After a great quantity of anxiety, I cast my first vote for the Linke Partei in the European elections around the early afternoon yesterday.
Since I had expected to vote Green until the last moment, it was a bit of a shock. In the end, what determined my vote was the enduring disgust with the treatment of Spain and Greece under the austerity regime, and the refusal of any major party to address it with conviction and to my satisfaction. Secondly, a fleeting mention in an article that in the Europe-wide debate for the next President of the European Commission, only the Linke-allied candidate stated that he was not in favour of the sanctions-happy state of diplomacy with Russia.
It felt like a wild decision, and at the hall I was so anxious if I had cast the right vote that it felt like my hand would begin to tremble as I marked the right circle.
*
Still, the mistake I did make was not to attend to the last days of the Tempelhof Airfield discussion. Being taken off guard by the two initiatives on the ballot, I thought that the two of them were intending to maintain a building-free Tempelhof, and that the 100% Tempelhof Field initiative was merely a more purist alternative. So I marked 'Yes' on both. In fact the second initiative was put forth by the Berlin Senate, enabling the building of residences along the perimeter of the airfield, and if it achieved a quorum then it would invalidate the other initiative. (I think.) The thing is that the 100% Tempelhof Field initiative fortunately won, and the senate's initiative failed to attract enough votes to pass the quorum. But as an individual voter with a duty to be informed, of course, I feel like a numpty.
*
Warning: Partisan commentary ahead, painted in very broad strokes.
In general, the European election results are dispiriting, but these were largely anticipated and if ~62% of eligible citizens did not use their franchise, then we have scanty reason to whimper at the embarrassment we are turning into in the eyes of the world. (Maybe the Nobel Peace Prize is a fateful burden, like the albatross.) As for France, I'm still so mad at Prime Minister Manuel Valls's remarks about the Roma that I have little pity for the Socialists regarding their defeat by the Front National and any fear that the French political elite in general might appear racist by extension.
Regarding Ukip and AfD, I think they're perfect 'I'm not a racist, I swear,' franchises for those with enough self-awareness to fear that their antediluvian views are not fitting for this age.
At least the relevance of the European Union might be kept minimal, as it has been believed to be for years, and we can assuage the fears of Ukipers and LePeners that the EU is some kind of hyperintelligent hypermachine for the efficient enslavement of the rural fringe.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Cinematic 'Twisters' in the Boston Harbour
This evening I left the computer, for a brief while, then was 'hooked' on a film that my parents were watching.
While we were in Canada, the American channel TBS would offer films in which rattlesnakes settled a town despite the efforts of Harry Hamlin, limestone crumbled into great sinkholes in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and Tommy Lee Jones ended a lava eruption through the might of explosives.
Generally I turned away whenever anybody died.
On German TV, there are evidently thrillers, too: windstorms stretching west to east and flooding Las Vegas with desert sand, grasshoppers who ate flesh, supervolcanoes emerging from the entirety of Yellowstone National Park, and killer bees in a loftier film with Gabriel Byrne.
***
In any case, this time the film investigated the likelihood that a volcanic eruption might trigger a disruption in the upper atmosphere, firing ozone up where it freezes and forms aggregate rocks with carbon dioxide, maybe, and then sucking them down again in waterspouts that end up approaching the Boston Harbour.
The waterspouts fling off the boulders as they twirl. These thrust through the air as if fired from a rocket launcher, to flatten Bostonians like flies or tip them over like ninepins. — The idea of 'amusing' deaths wasn't all that amusing, but then the level of plausibility was kept firmly in the fictional realm in any case. — Rather than resting idle on the ground (wafting a vapour) after their feats, and to heighten interest, these earth-meteors are then liable to be tempted by the higher air pressure into blasting athwart.
A few things were striking.
While we were in Canada, the American channel TBS would offer films in which rattlesnakes settled a town despite the efforts of Harry Hamlin, limestone crumbled into great sinkholes in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and Tommy Lee Jones ended a lava eruption through the might of explosives.
Generally I turned away whenever anybody died.
On German TV, there are evidently thrillers, too: windstorms stretching west to east and flooding Las Vegas with desert sand, grasshoppers who ate flesh, supervolcanoes emerging from the entirety of Yellowstone National Park, and killer bees in a loftier film with Gabriel Byrne.
***
In any case, this time the film investigated the likelihood that a volcanic eruption might trigger a disruption in the upper atmosphere, firing ozone up where it freezes and forms aggregate rocks with carbon dioxide, maybe, and then sucking them down again in waterspouts that end up approaching the Boston Harbour.
The waterspouts fling off the boulders as they twirl. These thrust through the air as if fired from a rocket launcher, to flatten Bostonians like flies or tip them over like ninepins. — The idea of 'amusing' deaths wasn't all that amusing, but then the level of plausibility was kept firmly in the fictional realm in any case. — Rather than resting idle on the ground (wafting a vapour) after their feats, and to heighten interest, these earth-meteors are then liable to be tempted by the higher air pressure into blasting athwart.
A few things were striking.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
