Communist China's elite calling for democratic reforms [ 1885 ]

China Dissidents Call for Reform 

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL(Asia News) OCT 15,2010.,,9:45 A.M. ET

By JEREMY PAGE

BEIJING—As China's Communist Party elite began an annual meeting Friday, more than 100 Chinese dissidents and rights advocates issued a statement calling for democratic reforms and hailing the Nobel Peace Prize for jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo as a "splendid choice."

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European Pressphoto Agency

A 2009 photo shows a pro-democracy activist holding a placard of Liu Xiaobo during a protest demanding China's government release the dissident .

The statement is the latest contribution to an unusual public debate that has been raging since Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made a surprise call for political reform in a speech in the southern city of Shenzhen in August.

The statement, circulating on several websites Friday, urged Chinese authorities to "immediately release the people who have been illegally detained" since Mr Liu, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December for "subversion," won the prize on Oct. 8.

It asked the Party's leaders to respond "with realism and reason" to the award, which the Chinese government has denounced as a "desecration" of the prize and part of a Western conspiracy to undermine a rising China.

Chinese authorities have also placed Mr. Liu's wife, Liu Xia, under effective house arrest. They also have heavily censored online discussion of the award and detained or increased surveillance of fellow dissidents across the country.

"Liu Xiaobo is a splendid choice for the Nobel Peace Prize," said Friday's statement. "He has persevered in pursuing the goals of democracy and constitutional government and has set aside anger even toward those who persecute him."

"In a recent series of speeches, Premier Wen Jiabao has intimated a strong desire to promote political reform," the statement said. "We are ready to engage actively in such an effort."

The statement comes after a group of 23 reformist Communist Party elders and retired academics made a bold appeal, in another open letter published online earlier this week, for the government to lift restrictions on freedom of expression.

Neither appeal is expected to have much direct impact on the Party leadership since both come from known critics of the political system who have spoken out many times before.

Combined with Mr Liu's prize, however, the letters are throwing a spotlight on the sensitive issue just as the Party's 371-member Central Committee begins a four-day meeting to set policy for the next five years.

They are also raising Mr. Wen's profile, at home and overseas, as top Party leaders start to jockey for position—to secure their own promotions, or those of their proteges—ahead of an expected leadership change in 2012.

Those who signed Friday's appeal included constitutional scholar Zhang Zuhua, one of the people who worked with Mr. Liu to draft Charter 08, the call for political freedom for which Mr Liu was sent to prison.

Other signatories included activist lawyer Pu Zhiqiang and Li Datong, a veteran state newspaper journalist who was forced from a top editing job for reporting on sensitive subjects.

NASA Image of the Day, Oct 15th..[ 1884 ]

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

Hubble's Lagoon

Like brush strokes on a canvas, ridges of color seem to flow across the Lagoon Nebula, a canvas nearly 3 light-years wide. 

The colors map emission from ionized gas in the nebula were recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. 

Also known as M8, the nebula is a star-forming region in the constellation Sagittarius. 

Hubble's remarkably sharp, close-up view reveals undulating shapes sculpted by the energetic light and winds from the region's new born stars. 

Of course, the Lagoon Nebula is a popular target for earthbound skygazers, too. 

Image Credit: NASA

Παρασκευή, 15 Οκτώβριος 2010 7:00:00 πμ

Switzerland, the Zurich-Lugano Tunnel and Rail Route..[ 1883 ]

The work for the Longest Tunnel completed

Unprecedented

The area already has the 34km Loetschberg rail tunnel, which opened in 2007, but this latest engineering feat is being hailed by leading members of the Swiss government as being of unprecedented significance. 

Swiss Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger said that the Gotthard Tunnel would become a spectacular and grandiose monument with which all tunnels would be compared.

Two other transalpine tunnels are planned to exceed 50km but are unlikely to be complete until the 2020s. One tunnel will connect Lyon in France to Turin in Italy and another is due to replace the Brenner road tunnel between Austria and Italy.

The head of the Swiss Federal Transport Office, Peter Fueglistaler, said he was very happy with the achievement: "In Switzerland we are not a very emotional people, but if we have the longest tunnel in the world that's... very, very emotional."

Exploration of Hitler's relationship..[ 1882 ]

Hitler's relationship with Germany explored

By Stephen Evans BBC News, Berlin, 15-10-2010

 

The new exhibition in Berlin has Adolf Hitler as its focus for the first time

The title is important: Hitler and the German People. The first ever big exhibition in a major German museum to focus on Hitler is not just about him but about his relationship with the people.

And that, of course, makes for discomfort. After all, the people who come to the German Historical Museum in Berlin are the grandchildren and, occasionally, the children of those who participated in the poisonous relationship in the 1930s and early 40s. This is not an exhibition where the visitors view coolly from outside. It is one where they look into themselves, too.

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I find the exhibition of Hitler not a good idea. I believe the neo-Nazis will come”

End Quote Hans Coppi, whose parents were hanged by the Nazis

What they will find as they walk the rooms is that Hitler and the Nazis permeated ordinary German life. There are tiny toys depicting him, children's models of him in uniform with his arm outstretched in salute.

There is a quilt where the inhabitants of a village have depicted their homes in delicate needle-craft - alongside the Nazi symbols also stitched with great care. There is a cup and saucer with a swastika, and a lamp shade with the same symbol. There is a deck of playing cards showing Hitler and other Nazis. There is a gravestone from 1938 with a swastika.

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Museum director Hans Ottomeyer on why the exhibition was put together

There are also exhibits that give the game away, as it were. There is a very ordinary amateur painting, but on the back you see the Torah, the implication being that the sacred Jewish text was just taken and used for material for a hobby. Who now knows where it came from or what became of the original owners?
As you look, you wonder.
One of the few bits of personal memorabilia is a vast wooden desk with an eagle and snake on the front, and used by Hitler. The conclusion the organisers want you to draw is about his obsession with aggrandisement. It is a desk that is useless except for what it says.
There are paintings of the masses as just that: the masses - regimented, indistinguishable one from the next. There is a painting from before the war which depicts the masses hauling their leader - depicted as a monstrous giant - in adoration. The organisers said they want the viewer to conclude: don't say nobody knew it was coming because here it is foretold.

 

The depiction of the swastika remains illegal in public places

The exhibition is ground-breaking because it breaks a great taboo in Germany - and remember that the depiction of the swastika or the Nazi salute remain illegal in public places (the museum is exempt because it's technically for research purposes). But previous attempts at exhibitions focusing on Hitler came to naught because of the fear of attracting neo-Nazis.
Six years ago, for example, a similar exhibition entitled Hitler and the National Socialist Regime was rejected because it was felt to be too personalised - too focused on the man.
It's the images of Hitler that remain the problem, and in this current exhibition they are sparse. There are the busts of him, which were turned out industrially for mantelpieces throughout the land. And there are pictures of him in rows on the front covers of today's news magazines, perhaps to make the point that Hitler sells.
But there isn't personal memorabilia. The clothes he wore are not here. The German museum has not, for example, borrowed one of his uniforms from a museum in Moscow.
Simone Erpel, the curator of the exhibition, said: "Something worn by Hitler, even if it was just twice, could become a fetish."
There's no doubt it is all very thoughtfully done, but people remain uneasy. On the one hand, there are people who say that Hitler is not studied enough in schools so the more serious contemplation and sheer information there is, the better.

 

Busts of Hitler were turned out industrially for mantlepieces

But there are also those who see dangers. Also in the week when the exhibition opens, three small brass plaques on cobble stones were laid in a quiet street a short distance from the museum.
On them were the names of three people executed by the Nazis for organizing resistance and saving Jews. One of the people at the street ceremony was Hans Coppi whose parents were hanged.
"I find the exhibition of Hitler not a good idea. I believe the neo-Nazis will come," he said.
To which the director of the Museum on Unter den Linden, Hans Ottomeyer replies: "We are not haunted by neo-Nazis because we are a place of enlightenment. They don't read books and they don't go to exhibitions".
"Hitler was a poor tramp and it needed the acclaim of the Germans to make Hitler what he became. This the exhibition tries to reflect. It is about propaganda and it is about the means of his attraction."
So does the holding of the exhibition mean that Hitler is now in the past, a person for museums but remote from today's reality?
"He is not past and remote. He is still everywhere to be feared," says Mr Ottomeyer.
"Our cities and our public buildings are still destroyed and not rebuilt - and the same is true of the minds and the values of the people which were heavily hampered by the Third Reich and its effects.

UK: Thatcher says 'the Lady is not for returning"...[ 1881 ]

Baroness Thatcher says 'the Lady is not for returning" as she misses 85th birthday party

Baroness Thatcher apologised to David Cameron for cancelling her appearance at her birthday party at Downing Street saying "the lady is not for returning".

Baroness Thatcher is helped down some steps after the Pope's address in September Photo: PAUL ROGERS

Telegraph co. uk.,Published: 6:31AM BST 15 Oct 2010

She had been forced to pull out of celebrations to mark her 85th birthday after being taken ill with flu.

The party for 150 friends and former colleagues hosted by David Cameron went ahead without her and the prime minister read out an apologetic note to the gathering.

The message from Lady Thatcher said: "I am so disappointed not to be with you this evneing. But I hope that you will appreciate that on this particular occasion I have had to accept that the Lady is not for returning. Plese, please enjoy yourselves."
A fresh event will be put on when she has recovered.

A Downing Street spokesman said on Thursday: ''Lady Thatcher is unable to attend tonight's birthday party at No 10 after being taken ill with flu at home earlier today.
''At Lady Thatcher's insistence, the gathering will take place as planned in her absence and the Prime Minister will attend.
''Guests, who include previous members of her Cabinet, colleagues and friends, will be invited to return to celebrate her 85th birthday at No 10 once she has recovered.''


Lady Thatcher's planned return to Downing Street was announced by the Prime Minister at the Conservative Party conference last week, when he was cheered by delegates for hailing Lady Thatcher "the greatest peacetime prime minister of the 20th century".
He first invited her to Number 10, from where she governed Britain from 1979 to 1990, soon after he became Prime Minister earlier this year.

The one-time "Iron Lady", whose birthday was yesterday, also returned to see Mr Cameron's two Labour predecessors, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
On the advice of doctors, Lady Thatcher very rarely speaks in public now, but does still attend a number of high-profile functions.

In March 2008 the peer, who has previously suffered minor strokes, was taken ill during a dinner in Westminster and spent the night in hospital as a precaution.
She was given a clean bill of health by doctors after routine tests.