Sunday, February 27, 2011

How Do You Know When Cutting Becomes An Addiction

actor Martin Niemöller as the intra

Martin Niemöller in an act of the World Council of Churches
in September 1954.

(Photo © John Dominis / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images)

recently fell into the hands of the passer, a friend of collecting curiosities, a "gate" or pass a conference of the German Lutheran pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller in Heldelberg, a green piece of paper off. The talk took place on June 21, 1947, and does not specify on which it relates. And since it is so, a curiosity (which in principle has minimal interest to a curious person), gave him to find out who the character in question. AND seems that his biography deserves to be disclosed, it is somehow a test of the relativity of the "historical truths" when they claim to be absolute, or a way to see the inside story, more or less as defined by Miguel de Unamuno .


Born in Lippstadt, a medium city of Westphalia, the Jan. 14, 1892, this church died in Wiesbaden (Hesse) on March 6, 1984. After graduating as an officer-cadet at the Imperial German Navy, actively participated in the First World War, and was even awarded the Iron Cross first class, as first officer of a submarine which counted among his achievements the collapse of thirty-five vessels, although it one of these dips, which took place on January 25, 1917, put a burden of conscience that then it would be unbearable: "It marked a point of no return my life, and that opened my eyes to the absolute impossibility of a moral universe, "commented biographer Jay Winter, Jay and Blaine Baggett [1] . The war ended, however, as commander of another submarine, the U-67, that three ships scuttled allies.

The submarine U-67, under whose command was Martin Niemöller

end of First World War. Over


that conflict, in which Germany was defeated very badly digested, reflections Niemöller led to study theology at the seminary of the University of Münster, and in 1924 was ordained pastor of the Lutheran Church. Commissioned in 1931 to a parish on the outskirts of Berlin, sympathized with Nazism, was even a member of the Freikorps ('Bodies Franks' autonomous militias fighting the Nazis resumed he had created the Frederick II of Prussia in eighteenth century, during the Seven Years War, which used to defend the German borders to a hypothetical Red Army attack) and complied with anti-Semitic nationalism of Hitler. [2]

At the time of their scores
with Nazism.


However, when in 1933 the Nazis implemented the Gleichschaltung ('sync') to impose totalitarian control and created the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs in order to control the Church and place them Arierparagraph ('Aryan paragraph'), which excludes any citizen of Jewish descent, Niemöller decided to oppose such a clause and founded in May 1934, another Lutheran pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) and the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968), the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church), whose purpose was to serve " not the German people or history, but to the sovereign word of God, "which rejected the submission of the Church to the State.

At the same time, confessing broke all ties with the German Evangelical Church, which continued faithful to the Nazi regime.
The new church was subject to public vilification and persecution, and July 1, 1937 Martin Niemöller was arrested by the Gestapo, which was time he had "pinched" his phone, "charged with" treason against the state and the Party "and sentenced in March 1938 to seven months in prison, which already had served, to deprive him of liberty, was arrested again by the Gestapo and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and in 1941, Dachau, where he remained until he was liberated by U.S. troops on May 5, 1945. When I was in Dachau her young daughter, Jutta, died of diphtheria, his eldest son died fighting in Pomerania and his other son was taken prisoner by the Red Army.

has never been known very well how Martin Niemöller fell out with Hitler, regardless of the affairs of the Church. In fact, he himself confessed in June 1945, during a press conference in Naples, who "had never fought with Hitler on political issues, but only for religious reasons" (sung facts: in 1931 he proclaimed from the pulpit that Germany needed a Führer and spread the views of Hitler on race and nationality, and when Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations in October 1933, Niemöller was sent a congratulatory telegram.) At that same press conference said, without blushing, that in 1939, after his arrest, had offered as a fighter for the German Navy.

Niemöller represented among the swastika and the cross
on the cover of an issue of Time .


These public statements, of course, made him suspect in the eyes of the victors of the war, and when he tried to visit Britain unleashed a campaign against him, which took even the Archdeacon of Lancaster, who stated that "the visit of the pastor at this time can not be more damaging." Yes, that visited on the other hand, no problems, the Soviet Union (Years later, in 1967, would be honored with the Lenin Prize for his work for peace, in 1971 he was awarded, for the same reason, the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany). Built

after release to the peace movement, presided over the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau (1947-1961) and starred in a world tour to acknowledge the collective guilt for the Nazi persecution and crimes against humanity committed in the name of German Evangelical Church: his book Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis ("Stuttgart Confession of guilt ', written antre 1946 and 1947) contains his reflections on this issue. He also chaired the World Council of Churches.


With his first wife, Else, in 1961,
shortly before she died in a traffic accident
and resulting
moderately wounded
on 7 August of that year.


As peace was very active in the struggle for nuclear disarmament, having considered immoral bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1959 some strong statements against the military took him back to court. Later he led the German Movement for Peace, where he openly opposed the Vietnam War in 1965 and en pleno conflicto viajó a Vietnam del Norte y se entrevistó con el presidente comunista Hồ Chí Minh, lo cual levantó una fuerte polémica, sobre todo cuando comentó que “está claro que el presidente de Vietnam del Norte no es un fanático, sino una persona con mucha determinación y un hombre poderoso, pero con capacidad para escuchar a los demás, algo poco frecuente en una persona de su posición”.

Pese a su gran personalidad y sus fuertes convicciones, que lo enfrentaron a políticos de talla, nunca perdió su característico sentido del humor. En 1982, durante la celebración de sus 90 años, dijo que había comenzado su carrera política as an ultraconservative who wanted the return of the Kaiser-monarchist always said, "but had become a revolutionary:" If I live to be 100, he added, may end up being an anarchist. "


In 1946, he wrote the poem reproduced below, based on the sermon on the occasion of Easter that year ("What would Jesus Christ said?") And became very popular, although he hesitated for a long time of his own and some attributed it to Bertolt Brecht, his wife Sybille demonstrations after his death, and investigations that would respect Harold Marcuse [3] -one of the greatest researchers work-Niemöller, however, dispelled the doubts. The following is one of several versions circulating of this poem:


When the Nazis came for the Communists,

kept silent,

because I wasn'ta communist.

jailed
When social democrats, I remained silent

,

because I wasn'ta Social Democrat.


When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak

,
Porque yo no era
sindicalista.


Cuando vinieron a llevarse a los Judíos,

no protests,
porque yo no era
Judio.


Cuando vinieron a buscarme, no habia nadie

más que pudiera protestar.


[When the Nazis came for the communists, / I did not speak / I was not a Communist. / / When they came for the Socialists, / I did not speak / I was not a social democrat. / / When they came for the trade unionists, / I did not speak out / I was not a trade unionist. / / When they came for the Jews, / I do not have protestiert; / ich war ja kein Jude. / / Als sie mich Holten, / gab's keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.]

However, there are other versions, as can be heard here .


Niemöller the American Chemistry Nobel
Linus Pauling and his second wife, Sibylle, in 1983,
few months before his death.


Martin Niemöller was, therefore, a controversial figure, which moved at any time between their attachment to German nationalism, deeply monarchist, his love-hate relationship with Nazism (Hitler wanted rebuild the lost empire) and his commitment to peace, probably the result of a not very disguised need for catharsis. Characteristics that have defined many biographies, especially of supporting actors on the stage of history.


[1] Jay Winter, Jay and Blaine Baggett: 1914-18: The Gea r t War and the Shaping of the 20th Century. London, BBC Books & New York, Penguin Books, 1996.
[2] See the study by Robert Michael, "Theological Myth, German Antisemitism, and the Holocaust: The Case of Martin Niemoeller" in Holocaust Genocide Studies , Oxford, 1987, 2 (1), pp. 105-122. (This article can be downloaded in full, by subscription, via the link http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/1/105.full.pdf.)

[3] See http://www .history.ucsb.edu / faculty / Marcus / niem.htm.


Monday, February 21, 2011

Tajemnice Wojny Swiatowej

((NO COMMENT))

© Forges, in El Pais, Madrid, February 21, 2011.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

My Daughter Wants A Brazilian

Liberté, égalité, Fraternité? ... Sarkozyté! We are all multilingual

Entry to the town of Ciboure (left of picture)
on the bridge over the Charles de Gaulle Nivelle River.
On the right, Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

(Photo: Albert Lazaro Tinaut)

Ciboure (Ziburu in Basque) is a small village separated by the river Nivelle (Ur Ertsi in Basque, whose waters come from lands of Navarre) of other largest and best known: Saint-Jean-de-Luz (Donibane Lohizune), with which it shares a small railway station and river port. To pass from one to the other must cross the river with a boat (usually in a boat-ferry service for passengers) or a short walk, cross the river by the bridge Charles de Gaulle of the road D 810 ( a branch -named there- avenue Jean Jaurès the main road that links Paris to Hendaye and Irun international bridge) and down towards the sea on the other side.

The passerby took a recent trip to San Sebastian to visit these two towns on the French side of Euskal Herria [1] . Enjoyed peace first winter in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, where she ate splendidly, and took the early afternoon, before embarking on the return trip to San Sebastian to shop around Ciboure, whose input had installed a large amusement park in which the children seemed enjoy leisure, sweets and cotton candy that is known as barbe à potato.

This time is not going to describe such beautiful places, but take the opportunity to say that in Ciboure born in 1875 the composer Maurice Ravel, the famous and magnificent Boléro (so misunderstood many times.) Will have a little adventure, one of those experiences that make sense, despite everything, life of the traveler.

The church of Saint Vincent and the
Croix blanche in Ciboure.

(Photo: Albert Lazaro Tinaut)

With his camera always ready to capture the unusual, ephemeral and what catches your eye, the pedestrian walked past the church of Saint Vincent (with its "White Cross", step one of the branches of the Way Santiago) and entered the Rue Pocalette, parallel to the promenade that follows the river bank. He made several shots and details of the facades of these beautiful houses that characterize the Basque lands, with cheerfully painted timber (blue, green, scarlet ...) and carefree and yet what was offered to his eyes, was surprised at the mouth of that street by three gendarmes who immediately surrounded him and asked, point-blank, what was photographed.

"Pardon, monsieur , but on the street you passed is forbidden to take photographs. Show me the clichés .


"I have not seen any sign that indicated," said the bystander, who often have much aplomb in such cases, it has gone through similar experiences in countries under totalitarian regimes. It was assumed that it was not the case in France, so that nothing should be feared.


the policeman was watching the images on the camera screen and forced the passer to delete some, which he did you weigh wrong, sorry had not been planted now so capricious decision to a nobody in uniform. Sometimes it costs a bit hot to react.


One of the few photos of the rue Pocalette
managed to save the passer.

(Photo: Albert Lazaro Tinaut)

-A ID, please ... (pièce d'identité is said in French, to the surprise of outsiders, who would appear to France's identity can be broken).

- I can know what this is?

"Nothing, monsieur , it's just a routine check.


The policeman who had taken the identity of the passer-by walked away, connected to your radio to some mysterious place and conveyed to his mysterious interlocutor also suspect data, which meanwhile was guarded by his other two companions. Farther along the waterfront, along the river, were two mobile vans and six or seven policemen.

At one point, the data transmitting approached bystander and asked what was the enigmatic abbreviation "c /" preceding the name of the street where you live.

-means rue , monsieur.

"Ah, le lime ..." sighed reassured after having displayed his great anglais, and retraced his steps.


The mouth of the river Nivelle
from Ciboure docks (where the police were stationed

with their vans). On the right,
lighthouse Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

(Photo: Albert Lazaro Tinaut)


One of the soldiers who retained the passer (but not get their hands on at any time, had just missed it!) Began to interrogate him. He was struck by the suspect as fluently speak French and asked him what was owed. Was the suspect lived in France? No? étonnant. .. Instead of answering, the suspect blurted, ironic (always in fluent French, of course):

"There are other languages \u200b\u200bthat I speak better.


- Do you speak Basque? -Was beginning to glimpse the shots where they were going.

-No.


"But do you understand?


"Why do you want to know these things, whether it is a routine check, as you say.

-obey orders, M. .

A typical panier à salade
('bowl
'), as they are popularly known

mobile vans of the French Gendarmerie.

(Photo: Collection CHARLYDESIGN93)

not know why (or maybe yes), the passerby happened to him over the head other times I had heard and read that sentence: Nazis executing following orders, Communist agents always obeyed orders, the killers of the bloodiest dictatorships defended themselves in court with the same statement and trying to pass the accountability of their atrocities to higher authorities. Decided cause:

"If you question me, do things properly: take me to the station, put me in contact with a English diplomat to provide a lawyer and I know my situation ...


"But ... M. , please do not exaggerate ...


"Hey, gendarme - the passer and did not seem a M. : no more good manners and formalities it was time! - , if someone exaggerates and ride the chicken ( in a fromage fait tout , we say in French), is you.

- Be careful what you say, monsieur !

"Listen, I am a free citizen and honest and I think being in a free country ...


"No doubt, but in the present circumstances ... know what I mean ... aliens ...


Ay what he said! The passerby would not let him finish the sentence, so he does not know how I would finish it, or cares.


- I'm an alien! I am a European citizen and I am chez moi (ie at home), you know what I mean? Or is that France has been discharged from the EU and I have not heard, gendarme?


Saint-Jean-de-Luz from Ciboure.
(Photo, Albert Lazaro Tinaut)

Transient somewhat feigned indignation and contempt by uttering the word gendarme, separating the syllables a little, but the truth is beginning to have fun. The officer hesitated, not knowing what to say, felt helpless in spite of the weapons that hung from his waist.


His companion, who had remained silent, touched his shoulder to reassure him, and the third returned to his radio and asked who played the man she had been nervous to write down all the parentage of a passer, which made in a small notebook.


"Well, what can you tell me what happens, gendarmes? Because at this rate I'm going to miss the train.


"No, do not worry, M. . We have already said that it is a routine check, "replied the radiotelephone.


- Bonjour, the routine ...! (rutuina ... Well go!)-Once again, the pedestrian could not avoid the provocative irony.

"No we do not reproach ... is ... is simply that on that street whose house is a minister," he added, lowering his voice (maybe it should be understood as the "minister" in women, given that a senior member of the French government, a woman she was mayor of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, as ascertained after the passer on the Internet) -. In France the law prohibits photographing any public building, "continued the policeman in question, in a conciliatory tone: a municipality, a Prefecture, a train station ... I tell you to take this into account. We are here for something ( pour quelque chose), Understand them.


Detail of a facade Ciboure.
(Photo: Albert Lazaro Tinaut)

The house of a minister, male or female (public persona), proved to be a public building, with the peculiarity that there was no indication that special status.

-Note, and thank you very much, monsieur said he had jotted down thoroughly the data on the card (do not know if they even copied the picture ...), as he returned to his transient identity.

"For this part can take clichés of all you want," added the radiotelephone forced a smile and showing with a sweeping gesture your right hand side of the river waterfront. The pedestrian was about to ask them to put it to portray, but declined, preferring to be more Provice the rude and turn our back to go his way. This is what in Spain is popularly said "goodbye to the French" and the French say "filer à l'anglaise " (scoot to the English).

railway station Saint-Jean-de-Luz - Ciboure.
(Photo: Albert Lazaro Tinaut)

had been an interesting experience especially to check that it is said that the French Presidential Republic has become a police state since Monsieur Nicolas Sarkozy (Sarko for the populace) work at the helm and "engineer" at a time. In the 70's of last century, the passer-bearded and denim clothing, to whom it happens! - Had been detained arbitrarily in the north of Argentina (especially in the airport of Resistance, a name that already brings them in Chaco province) and subjected to summary trial almost an immense military would not have fit in a closet with two bodies, and not let go until the very slow telephone with a center Buenos Aires safety assured him that there were no suspects in its name or its characteristics, and also stopped briefly in Esztergom, north of communist Hungary, having witnessed a street fight. After the Basque-French experience is formed in the mind, by a curious association of ideas, a new and absurd toponym irónicopolítico: Soviet Republic Sarkozyana (RSS).


You go carefully, because the borders still exist in the Europe of love and I can not so disjointed as ever. In Irun it clearly said the passerby, the alleged disappearance of physical boundaries hoped that, somehow, the establishment of something like this utopian Republic of Bidasoa with naively dreamed Pio Baroja, "a republic without priests, without dogmas that plague us, no flies and no police," as he recalled his nephew, Pius Caro Baroja, during the opening in the center of the widening iruña the monument to the great author of the so-called Generation 98 (such as enemy he honors) [2] to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 2006. But that also was a utopian dream: The relationships between the populations on both sides of the river Bidasoa are virtually non-existent, and attempts to organize joint events have almost always failed.


Details monument in Piazza Pio Baroja Zabaltza of Irun, Spain artist
work of Sebastian Miranda, opened in 2006.

(Photo: Albert Lazaro Tinaut)

the Pyrenees not only separate the Iberian peninsula from the rest of Europe, not just the Alps separate two concepts of Europe, not only divided the waters of the Rhine the territories of France and Germany. What most separates Europeans from either state is the lack of will: Yes this is common!



[1] The name, in Basque, of what is known as the Basque Castilian, ie the European-documented since the sixteenth century, divided between French and English states, which reveal the culture and Basque language.
[2] Baroja was expressed by the mouth of one of his most famous characters, the sailor autobiographer Shanti Andia: "To me, truth, glory excites me. The glory is not for the rainy countries, have a statue on the Mediterranean, a city of Andalusia, Valencia and the Italian border, OK, but what can I do if I prize this book up a statue in Luzaro? Is being constantly receiving rain in the back? No, no, I am very rheumatic and not in effigy, I'd be so in the open. "

Do click on pictures to enlarge.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Is It Safe To Vacationin Kenya At This Time





Transient recently read an interesting article by Mario Wandruszka (1911-2004), who was a professor at the University of Salzburg, entitled "L'uomo multilingual" [1 ] , and although some things he says seem obvious, perhaps not be so. Why transcribe sees fit, translated, some paragraphs of text. About


use language, languages, as a working tool, we are generally aware of what it means to customize the language, the "contagion" that identify a person, a small group or a writer. At the same time, we fear the terrible traps of so-called "false friends", to which Professor Wandruszka refers to the end point chosen.

Without further ado, here are some of the considerations of this prestigious Austrian civil law.

Language, this very human faculty we have to express in words our desires, feelings, thoughts, our will, the world around us and what we have internalized that we do not acquire language once and for all in the first childhood as a unique language, homogeneous and definite. Spoken language, ie the cultural varieties used by our mother and other relatives, so Grandma reads to the child or the child, television, more and more invasive, local variants and social learning from kindergarten, are only routing to a multilingualism that increasingly characterize written language you learn in school, literary and poetic language, national language, state, bureaucracy, politics, journalism, all the languages \u200b\u200bof modern science sector and the most advanced technologies, with their jargons and slangs
, all talk of everyday life in perpetual motion.

Cyanotype-spiral, Jonathan A Lewis.
(© 2008)


In this regard, and to varying degrees, we are all multilingual and within the scope of our mother tongue. This multilingualism fundamental whether individual as if it is collective, from the beginning has three characteristics that many linguists-be-forgotten Chomskyans Saussurian or even despise its skeletal outline.


- The understanding of speech than usual, thoroughly and in a thousand ways, both our faculty of reproduction and production. Each of us only able to play or produce a tiny fraction of all the sounds and words, of all shapes and figures of speech we mean when we hear or read.


- Obviously, our multilingualism is imperfect, necessarily incomplete. Imperfection is a constitutive element of human language itself, the assumption of any creative process of any development, change, renewal, enrichment of languages, which have much to do loans from one to another language.


- The ability to learn and use (always imperfectly) different languages \u200b\u200balways drives us to produce, make noise or interpretations and, therefore, cause countless hybrids (which in German is called Sprachmischungen ), a universal phenomenon already referred to a hundred years ago Hugo Schuchardt and Hermann Paul. [2]

Uriel Weinreich [3] with his work Languages \u200b\u200bin Contact (1953), we are accustomed to speak of "contact languages," a concept to consider rather clumsy because, really, does not say what it is: the billiard balls also come into contact. It is not just contact, in fact it is spread, collusion between languages: it is their interaction and interpretation. This has led, among other things, in all European languages, the common denominator massive Greco-Roman origin, thousands of words, prefixes, suffixes, phrases and expressions, metaphors that recognize the common heritage from one language to another using the phonetic and morphological changes that wins each. It is a genuine European linguistic community that expands and intensifies every day with the very recent scientific and technological terminology.

We need only open any newspaper writing in one of our languages \u200b\u200band a red pencil to underline all the "European" Greco-Latin we find on one page to realize the critical importance by quantity and quality of this community European language, effective and increasingly active. [...]

The result of all this is that our languages \u200b\u200bare increasingly resemble. This same phenomenon of linguistic convergence is observed anywhere in Europe that some are quick to call "post."

is, unfortunately, a convergence not only imperfect, but also whimsical and paradoxical, because next to many European terms identical meaning in different languages, real friends of all confidence-pan, we find the abominable " false friends ", produced by many ups and downs and historical contingencies. What in German we say die Signature, no signature is printed on paper, but the company; der Statist is not the man of State (which in German would der Staats-mann ), but the helper (in a play, or an extra in a movie.) The English word l argo in Italian means' wide ', and the Italian verb out accounts for Castilian' up ', a successo, in Italian, is equivalent to our' success', and great In English, Castilian has no meaning of 'cool', but of 'jovial', 'happy', 'friendly'. The same happens between the Scandinavian and Slavic languages.



Our languages \u200b\u200bdo not respond to logical-mathematical system devised by some peculiar Europeans and Americans. False friends, on the one hand, and semantic overlaps the other, so common in our language (ie a European term, international, along with a word "indigenous" - by it were - roughly equivalent, although it has a slightly different stylistic value), show otherwise.

There you go, then, warily. If an Italian tells you that there donkey in food, to know that it is butter, if one speaks French voler , refers to theft, not the flight, if you propose a Swedish kaka or dessert with tea, you know that offers you a piece of cake, for a Portuguese one nose a hill, and in Czech hours means 'mountain' ...


The "false friends", as he said the passer at the beginning and explains very well the teacher Wandruszka are traps, traps that can easily fall and foster misunderstandings, sometimes funny, but sometimes unpleasant. And needless to say we are one of the nightmares of the translators. The press, with the supposed guise of "emergency" does a disservice to the quality of language, in which the "false friends" - especially from Anglo - is slip with the ease of air through a window not closed.

[1] Mario Wandruszka: "L'uomo multilingual" in Aspetti metodologici e nello studio of Multilingualism teorici nei territori dell'Alpe-Adria. Atti of the Convegno Internazionale, Udine, 12-14 ottobre 1989 . Testi di raccolti to cure Moñai Liliana Spinozzi. Tricesimo (Udine), Aviani Editore & Consorzio per la Costituzione e sviluppo degli Insegnamenti what universitari, 1990, pp. 11-20.

[2] Hugo Schuchardt (1842-1927) was an Austrian comparative linguist who specialized in Romance languages \u200b\u200band Creole, and was also interested in the Basque language (one of his works is entitled, precisely, Primitiae Lingvae Vasconum , 1923). Hermann Paul (1846-1921) was a linguist and lexicographer German among his works are Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte ('Principles of the history of language', 1880) and the German translation of the Finnish epic Kalevala (1885), carried out during a long stay in Helsinki.

[3] Uriel Weinreich (1926-1967), a linguist, an American Jew born in Vilnius (now capital of Lithuania), which specialized in the language of their ancestors asquenazís yiddish, established in the book cited the concept of interlanguage.


With thanks to Professor Pietro U. Dini, who provided the passer
text Mario Wandruszka. Do


Click on images to enlarge.