A women's magazine and a pleasant phone call

Let's see if November 17 will be a good day for me. I just had a pleasant conversation with a publisher from Switzerland. Via my call for feedback in the Brigitte forum [which my heroine from 'Mal,' Ruth Marx, would certainly never visit ;-)] she must have come to my site, looked at my page and the readings. Now, I have sent her more material plus a quickly written synopsis. We will see …

Favorite Line: »I Started To Work« - The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

Reminder: November 16: A Marine shoots a wounded Iraqi in cold blood in a mosque in Fallujah. Rubble and plaster litter the room. White columns. Light falls through dust-matted panes. A gunshot. "Now he's dead." The soldier stands there like one of the Littleton rampage shooters.

November 19: Former police vice-president Wolfgang Daschner is accused of threatening Magnus Gäfken, the murderer of an eleven-year-old boy, with torture. At that time, Daschner still believed that this threat would give him the whereabouts of the boy, who may still have been alive.

Putting these events side by side, I wonder how far the balancing act of the democratic, liberal basic order will still go. The stark contrast between these acts of violence and the principles of democracy and liberalism makes me question the extent to which our society can maintain its core values amid such extreme actions.