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Friday 3 October 2008

in der Nacht zur Einheit


















































































































History has seen the German Day of Unity migrate from the first day of the Weimar Republic on the ninth of November 1918 - on which date in 1923 Hitler's coup attempt was thwarted, and in 1938 the Nazis organized yet another violent outbreak against its Jewish citizenry, and on which date in 1989, the people literally tore down the Berlin Wall - to the third of October, which is where it falls today, to commemorate our latest fusion's consummation.

So we celebrate governance. The fact that the governed smashed their separation to crumbling bits was too embarrassingly overshadowed by the hideous events on that same day fifty-one years previously.

In between, the partitioning into East and West led to the seventh of October and the seventeenth of June respectively. The former was the day upon which the German Democratic Republic had been founded, while the latter marks the uprising of workers in the same, establishing a spirit of thumbing one's nose at all things East, which continues to this day.

I suppose if the GDR had wanted to reciprocate this mockery, they could have chosen the fifteenth of January - the day in 1919 when Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were summarily tortured and murdered by the first unity government. This would represent, after all, a great triumph of the employer over his workers - the capitalists over the socialists.

And so thereupon it lies; these decisions made by those in Potsdam after the war - by nations content with slicing a people like pieces of pie - for, you see, the allies were enemies, as well.

In that same spirit of bipartisanship, the leaders of the free-est nation on earth have sealed the plan to rescue the American taxpayer from a vast sum of a symbol of their currency.

Those who disagree with this unified declaration of intent won't be bludgeoned to death and thrown into a canal. But the decision made by the red and blue would seem to exclude orange, yellow, green, indigo, and violet from the united front.
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words & music by Pete Townshend 

The sun shines 
And people forget
The spray flies as the speedboat glides 
And people forget 
Forget they're hiding 
The girls smile 
And people forget 
The snow packs as the skier tracks 
And people forget 
Forget they're hiding 

Behind an eminence front 
Eminence front - It's a put on 
Come on join the party 
Dress to kill 
Won't you come and join the party
Dress to kill

The drinks flow 
People forget 
That big wheel spins... 
...the hair thins 
People forget 
Forget they're hiding 
The news slows 
People forget 
The shares crash, hopes are dashed 
People forget 
Forget they're hiding 

Dress yourself to kill.