spring2life take2

Westend, Munich

The political orientation of this book shop/meeting point is not really obvious, besides may be that yellow/red no-nuclear-power sticker, but when you read the (German) texts of the posters, it becomes pretty clear that this is one of the rare outlets for leftist ideas. N.B. the communist party is next to inexistent in terms of political influence, and the “Die Linke” left wing party has only limited weight in the western part of Germany, more in the East. But what I noted was the fractur headline “wo die zeit urlaub macht”, translated “where time is on holidays”, demanding to “reeducate Bad Reichenhall”, my hometown.

Now Bad Reichenhall and even more Berchtesgaden were strongholds of NSDAP in the Third Reich, and there definitely are dregs of brown, national-socialist ideas in that area (but where aren’t they), partly also held alive by tourists demanding memorabilia, books about Hitler’s army etc. Also, the barracks are named after a at least contested Reichswehr general, and one of the newer bridges was named Kreta-bridge, which is insensitive or better outright stupid.

Still, I dare to say that Bad Reichenhall is in no more need of reeducation than most other places in Germany.

For that text on the left side of the reeducate poster I found at least an introductory translation: ““No one is to be reproached for coming from the country, but no one ought to turn it into a merit and insist upon it; whoever doesn’t succeed in emancipating himself from the province is exterritorial to education”. Quoted from: Adorno, Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit, l.c., p. 43. Matching, at least in the sense that Bad Reichenhall is well influenced by the rural surroundings.

Ludwigsvorstadt, Munich

When I saw that peace tag, I immediately was reminded of Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece” (here on youtube).

And today my thoughts are with the parents of Trayvon Martin, 17 years old, whose violent death is a tragic memento that peace in our societies is still not guaranteed, that instead racism rises its ugly head in oh too many places – and finds its support in the silence of the masses.

Update: I exchanged the image for a different version without those burned out taillights – it seems I was a bit unconcentrated when posting. The original is under the thumbnail.

Bayerisch Gmain, Bavaria

Martina asked for it – the hydrant, not the nsfw – but Carl admittedly is the source of “bad influence”. This is no Munich hydrant here, following up with one tomorrow. I just had to make a tasteless joke on the U.S. primaries, sorry.

Thumsee, Bavaria

9/11 is a sad anniversary for all humankind. My deepest compassion is with all that have lost a loved one in these tragic events.*

That religion gets abused to justify large scale slaughter was and is nothing new, and naive is everybody who believes that humankind has overcome this stage. That the native country of freedom, human rights and the only superpower then could be hit by such attacks was a tremendous shock for most. That freedom was lost to such a degree in its home country to a department of homeland security is shocking continuously. That justice is defeated gets proven daily not only in Guantanamo but in oh so many countries of the world, only the rationale now is easier. That backlash based on thinnest facts and not even those has cost hundred thousands of innocent and in no way “combattant” lives will continue to breed hate. A sad anniversary indeed.

* I was only spared by a hairbreadth: Our foster son was for a student exchange in Philadelphia and on his way to a New York and WTC visit that day. Only a traffic jam was the reason that his name is not written on the Ground Zero Memorial.

Omišalj, Krk

I am more than happy that Police Chief Jim McDonnell (via conscientious) is not on duty in Omišalj. I am certainly not sure about the artistic value of the image above, but getting detained for it certainly would be a draconic measure. But with long hair and moustache, I might well qualify for a potential terrorist.

Oh America, how have you come down! Once it was an earmark of dictatoric regimes to go after people photographing clearly defined subjects of assumed strategic value – Yugoslavia, from which my current residence in Croatia stems off, was known for such rules. But making an assumed non-artistic value the criterion deciding over the harassment of a photographer is certainly a new quality in the erosion of those very Civil Rights for which the United States of America were rightly admired.

Freilassing, Bavaria

For a given reason it might have been appropriate to photograph those pinstriped pants and leather shoes *descending* the stairs. Taking into account that I took this image several weeks back, I can only state that my augural capacities are not really sufficient.

Omišalj, Krk

What happened in Norway simply leaves me speechless. As Juha I have daughters in the age where they go to summer camps, so I can’t simply push aside that terror. And reminiscences of 9.11. come back, when our foster son was so lucky to be stuck in a traffic jam instead of visiting as planned the twin towers on that day.

What a denial of all values of humanity, what an insane perversion of religion believing that mass murder could be a necessary action. It is frightening to see how close the most adverse ideologies are again in the choice of their means. My heart is with all humans having to mourn the loss of a beloved.

Today’s image was made in Omišalj, in the north of the island of Krk. It is the leading image of a small gallery of black and white images that you can find here. And it’s also the last of this batch of Krk images.

The June wallpapers are here, as usual. This month’s image was made in the ‘Pinakothek der Moderne’ in Munich, which has a wonderful collection of contemporary design, too. And they don’t forbid photography in the museum (without flash of course) which in a certain way reconciled me with the high entrance fee. 10,- € might not be much for the young urban ‘performers’, but it certainly limits your wish to visit the museum if you have to get along with a limited budget, being still in school or apprenticeship. A museum that is only for elite groups in a certain way falls short. But as Bavaria has a right wing government almost since WWII, this certainly is not unintended. Just keep the classes separate…

A poignant reminder about the truth of the Einstein quote “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe” reached me just now: The infamous baby-killer (albeit African ones) company of the seventies, Nestlé, will introduce “BabyNes”, just see this link.

I am just thinking who will replace George Clooney as media vehicle – what else – here, or is he pregnant maybe? Anyhow, Nestlé for sure has calculated the numbers of the high income yet intellectually challenged, that will form the hip-chiq customer basis for this thingie.

Salzburg Cathedral, Austria

The Salzburg cathedral greets all the visitors with this banner, showing a sentence from the Holy Bible’s book of wisdom (9:14). I follow the anti-nuclear movement since 25+ years, but I can’t remember a bishop’s church publicly giving such a firm statement.

A worthy cause – albeit not the strongest image – for my blog post No. 1000, given wordpress’ calculations are correct.

twentyfive years back for the first time earnestly in Tchernobyl, as Three Mile Islands before had only been a feign attack from which nobody had wanted to learn. My deepest sympathy is with all the innocent victims of human hybris.

At the 2007 Documenta in Kassel, the Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei (here is a clip from his TED talk) showed a project called “Fairytale”. Part of this project was not only freedom of travel for 1001 “ordinary Chinese”, whom he had invited to visit Documenta, but also 1001 old Chinese chairs, which first served as utilities for the Chinese visitors and later were sold.

Ai Weiwei was arrested on April 4th under allegiations of “economic crimes”. His state and whereabouts are still unknown, the Chinese authorities give no information. Today saw many protest actions to support him, all over the world Chinese embassies were confronted with chairs.

I have visited China in 2008 for only a short time, and I was deeply impressed both by historic artifacts as well as daily life in modern China. But the human rights are indivisable, freedom of speech is part of it, and it is high time for all governments in the world to acknowledge this.

It’s just a weeks ago, that the time of the cherry blossom has lost it’s exclusively happy associations. It’s a poignant beauty now and probable will be for a long time.

My sympathy is with all the people of Japan, who had, have and will have to suffer from the consequences of those natural disasters plus a man-made catastrophe.

Their sad faith fate exactly reflects the classic principle of our economic system: toil and sweat in the hope of some fractions of more wealth for the masses, the immense profit for a small caste of entrepreneurs and their willing disciples in the corridors of power, and cost and damage again for the people. The Tepco CEO now feels sick, while the Fukushima workers damage risk their health, and probably some AREVA managers calculate the additional profits that might appear on the global market, now that a concurring company is temporarily out of business.

The nice play of the shadows I had only seen from the corner of the eye, and asking the protagonists to repeat it occurred to me only later – there it shows up that I am not a professional.

For this time it’s the last anti-nuclear image I am pestering you with. But then, for me the cause is important (a weak word – of vital importance might be more appropriate) and if the voters in Baden-Württemberg want, Germany might see a change towards a nuclear free future and with it an immense advantage and push in developing processes and goods for a sustainable development in the 21st century and beyond.

It seems that I am already billions years old – taking into account the specialist’s arithmetics that a core meltdown in a nuclear power plant will happen only once in a billion of years.

Returning from my meeting in Ludwigsburg, I was lucky to meet fellow photographer Martin Storz from The Public Eye Blog. It turned out that we have many things in common, sharing the same opinions about nuclear energy being not the smallest common denominator. The venue of our meeting was the green in front of the Staatstheater Stuttgart, where Greenpeace had collected numerous signatures on a banner, that was to be given to the Baden-Württemberg government.

Spending the last days in the transnational meeting of the European project “Energycity”, dealing with prediction methods to calculate the efficiency of energy saving methods and in this way contributing to the reduction of CO₂ emissions, I happened to have a hotel room next to an election rally event hall.

German politics really have been rocked by the disaster of Fukushima, and the currently ruling conservative party has made a desperate attempt to avoid defeat in the state level elections this weekend by turning away from the up to now highly praised nuclear energy. Annoyingly enough, one minister of the goverment has unintentionally de-masked this move as unadulterated election rally theater. For most of the protesters against the continuation of the use of nuclear energy, this however was nothing new. Many of them deal with this topic since decades already and have had to learn that most politicians can’t be trusted in this context. As the financial profit in the nuclear business is so immense, lobbyism up to now had succeeded to talk at least parts of the political forces into pro-nuclear legislation, leaving the profit for the corporations and risk and follow-up costs for the public. It seems that many of the citizen’s don’t want to follow their revered leaders any more.

I simply couldn’t resist

Resist I can however to comment on the results of the U.S. elections. Which is anyhow the best thing to do as I would lack words.

So I close my eyes, ears and mouth and nurture the sensitive and fragile plant of my creativity, trying not to dung it to death with cynicism or pure despair.

On the same construction site as pictured here, the landscape gardeners are now planting trees. In my naivité I had been under the impression that tree nurseries still are local companies, taking into account the low work intensity and the (erroneously assumed) high transportation costs. Obviously I was wrong…

The kickoff meeting for our project (EnerCity, at the moment of this writing in a preliminary stage) took place in the Technical University of Budapest, where we were warmly welcomed by Prof. János Szlávik, Head of Department of Environmental Economics. In his keynote he mentioned just in passing a small detail which still remains in my memory: We sat only 20m away from the place, where the planning for the 1956 revolution took place. And that thought influenced my mind when peering down into the hall where the statues of two former professors seemed to whisper, watched by two faces on the balustrade.

On top of Gellert Hill in Budapest is the Liberty Statue, commemorating the liberation of Hungary from the demons of National Socialism, embodied by german troops and ‘special units’. The translated inscription at the foot of the liberty statue reads “Erected by the grateful Hungarian Nation in memory of the liberating Russian heroes.”

At that time the red army was. with good reason, welcome because in a long bloody war they had defeated the Gerrman troops. That this was the starting point of a long and bloody suppression, culminating in 1956′ (failed) Hungarian Revolution, could not be foreseen then.

You will have noticed that the sidebar now greets you with a kiva.org banner on top. Optical aspects aside – the colors of the ad can be distracting until you enlarge the main post’s photography by clicking on it – I found it high time to extend my private support of kiva.org by advocating it in public.

During my many travels outside of Europe I have seen too much poverty (and photographed) to just sleep well and enjoy my personal wealth. And I have met many many engaged peoply, working hard to improve their living conditions but meeting limits they cannot overcome by themselves. The lack of bank loans at reasonable conditions is one of them.

Microcredits can mitigate this problem, however most of the traditional banks seem to prefer high risk games instead of this hard groundwork. kiva.org steps in here and acts as a broker between lenders and loan seekers. If you are interested, please have a look at their website about all the details.

What is still making me sad is a fact confirmed by everybody with some insight into the microcredit, namely that the average credit risk is lower by dimensions when the loan is given to a woman. Just think of it: men, at least in the income groups where microcredits are requested, are as a species much less reliable partners for a bank than women are. No racism, just sad statistics.

Leaving that aside for the moment, the kiva website offers you a broad spectrum for investing – all over the world, as individual or member of a group, to individuals or collectives. Paying is made easy through PayPal, which according to the kiva FAQ does not collect fees on these transactions. And citizens of the U.S. can deduce donations to kiva.org from their taxes.

I hope I have encouraged some of my readers to do a lot of good even with small amounts.

What has salad to do with Chernobyl, and what the heck has Chernobyl to do with infinity?

For the records: April 26th is the sad anniversary of the atomic catastrophy of Chernobyl. The victims of Chernobyl have not been counted, the true number has never been published, and thanks to this precaution of an inhuman regime, the abusers of nuclear energy still can make profits without limits.

The reason for this catastrophy has not been stupidity, probably more hybris. But utmost stupidity was the reaction of our government(s), trying to soothe use with lies when the fallout was already contaminating country and people. Visible spearhead of their campaign was the wife of the then-chancellor, Hannelore Kohl: She got herself photographed with a salad fresh from the market, in order to demonstrate that everything was under control, vegetables from the fields and gardens were harmless and there was no reason to worry.

Yes, Einstein was right: while infinity of the universe is not yet proven, infinity of the stupidity of certain exponents of the leading castes substantiated 1986 in a salad.