MORE ABOUT POLITICS

Right now, on behalf of the present financial crisis, I am reading that Alan Greenspan said this one to be the worst crisis of the century.

About a fortnight ago, I heard on the telly that the Mayor of New Orleans called the approaching hurricane the worst of the century and thus he invited his fellow citizens to leave town.

Well, being a born Berliner, we would say to this kind of braggadocio "one size smaller would be welcome".

I take the liberty to remind everybody the century barely started, we have still 92 years to go before we are able to make an evaluation. So let's be patient and leave the subject to our children or even better to our grand-children.

Another well-known fact, the stock exchange goes up and down, some get burnt and other get rich and probably next year we'll have other "events of the century" to consider. As to the king-size hurricane over New Orleans, the Mayor mishandled the evaluation of this one as he did on behalf of the previous one thus I suppose he will be reelected triumphantly by his thankful citizens.

Another thing I am quite fed up with is the "War on Terror". Every one of us has a bigger chance to win a Billion Dollar or Euro at the Sweep Stakes or the Lottery and afterwards get struck by lightning rather than being killed in a terrorist action. An efficient police force and a Secret Service that is doing his job on the ground are amply sufficient to neutralize these buggers.

And let's stop talking endlessly about September 11 when its main aim seems to be using it merely as an excuse to embark on actions that shy the light, a kind of smoke screen with an exceeding long shelf life.

Because there are problems and there are dangers facing us. Climate change is one. During the last Ice Age the average temperature fell 2°C. Not very much one might say but now we are in danger to live through increases of 4° to 6°C!! That means lots of more deserts everywhere as well as flooded and definitely disappearing coastline everywhere around the globe.

Another one is overpopulation. If we go on like this the horror movie "Soylent Green" depicting life in 2022 will become a reality well before the end of the century. I have seen recently a documentary about Dhaka the capital of Bangla Desh: that was hell on earth, just to look at it. Those unhappy people have already achieved this kind of concentration..............


Have a look at overpopulation at home. Fortunately, it lasted only one evening and half of the night. We were celebrating our ten years' living here.





All this to let off some steam and to entertain my friends worldwide who want to read something about politics.

ON UGLINESS

I should have started this entry by talking about those photos. All show constructions I like very much. The first two are houses for sale at the French Atlantic coast, between Bordeaux and Biarritz. For the other ones, just read the text (that has become a bit too long).

Before coming here in 1998, I lived for 15 years in Neuilly, a suburb of Paris. I suppose that most people would agree with the statement that Paris is a beautiful city. And that's true.

However, if you look closely at that beauty you might realize that what is considered beautiful is at least hundred years old or more.

Have a look at all those constructions realized in the sixties, seventies etc. - in Paris and elsewhere - and you see lots of glass, steel and concrete put together at right angle as cheap as possible. Kind of boxes of different sizes.

Over the years I came to the conclusion that our modern ugliness is materialized by the right angle. Everything and anything looks aggressively square and I have the impression these are the modern barbarians. Lame brain barbarians utterly devoid of creativity and fantasy.

Talking about architecture I think we have at least a big chance. All this square concrete stuff is of very poor quality. Years ago I showed a friend the modern opera house in Paris (Opéra Bastille) about a year after its completion. There was already rust seeping out between the marble plates fixed on the outer wall to hide the concrete.


In 2002 I went to Berlin, my home town, and was shown around there. The infamous Berlin Wall had vanished without any trace and the town was once again the country's capital. So I had a look at the government buildings, situated right at the river Spree. Madre de Dios. Concentrated cheap ugliness everywhere. You look at it and depression crawls up and engulfs you.

One might think that modern buildings and houses must be ugly. But that is not so. Have a look at those two buildings. The first is a newly erected museum in Paris (Musée Quai Branly) and the other one is a building that has been erected with the help of the Austrian painter Hundertwasser (Hundertwasser-Haus in Vienna). And there are some quite good looking big buildings in the so called "third world" countries, like in Dubai or Kuala-Lumpur.

The first photo (the last added) shows a typical house in the Périgord region. In the background you see the quite recent Museum of Prehistory. To me, the latter looks a bit like an air raid bunker, though in sandstone and not in concrete.