Discoveries in the basement and censorship in Germany

G´day,

And another extra special welcome to Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. Todays blog entry will feature some of my extremly early "artworks", some pictures of my ancestors and a little report on the Germany´s latest idea of internet censorship.

Today the German Bundestag will pass a new law. This planned law got me (for the first time ever) to sign the official Bundestags petiton against it. Like so many ofther countries (as well as Australia see Blog entry from the 29.03.2009) the German government wants to regulate the internet. As the Germans made some real bad experiences with censorship in the course of the "third reich" the German people at the whole are a little sensitive to censorship. So significantly the proposition came disguised as a campaign against child pornography. The minister for families, Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) did the Helen Lovejoy approach ("Will someone please think of the children?") and demanded that all Geman ISPs need to implement a filter software which is connected to an ominous blacklist to ban websites which contain child pornography.

This is quite a clever strategy as a freedom-of the-internet activist is forced to be "pro-child-pornography". When I voiced the opinion that I´m very much against this law people asked me, "how can you defend the consumers of child pornography?". Well, let me firstly tell you that I don´t like child pornography and I think people who get aroused while watching something like that are sick in the head and the whole thing is disgusting BUT banning those websites doesn´t solve anything! It´s a populistic campaign aimed at stupid people who have no idea how the internet works to show that "we do something" to protect the children. FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!

You must be quite stupid to belive that a blacklist on the ISP-end would save any child. The assholes who produce the disgusting stuff will be still out there and the consumers will find ways to circumnavigate this obstacles (via cell phone for instance). If you really want to make a difference use good old policing. Find out where the stuff is produced, kick in their doors with a SWAT team and give them the truncheon, then put them in prison and it´s well known to all who know it well, that child abusers will have a really good time in prison...

But apparently that costs money. So instead of doing something effective the government tries to pass the first censorship law since 1933! O tempora, o mores!

And the media for the stupid majority, i.e. BILD and CO, are promoting this campaign. BILD today features an article on one German ex-congressman who´s against the law. As a matter of fact there is an investigation against this guy for possession of child pornography. But BILD combines the two facts so that it seems that everybody who is against this law is a child pornography consumer. On a journalistic level it´s ingenios I have to admit but media coverage like that only deepens the opinion of the stupid masses that "he who s against internet censorship is a child molester".

On the other hand -and now it get´s paradox- BILD demonises censorship in other countries especially Iran as dictatorship and undemocratic and praise the "heroes who use the internet to fight against the madman of Teheran". I won´t even comment on that...

But I´ll summarise my oppinion: the internet must be free of any preventive content control. The authorities must take repressive reaction on forbidden acts, contents and behavior according to the local laws but content control is censorship. I am aware that the price for my freedom to use the net and voice my opinion is that a bullshit nazi motherfucker, a child porn freak and religious nutcases have the same rights and I don´t like that too much but freedom is always the freedom of everybody or no freedom at all...

Any society that resorts to censorship is only one step away from becoming a totalitarian regime!

Ok that was my call for more sanity and now in lighter news, the cleaning of the basement became the digging into a goldmine. I found unbelievable stuff, old pics in my granny´s old folder, my mother´s old passport from 1963 (man, she was a looker...) and paintings my sister and me did in 1977/78...argh...

So let me introduce my ancestors
My great grandparents (parents of my mother´s mother) Josef (awesome moustache) and Josefine Hillers and their first three children (3 out of 10 lol). Picture was taken approx. around the turn of the century...
My granny, Emmi Wilkes
My grandpa, Otto Wilkes
My grandparents together...dates of all three pics unknown...
My parents wedding day 12.06.1970

I also found a folder with my mum´s old stuff. She was a quite good athlete when she was younger, she even started for the West-German national team at some international championship in Finland in 1963. I found some funny newspaper cuts...
My mum is the girl on right, this pic was taken at an annual sports club meeting in 1962 at which the successful athletes got some medals or so...I love the hairstyle...very 60ies
Well, my mother has always claimed that she looked quite good when she was young but when I found her old passport, my jaw dropped...fucking hell...my mother was a hottie...

Well, it´s funny enough to put pictures of other people on the net and it´s also nice to make fun of them but when it get´s to embarrassing stuff of myself, aehm, let me phrase it that way: it´s not so fun anymore but as I serve the truth I can´t just hide unpleasant truths...Ok here we go, when I was little I went to the day care center and afterwards to the kindergarden and the people there made me do stuff like painting or diverse handicrafts. I can remember that I didn´t like it, as all the other kids were good at it and I was -lets face it - shit. I saw the stuff my sister did in the same year (and she´s two years younger than me) and her stuff looked at least like a human being with a sense of colour and form did it, where my sorry efforts more resemble the works of a brain damaged, colourblind monkey who had his arms amputated and tried to paint with his mouth... Only a loving mother could keep something like that instead of dumping it into a bottomless pit in the middle of the night. Oh well, here they are:
"Untitled" (Crayons on paper, approx. 1977) This could be a house and a flower, the black thingys that resemlke "m"s could be birds...
"Wir malen mit Wasserfarbe" (watercolours on paper, 07.06.1978). The red blob could be a house and the brownish-greenish thing a tree, The black dot symbolises the despair of the artist...
"The mole Grabowski" (Crayons on paper, 16.05.1977). This was the artists impression of the childrens book "The mole Grabowski". The vulcanoshaped blackish thing is a mole´s hill and on top of it we have the mole itself. Flowers, grass and a butterfly complete the composition...
"We fold a cat" (Oregami technique, 06.07.1978). The artist leaves the traditional boundries of paintings and uses the japanese art of oregami to show a cat. I guess I had help with that one, as the foldings are quite neat...couldn´t be me by myself...
"We use watercolours II" (watercolour on paper, 17.08.1977). My abstract phase...honestly I have no idea what that should be but I simply have to admire the boldness of the brushwork and the novel choice of colours...
"Untitled" (watercolours on paper, undated). The artist´s first attempt on pointilism, if you look real hard (and take some LSD) you should be able to see the cunningly hidden shapes...
"Pustetechnik" (ink and crayons on paper, 13.06.1978). The artist discovers the abstract minimalism, clear shapes and some coloured accents show the tendency of isolation of the individual in modern society. The artist most polictical work...

Ok...I know you all had a giggle now and you probably can´t take me serious as an artist no more but well, so fucking what? I know I can´t paint, draw or handicraft stuff. Well at least I can write...lol and now I write a goodbye for today, have fun, take care (get well soon to Shivani and Lei-Lani who also got the swine flu today which raises the swine flu count of my facebook friends to three...), take care and cya