's 50-plus women, the problem of sexlessness is as bad or worse than it was for older women two decades ago.

But not in France. Frenchwomen simply don't suffer from the same dramatic, post-40s slide into sexual obsolescence. Just 15 percent of Frenchwomen in their 50s and 27 percent in their 60s haven't had any sex in the past year, according to a 2004 national survey by France's Regional Health Observatory. Another national survey being released next month will report that cohabiting Frenchwomen over 50 are having more sex now than they did in the early 1990s.

Try not to hate them: Frenchwomen don't get fat, and they do get lucky.

The idea that older women are desirable goes right to the top. Before Nicolas Sarkozy hooked up with his new bride, 40-year-old Carla Bruni, a French magazine suggested some matches for the newly divorced president, including 50-ish TV presenters, writers and an extremely buff sailing champion. After all, Sarkozy, 53, had just been dumped by his then 49-year-old wife Cecilia, who had famously obsessed him and who had had no trouble finding other suitors.
This post-menopausal sexiness is palpable here. In the lingerie section of an upscale department store, I recently watched a gray-haired man earnestly inspecting the black lace bra and panties that his similarly aged companion had just picked out. "That's just what's needed," he clucked, handing his credit card to the clerk.
So why are older American women sitting around feeling bad about their necks, while their sisters across the ocean -- craggy necks or not -- are off being seduced?

For starters, Frenchwomen d'un certain âge have much better role models.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020801607_pf.html

There are people who don’t understand the culture,” Jay-Z said.

artwork by marguerita- original for Ariel Dorfman's book cover: The Last Song of Manuel Sendero"
Young said he called his fellow band members before the tour and told them: ''This is all I'm going to do, I won't be doing anything else and I don't want to sing any ... pretty songs; we can only sing about war and politics and the human condition.''
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Film-Berlin-Festival-Young.html?scp=2&sq=neil+young&st=nyt\

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/business/media/08adco.html?em&ex=1202619600&en=32d777f69445bbc2&ei=5087%0A

Rats Sweet and Sour : Chinese New Year

photos by Reuters
In China the rat is beloved.La légende raconte que Bouddha avait invité tous les animaux à venir fêter le Nouvel an avec lui, mais que seuls douze ont répondu à son invitation.
As the legend goes,Boudha invited all the animals to his birthday party.Only twelve showed up.
I love to draw rats and mice.Maybe because they remind me so much of Man and his ways.

Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck

In CliffsNotes on Of Mice and Men, you discover John Steinbeck's parable about what it means to be human. Steinbeck's story of George and Lennie's ambition of owning their own ranch, and the obstacles that stand in the way of that ambition, reveal the nature of dreams, dignity, loneliness, and sacrifice. Ultimately, Lennie, the mentally handicapped giant who makes George's dream of owning his own ranch worthwhile, ironically becomes the greatest obstacle to achieving that dream.`

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/Of-Mice-and-Men-About-the-Novel-A-Brief-Synopsis.id-101,pageNum-6.html

Based on Steinbeck's own experience as a bindle stiff in the 1920s (before the arrival of the Okies he would vividly describe in The Grapes of Wrath), the title is taken from Robert Burns's poem, To a Mouse, which is often quoted as: "The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry." Required reading in many American, Australian, British, New Zealand and Canadian high schools, Of Mice and Men has been a frequent target of censors for what some consider "offensive" and "vulgar" language, and appears on the American Library Association's list of the Most Challenged Books of 21st Century.from Wikipedia

Of Gong,Mallet and Pain: Freedom

Because some lost souls did not lead good lives, the nuns explained, they are agonizingly stuck between this life and the next. So each night, at precisely 8:30, the nuns take turns striking a large gong with a wooden mallet and reciting a “hell-breaking mantra” to release them from their pain.

“When they hear the bell, they get peaceful,” Ms. Sun said.

A tenet of Buddhism is not to kill animals, and sometimes local devotees request that their donations be used to free caged birds or animals. “Everybody likes freedom,” she said. “Nobody wants to be killed.”

Helmut Schmidt and Smoking

Anyone who doesn't read is an idiot," said former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in Hooked on cigarettes, former Chancellor Schmidt nabbed by justice

Berlin (AFP) — Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, rarely seen without a cigarette between his lips, is the subject of court proceedings for having smoked in a public place, despite anti-tobacco laws, a judicial source has told us on Friday.
Mister Schmidt, eighty-nine years old, and his wife Hannelore are the subjects of a preliminary inquiry for "violation of tobacco law" and "assault and battery", following an official complaint filed by the heads of an anti-tobacco association in Wiesbaden (center-west), as explained to Agence France Presse by Hamburg (north) public prosecutor Rüdiger Bagger, confirming information reported in the popular journal Bild.
The legal trouble dates from January first of this year, when Mister Schmidt (Social Democratic Chancellor from 1974 to 1982) was photographed in the act of smoking at a Hamburg theatre, in spite of a new prohibition on smoking in public which had come into force in the city.
Mister Bagger suggested that prosecutions for "assault and battery", provided in the criminal code for a case of "endangering the health of others", could be abandoned in the short term, but recidivism by Schmidt or his wife would subject them to financial penalty.
Of course the Schmidts, man and wife, are famously addicted to cigarettes. A few years back, Mrs. Schmidt propounded that smoking was "good for the brain."

an interview for Die Zeit's weekly magazine LEBEN on Thursday, Jan. 24.

http://www.forces.org/News_Portal/news_viewer.php?id=736

Helmut Schmidt: et L'Amérique de demain et nous, par Daniel Vernet

A 89 ans, l'ancien chancelier allemand Helmut Schmidt est toujours un observateur attentif et écouté. Quand il écrit à la première page de Die Zeit, dont il est un des éditeurs, les ventes de l'hebdomadaire augmentent. La semaine dernière, il adressait une sorte de lettre ouverte aux candidats à l'élection présidentielle américaine - "Qu'est-ce que le monde peut attendre de vous ?" - et leur posait douze questions à propos de leur future politique étrangère éventuelle.

Bien sûr, Helmut Schmidt avait lu les longs articles que les principaux compétiteurs avaient "fait publier sous leur nom" dans la revue Foreign Affairs, mais il n'y avait pas trouvé de réponses convaincantes. Les analystes politiques américains sont eux-mêmes divisés. Les plus proches des républicains pensent comme George W. Bush que la continuité l'emportera sur le changement. Le président américain, qui s'est lancé dans la lecture des biographies de ses prédécesseurs à la Maison Blanche, a utilisé une analogie avec l'époque Truman-Eisenhower, devant quelques invités : "Il croit que, quel qu'il soit, son successeur pourra bien avoir critiqué sa politique pendant la campagne électorale mais qu'il la poursuivra une fois élu", a rapporté George Stephanopoulos, un ancien collaborateur de Bill Clinton.
Pas du tout, semble répliquer John Kornblum, un ancien diplomate, également de l'ère Clinton, les Etats-Unis mèneront une nouvelle politique extérieure "quel que soit le vainqueur", parce que la politique Bush "est très loin de la normalité américaine". Les historiens contestent d'ailleurs la continuité Truman-Eisenhower.

Si, comme Helmut Schmidt, on lit les articles sur la politique étrangère des quatre candidats restés encore en lice à la veille du "Super Tuesday" - Hillary Clinton et Barack Obama chez les démocrates, John McCain et Mitt Romney chez les républicains -, on est frappé par deux constantes. D'abord une critique, ouverte ou voilée, de l'action de George W. Bush. Même John McCain, pourtant partisan de la guerre en Irak, souligne les "erreurs de ces dernières années", l'insuffisance des troupes engagées et les plans "irréalistes".

La seconde constante concerne le leadership américain dans le monde. Les candidats à la Maison Blanche peuvent varier dans leurs définitions, mais tous les quatre louent les Etats-Unis comme une "nation unique" (Mitt Romney), qui "doit guider le monde par les actes et par l'exemple" (Barack Obama). Car "le monde compte sur le leadership américain" (Hillary Clinton), dont la forme est "unique, l'antithèse de l'empire" (John McCain).

Tous plaident, par contraste avec l'actuel président, en faveur d'un renforcement des alliances traditionnelles, car "l'Amérique ne peut pas faire face seule aux menaces de ce siècle et le monde ne peut pas leur faire face sans l'Amérique", écrit Barack Obama. Les deux républicains reprennent l'idée d'une nouvelle communauté des démocraties qui, selon John McCain, ne devrait pas "supplanter l'ONU mais la compléter".
L'Union européenne - mais comment s'en étonner ? - est largement absente alors que les regards américains se tournent vers la Chine. C'est avec elle que les relations bilatérales seront "les plus importantes", si l'on en croit Hillary Clinton.
L'opposition traditionnelle, et simpliste, entre "isolationnistes" et "internationalistes" n'est plus de saison. Aucun candidat ne propose que les Etats-Unis se replient sur eux-mêmes pour se guérir de l'activisme extérieur des dernières années. La prudence est cependant de mise. George W. Bush n'avait-il pas vanté, avant son élection en 2000, les mérites d'une Amérique "modeste" ?

chroniqueinter@lemonde.frhttp://www.lemonde.fr/opinions/article/2008/02/05/l-europe-sans-gloire
_1007565_3232.html



Apropos:

Warum Herr Schmidt ?

From time to time,I read these letters and I do not know if I have to laugh or to cry,given the fact that the the words in the second communication is so true to the letter about the fate of my family.

http://atireugram.blogspot.com/2007/06/die-zeit.html

Apropos :

Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Sets Bad Example by Smoking

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Helmut and Loki -- even their doctors tell them not to stop

Nothing, it seems, can induce former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to quit smoking. Not even the new German law banning tobacco in public buildings. Anti-smoking advocates are not amused and are pressing charges."

Anyone who doesn't read is an idiot," said former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in an interview for Die Zeit's weekly magazine LEBEN on Thursday, Jan. 24.

But however many books the very learned Schmidt might have read, he certainly doesn't seem to be good at reading Germany's new and very visible No Smoking signs

His remark was issued the same week that prosecutors in Hamburg began investigating him for lighting up in the lobby of the Komödie Winterhuder Fährhaus theater just hours after the controversial smoking ban came into force on January 1.

Yet another controversy

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Schmidt in the days when everyone smoked

Hailing from a time when cigarettes were easily the least pernicious of politicans' preferred poisons, Schmidt would never have predicted the impact a quick smoke could have in this health-conscious age.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3089647,00.html

Helmut Schmidt, geboren 1918 in Hamburg, 1953 Mitglied des Deutschen Bundestages, 1969-1974 mehrere Ministerämter, 1974-1982 Bundeskanzler. Helmut Schmidt, born in 1918 in Hamburg, 1953 Member of the German Bundestag, several ministerial posts 1969-1974, 1974-1982 Chancellor. Seither Herausgeber der Wochenzeitung "DIE ZEIT". Since then editor of the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit". Zahlreiche Buchveröffentlichungen, darunter im Siedler Verlag die Bestseller "Eine Strategie für den Westen" (1984), "Menschen und Mächte" (1987), "Die Deutschen und ihre Nachbarn" (1990) und "Weggefährten" (1996). Numerous publications, including settlers in publishing the bestseller "A strategy for the West" (1984), "People and Powers" (1987), "The Germans and their neighbours" (1990) and "companions" (1996).

How Hitler Won Over the German People

Zyg and Mea by marguerita Memories and Present undertake you to sweet and darker pages.....

By Ian Kershaw

There were still many Germans who were skeptical of Hitler when he became chancellor in 1933. But Führer propaganda and military success soon turned him into an idol. The adulation helped make the Third Reich catastrophe possible.
"Today Hitler Is All of Germany." The newspaper headline on Aug. 4, 1934 reflected the vital shift in power that had just taken place. Two days earlier, on the death of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler had lost no time in abolishing the Reich Presidency and having the army swear a personal oath of unconditional obedience to him as "the Führer of the German Reich and People." He was now head of state and supreme commander of the armed forces, as well as head of government and of the monopoly party, the NSDAP. Hitler had total power in Germany, unrestricted by any constitutional constraints. The headline implied even more, however, than the major change in the constellation of power. It suggested an identity of Hitler and the country he ruled, signifying a complete bond between the German people and Hitler.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,531909,00.html

FYI NYTimes:Soul and The American Dream

painting and drawing by marguerita

Reading today's NYTimes story The Presidency :Myth and Reality Combine ,kind of a picture about what we expect from a President.
"We expect competence and smart,but not intellectualism."
Not intellectualism?
"... now we demand a president who cannot only fix our pain but feel it, too."

"Lies and manipulations, the kinds of calculated untruth that are different from myths, have come close to owning the day."

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Measure-of-a-Nation-The-Mythic-Presidency.html
Well,after living here in America, for 32 years ,being brought up with the idea of America the Truthful,the Sincere and Honest Values,I learned by observation and experience that that was all a myth.
The image radiated left in right of a warm,real and humane society,with humanistic goals,has proven to be a mask and a frightening deception,as much as I am still a believer in miracles.
Reading the line about that we do not expect intellectualism,only serves to solidify my conundrum,as here I believe we are in a culture shock that has caused so much strife in the last 200 years in the historical life of our planet.
Neglecting the mind in favor of material gains seems to have been so far a recipe for calamity.
As humans,the "homo sapiens" supposedly is to use it's Mind,Body and Soul to examine his and hers,daily actions,vis a vis the world. An interior monologue,a constant check with it's own conscience and a sense of dimension,a three dimensional view of what reality is in fact.
And this is for each one of us.Rich and Poor.
Young and Old.
Man or Woman.
To observe Nature and work along,watching life at it is minimal details,comparing our needs to our co-existing partners,the animals,birds,fish,plants,the Moon,Sun and Stars.
Understanding that we all share the Air,Water and be humble ,instead of acting out with that myth of conquering or competing with the Earth.
We need to understand that Carpe Diem,the knowledge,the acceptance that Death is our limits,our ruler and landlord.
We are here on a sharing passage of and time spending. Limited and conditioned to many factors,many times beyond our real understanding.
There is a mystery,many unsolved questions about who we are,where we come from and where we go.
Violence and supremacy is certainly not the way to go about.
So, here we arrive at the Mind.
The simple realization that this is reality.
The Earth gives us all we need to survive,on the condition that we maintain and observe a constant respect and care.
We need a certain order to co-exist,as Nature has clearly a system.
Just watch how Day and Night keep happening,as much as Man or Woman may dispute and wonder.
Man or Woman,Black or White or any color or gender will never be able to change that cycle.
We need the basic to survive. Food and Shelter.
Thus a President,a leader per se,should be a guide,with an intellect,to be able t inspire Harmony and Wisdom.
Intellect,is the capacity to think and be able to use Reason.
Denying this or not asking for that quality,is certainly avoiding soul searching, and certainly
a mortal ingredient for continuing and impending disaster.
A repetition of mediocrity and hypocrisy.
And War,Unhappiness and Disaster.
Do not Draw into Conflict,takes a good measure of soul searching and thought.
By the directives of the CEO book,so far we have witnessed a
bloody and terminal path to our co -existence as it has been proven.
So CHANGE,I believe is to look into this obvious alternative.
To accept the real meaning of Life.
A social conscience and a realistic and forceful outlook to be compassionate,mindful and intellectual.
Not in words,but in actions in fact.

Intellect ¹

Definition: The part or faculty of the human soul by which it knows, as distinguished from the power to feel and to will; sometimes, the capacity for higher forms of knowledge, as distinguished from the power to perceive objects in their relations; the power to judge and comprehend; the thinking faculty; the understanding.

intellect ²

Definition: knowledge and intellectual ability; "he reads to improve his mind"; "he has a keen intellect"

intellect ³

Definition: the capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination; "we are told that man is endowed with reason and capable of distinguishing good from evil"

intellect ⁴

Definition: a person who uses the mind creatively

http://www.aaredition.com/13%20Research/1301%20Classical%20Musik%20Creation/12akdm_Music%20and%20Speech/09akdm_theory_Content%20and%20Form.htm