Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
Barack Obama for President
Given the fact that the USA is still the most powerful and meddlesome country in the world, it is rather important who becomes the next President of the United States. On Tuesday American voters in many States go to vote for their candidates in the primaries on Super Tuesday and I am rooting all the way for Barack Obama. No, its not (only) because he is sexy and black, but because he seems to have an intelligence and integrity – given the limits of American electoral politics – so sorely lacking in most elected officials (also those here at home)
So I am rooting for Obama all the way. Who wants another 8 years of the triangulating, cautious and cynical Clintons in the White House. Now, I wonder, when will we get our own Obama here at home. Sorry Jacob Zuma, you just ain’t it. Here is a video setting Obama’s speeches to music.
