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“I’m the original Ma Ying-jeou, I have my own style, I’m going my own way.“
“我是正规版的马英九，我会有我自己的风格，我会走自己的路！“
Ma Ying-jeou, telling what he thinks of the allegation that he is a fake Chiang Ching-kuo (山寨版蒋经国), on a press conference, May 19.
JR was thinking of him as a shanzhai Chiang Kai-shek.
Bremen – Granted, there is something nice about a Kirchentag – something civic, or sort of civic. The market of opportunities – a platform for groups, initiatives and organisations from both church and society who are working for the benefit of the community to present their work in a creative way – suggests that, and so does the way the participants from Bremen, Germany, and abroad organize the event by themselves to quite an extent. It looks as if it’s as much bottom-up as it is top-down. Bremen is hosting it this year.
The square north of the Central Railway Station seems to be the center of it. But then, maybe there are many such centers. Anyway, it’s full of outside broadcast vans from everywhere, and and a big band is playing some up-with-people kind of music. And a lady hands me a leaflet – “for a German policy of peace”, she says. I can’t resist asking: “why German in particular?” She’s apparently puzzled for a moment. “Oh, well, because we have no… of course it will have to be a European policy. But it will have to start here.”
She’s not to blame. The leaflet itself calls for a demonstration in support of a German policy of peace. And Eugen Drewermann, a theologian and psychologist, will speak on a rally in the city, on Saturday. There’s something about capitalism on the leaflet, too. And a tank around it, with two soldiers taking aim at something.
Oh, Germany, my Lutheran native land! You are the cradle of protestantism, religious conscience, of conscience per se, and of a policy of peace!
If any students had tried to talk about the Kirchentag during recent days, I’d have had a damper in place: some 100,000 guests arrive in a city of 550,000 people. By which percentage does this make the city’s population increase? Maths instead of feel-good talk.
But the opportunity didn’t arise. Nobody brought the topic up. I’ve been a well-known asshole for a long time.
Churches and Communist Parties have a lot in common. They are dogmatic. They can be nice when they aren’t in power and when they need to state their cases convincingly, but I suspect that if the churches – Catholic and Protestant alike – called the shots in our society, it would be no fun any more.
So to me, the Kirchentag, despite being organized by lay people, is a big propaganda event, albeit with some charm.
Meantime, the up-with-pepole sound has taken a break. Now its the turn of the soccer fans to fill the air. Finale, oho! Finale, Ohohoho! Werder Bremen is going to make a pretty serious attempt at the UEFA Cup tonight, in Istanbul.
I’ve caught a nasty cold this week. “Let them bless you,” someone tells me with a sardonic smile. Forget it. There’s no miracles without faith, right? I’ll try a household remedy tonight.
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Related:
Genesis 3
Chen Shui-bian: Control your Wife, April 16, 2009
… reports the Hong Kong Standard.
None of this happened at all, reports a security official.
According to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, five student vendors with the Nanjing University of Aeronautics (南京航空航天大学) were beaten by officers as they tried to remove them from the campus on Monday evening, reports the China Economic Review.
David Bandurski of the University of Hong Kong’s China media project quotes from an article by Patrick Whiteley, a China Daily columnist. Whiteley took issue with an article by The Telegraph‘s China correspondent Peter Foster, who had previously referred to the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda as propaganda. According to Whiteley, it’s no longer propaganda, and Foster only uses this dirty word because it carries a sinister ring. Whiteley recommends PR as a replacement.
Foster apparently enjoyed the quarrel. Every few years, the Telegraph sends another unharmonized barbarian to Beijing. Richard Spencer, the paper’s China correspondent until recently, has moved to the Middle East.
The article which probably started it all was this one.
