that’s how they call him
I totally forget about this poster: Ten days ago my brother celebrated his birthday in a club in Berlin - and this is a poster informing about the artists of the evening - my brother played as a DJ, too 
Archive for January, 2007
data protection day - What is next?
Yesterday we had the first “day of data protection” in Europe.
I am very interested in this topic for a long time, and I’m wondering if ministers of the interior in Europe or other countries (such as the minister of homeland security) have too much work and too little time to experience that there is life which is not statistically captured by criminal statistics, and that there is not a terrorist living around every next corner or a terroristic gene in all of us.
Ministers of interior are usually somehow tremendous persons, but within their starting careers they turn to paranoid and escapist watchdogs. Since 2001/09/11 it is common practice to see a “unsually serious” and “close” terror threat at least 3-5 times a year. The US “Homeland Security Advisory System” for example informs us that the “threat level” is currently “elevated” or “yellow”.
Every law which shortens our basic rights is justified by the “war against terrorism”, “a matter of inner securiuty policy” or something similar. Though these laws are only successful in very little cases, they are all in all accepted by the majority of the population. By supporting such a pragmatical policy, that even considers to fire off aircrafts that might be hijacked, our democracies are turning bit by bit into police states.
Last year the European Union adopted the „Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament“ which is about the “retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC“ - in a quite undemocratic way. It demands the member states - or at least their internet providers, their telephone companies and mobil radio operators to save connection data for a period of time between 6 months up to 24 months. Germany is going to adopt the directive in summer - a complaint of unconstitutionality is prepared against it - I took part.
The last point I want to mention is maybe not a matter of data protection - but a reason for a “glass government” (as it is called in Germany), and against the development to a “glass citizen”: the German case “Kurnaz“. As it seems, our foreign minister Steinmeier, once boss in the chancellery, refused the American offer to welcome innocent Guantanamo-prisoner Murat Kurnaz back to Germany in 2002. Though it seemed to be clear to everyone that he was innocent, the prisoner had to stay four more years in storied prison Guantanamo - and he even affirms his decision nowadays.
Become active and try at least to see where you are controlled. Terrorism could be even a justification for fascistic systems - and as we all know, totalitarianisms are doubleplusungood.
En el mundo habrá un lugar…
…donde yo no seré.
Last year Santa brought me a cool Gotan Project Lunático concert ticket. I was rejoicingly looking forward to watching the concert with Daniel, Christina and Mimi, but unfortunately I got to know that my Lithuanian exam is on 2007/02/05’s early morning - the concert is on the evening before. It is impossible for me to go from Berlin to Münster during the night and be mentally able to write my lietuviškas egzaminas somehow successfully.
So, if you want my ticket - check ebay
The introducing line “En el mundo habrá un lugar” is the beginning of Gotan Project’s “Diferente”. It means : “there is a place on this world” and “dondé yo no seré”, some vocabulary relicts of my Spanish means “where I won’t be”.
Planet Holbach
Yesterday I set up a new site on our family-server: Planet Holbach
A planet is a feed reader, that downloads news feeds of different blogs and puts everything together on one site. Actually there are my siblings’ (Christina and Daniel) blogs and a random picture of murphy.
Back in Münster
After a long absence, I’m again back in Münster, ready to swot for my exams. In addition to this I’ve chosen to have two presentations in political science just in the big time of memorising before my exams. One presentation is about development politics - the other one discusses the topic of the development of federalism in Germany. So, a lot of work has to be done.
Fortunately my brother Daniel has already written about our time in Vienna (in contrast to my sister Christina, who doesn’t use her fancy new blog, which took a lot of time).
So, actually I only have to illustrate his small story:
- On New Year’s Eve Thomas got a ‘at home’ haircut [by my sister, Christina] (our real intention was to do a mullet… maybe next time)
- I [my brother, chef de cuisine!] cooked on two evenings (cheese fondue on one evening and duck in red curry on the other). This is something I really missed and greatly enjoyed,
- We’ve been kart driving in Vienna’s Prater,
In addition to this, there are some other shots that have to be shown:
- My brother turned out to be a fascinating photo model
When we spent New Year’s Eve in Christina’s, I wanted to start a smal photo project by taking a photos of us from a static point of view in a specific interval of time, showing the development of the evening. But unfortunately I was not able to manage to do enough shots for a tiny movie - maybe next time, but there are still some nice photos left:
