America is not totally retarded, and there is still hope for that nation despite everything that has happened in recent history. Now it is up to Mr. Obama to prove that the hopes the world is putting in him are justified.

• Obama Wins Election
• Obama’s Victory Speech

One thing is for sure: He can not possibly do worse than Mr. Bush did.

Oh and go watch his victory speech. It starts a little slowly, but it gets really good.

Finally. Good riddance, you bastard. Unfortunately, I didn’t get him on the Death pool.

Dear World,

the German government has gone crazy. More specifically, the interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble has gone out of control. For months he has been making more and more demands for stricter and stricter laws to fight the “threat of terrorism”. Our government wants to:

• Use evidence obtained by torture: While he says that German law enforcement may not torture or encourage others to torture, it would “not be responsible” not to use information obtained by such means.
• Build databases about potential terrorists which are to include such data as religion or professional training.
• Expand video surveillance: “At train stations, airports, big streets and places video surveillance is feasible and expedient”.
• Use the army as a security force inside the country. This was planned for the soccer world cup but not implemented until the G8 meeting at Heiligendamm.
• Shoot down hijacked airplanes – which was actually determined to be illegal by the constitutional court. This doesn’t stop them from saying “we’ll do it anyway”.
• Make conspiracy a crime and ban so-called “Gefährdern” (dangerous individuals) from using Internet and mobile phones. He also considers the killing of suspects to be in no violation with basic law: At most it would be a “legal problem”.
• Search private PCs via a government trojan horse – in secret, of course, without any oversight.
• Retain all connection logs of personal communications – telephone calls, text messages, email and so on – for six months, regardless of any suspicions of criminal activity. This law was passed on November 9th, 2007, but has yet to be ratified by the Bundesrat and signed by our president.
• Introduce biometric passports and ID cards, which include fingerprints saved on an RFID chips, and keep all the biometric data in a central database. Biometric passports have been implemented as of Niovember 2007; the central database and the biometric ID cards are still planned.

Germany is the country which should really know better than this. Of all the people in the world, we should be the ones who learned from history. Unfortunately, we haven’t: Not only do our politicians kick our fundamental laws with their feet, the reaction of the German people is to shrug their shoulders and to vote for them again. “I have nothing to hide”, they say and look the other way.

I now know what it must have felt like, back in the early 30s. Of course we won’t get another Nazi regime. Death camps are really bad for PR. Instead we’ll get something more similar to the East German regime: A surveillance and police state. But unlike East Germany, where the system was dictated by the Russians, we’re doing it to ourselves this time. And similar to the Nazi regime, I am pretty sure everybody will claim “we didn’t know anything” afterwards.

Normally, I’d hope for the free, western world to come to our aid. Failing that, I’d pack my things and move out of the country. But what free western world? Those who should be the shining beacon of freedom and democracy are doing even worse things to their own countries. It is a sad state of affairs when China is a shining ray of hope – while China is a dictatorship, conditions there are improving. Everybody else seems to be hell-bent on making things as bad as possible as quickly as feasible.

Am Tag danach: Hier die Artikel zur gestrigen Demonstration.

• ZDF: Heftige Proteste gegen Ãœberwachungspläne
• Spiegel: Tausende protestieren gegen Datenspeicherung
• Tagesschau: Tausende protestieren gegen Ãœberwachungspläne
• Yahoo (via AFP): 10.000 Menschen demonstrieren gegen Vorratsdatenspeicherung und Tausende protestieren bundesweit gegen Vorratsdatenspeicherung
• Yahoo (via AP): Tausende protestieren gegen schärfere Kommunikationsüberwachung

Mehr habe ich nicht gefunden. Recht schwach.

Ich war heute auf der Demonstration gegen die Vorratsdatenspeicherung in Frankfurt. Was soll ich sagen – strömender Regen. Ca 650 Teilnehmer (laut Veranstalter, ist sicher aufgerundet kommt aber ungefähr hin). Mäßige Sprecher – Insbesondere der Kerl von der Piratenpartei muss das Sprechen in der Öffentlichkeit noch üben.

Die Teilnehmer schienen meist sehr jung. Das sah ich mit gemischten Gefühlen – zum einen ist es schön, dass es auch noch jugendliche gibt die sich für Politik interessieren. Auf der anderen Seite befürchte ich dass es bei diesen Leuten einfach die jugendliche Rebellenphase ist. Klar, es waren auch einige in meinem Alter oder älter da – aber einfach nicht genug. Ich hätte mir eine insgesamt bessere Teilnahme gewünscht. Aber angesichts des sehr schlechten Termins und des sehr schlechten Wetters ist bei einem für den Normalbürger so unzugängliches Thema wohl nicht mehr zu machen.

Letzlich war auch die Botschaft der Demo leider nicht eindeutig. Es wurde zu sehr das Thema “Krieg” mit hineingemischt; vor allem auch durch einen Neokommunisten am Ende der Veranstaltung. Das ist auch ein wichtiges Thema, passte aber nicht in die Veranstaltung.

Zusammenfassend bin ich froh dass es die Demo gab (Danke an die Orga) und ich bin erst recht froh dass ich hingegangen bin. Ich wäre auch bei der nächsten wieder dabei. Und dass es weitergehen muss dürfte klar sein: Wenn unsere Regierung aufgrund von 30 Kleinst-Demos ihre Meinung ändert fresse ich den metaphorischen Besen.

Lars is fed up and has begun to campaign against electronic voting machines. This is, in my opinion, a good move, as electronic voting is a serious danger to our democracy. Link in German – Sorry.

When you hear all the current talk about how “islamsits” threaten us by means of “terrorism”, you should be aware that NATO – and thus directly or own, freedom-loving and democratically elected governments, seem to have a history of stirring up trouble at home by conducting terror against their own citizens: It is known as project “Gladio“.

According to Ganser, the secret army was behind waves of attacks in Italy in the 1970s. In Spain, it worked with Franco and may have supported over a 1000 attacks. In Germany, it had standing plans to murder leaders of the Social Democrat party in case of a Soviet invasion. It carried out terrorist actions against President de Gaulle and the Algerian peace plan in France. It seems to have been involved in the assassination of Amilcar Cabral and Eduardo Mondlane, prominent leaders in African liberation in the Portugese colonies. It was involved in the coup against Greek Prime Minister Papandreou and fomented terrorism against the Kurds in Turkey.

This was no accident either, but deliberate policy:

As one of Gladio’s operatives said, “You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”

This reminds me of something Hermann Göring said. Göring was undoubtedly an evil man, but just because he committed crimes against humanity doesn’t mean he was not an intelligent man. He said:

Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. …Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

This is something that every citizen, no matter in what country, should be aware of. Always question the motives of your government. Always ask questions. Never trust those who ask for new powers. If they say it’s for your own good… it’s probably not.

Ten random ideas that would improve current nation states:

1. The human rights are absolute and must never be violated: The universal declaration of human rights must be the basis of all laws and of all actions of the state and its citizens. These human rights must be legally binding, and any law that violates them to any extent must be null and void. All citizens must have the possibility to ask the courts to investigate violations of these fundamental rights; such investigations must be free of charge. Lawmakers found guilty to pass laws that violate or circumvent the basic human rights must be stripped of their position and imprisoned as traitors.
2. Monarchy must be outlawed: There must be no monarchy or nobility, or their equivalent, nor any special rights for them. Constitutional monarchies must be dissolved and turned into true democracies. Democracy is the only acceptable form of government.
3. Bring back secularism: The state must be absolutely secular. Religion must be kept completely out of politics. This ban on religious involvement must be absolute: Prayers at school must be illegal just as it must be illegal for a president of member of parliament to swear an oath by the bible.
4. Stop special treatment for religions: All religious organizations must obey the same rules and laws as all other private organizations. Churches must pay the same taxes as corporations. Under no circumstance must a religious organization be exempt from any laws, regulations, taxes or fees that a non-religious organization must follow. Organizations that promote religion must never be considered as non-profit organizations. All religions must be equal before the state, and the state must not recognize, support, or validate any of them. Freedom of religion must never be valued higher than any other freedoms.
5. Politicians must never enjoy immunity: The people who make up “the state”, its organs, ministries, parliaments, and so on, must never, under any circumstance, be immune to any laws of the nation, nor from international law. All people are equal, and this includes politicians: If a politician commits a crime in his line of office, he must be held responsible.
6. All income of government official must be public: If a person works for the state in any capacity, this person’s sources of income must be known to an accountancy office, to the police, to the press, and to members of the public at any time for the rest of the person’s life as a guard against corruption. Employment contracts of government officials, members of parliament, and so on, must also always be public, even after their terms of office.
7. Equalize taxation: Everybody must pay the same taxes, as measured as a percentage of their income (not profits). This includes all income from any source (labor, capital, gifts, inheritances). Corporations, organizations, and other legal entities must pay the same taxes as everybody else.
8. Stop state subsidies: The state must never gift money or other valuables to private corporations, institutions or individuals.
9. The state must not be in debt: The state must never, under any circumstances, spend more money than it takes in from taxation or other sources of income. The massive debts accumulated by current nations lead to huge interest payments, which causes problems for the state in the long run as a larger and larger percentage of taxation is used to pay those interests. If the state consistently takes in more than it spends, taxes must be lowered. Senselessly wasting tax money must be considered embezzlement/fraud.
10. Insecure voting must be outlawed: Election computers are easy to manipulate and must be outlawed. They can never be trusted to conduct elections. Elections are the basic foundation of a democracy; and they must be safeguarded against abuse. Paper is a tried and true method that is comparatively difficult to manipulate, and at any rate it is possible to verify the results of an election afterwards.

I know that some of these points are more practical than others, and it’s all terribly idealistic. I’ve wanted to include a “self defense” clause for the military, but I know that it’s easy to make any war look like self defense (cf. the War on Terror).

I also wanted to include an “absolute right to privacy”, but in the end I decided that the Human Rights cover that point: Instead, I decided that it would be better to have effective, easily-accessible methods of recourse for the citizens.

In the end, no set of laws will ever create a “perfect nation”. Utopia is impossible. What we really need are not only better laws; we need lawmakers with a conscience and with morals. They seem to be in very short supply these days.