Today is the 7th of October, the 60th day after Obama started attacking IS with bombers or cruise missiles or whatever.

That may sit well with many US citizens. I, unknowing German in a German city far away, am unsure, but leaning toward agreement.

But at least one US citizen isn't happy, a constitutional expert who used to work for Clinton, whose outspoken irritation and arguments I heard on the radio, during NPR's OnPoint, today.

He reminds/instructs us that the US have a federal law since the Seventies, which says the president may use excessive force if the country is clearly threatened (is it in this case?). But (and it's a big BUT): He or she has to get the US Congress's approval within 60 days.

Obama is the 1st president to apparently ignore this law, since it - set up after the end of the Vietnam war, as a "lesson learnt" I assume - took hold. To my surprise, Bush jr. adhered to it - twice! - after 9/11.

So, basically, the USA have a very clear definition of when the country can go to war. (The 3-letter word is not mentioned in the law, but there's a longer exact description - something about "hostilities" etc..) Which is pretty good. Even better: It's clearly defined what the president can & cannot do on his own.

By "good president" Obama - so far - ignoring this law, he's setting a pretty terrible precedent. If it is further ignored - by him, by members of Senate & Congress - as it has been up till now, another "bad president" may just emulate him in future, to spread some sort of untoward mayhem. ("If Obama did it, so can I.") Congress would then have to basically impeach that guy.

The radio hour gave a possible explanation: In four weeks' time, the US mid-terms are on. So Obama, whose popularity is very low at the moment, doesn't want to boost Republican candidates by giving them the chance to make him come to (their) heel. That seems a bad excuse to me, since those same candidates as a rule called for more military intervention against IS.

A sad story to end this day with. A sad development of a once-great man.

That title is figurative - South African nights are generally short, since it's not that far from the equator. But I just saw the film LONG NIGHT'S JOURNEY INTO DAY at a celebratory* weekend at Berlin's House of World Cultures (next to the Chancellor's "washing machine" palace).

It's from 2000 and documents the TRC, which at that time was still going on. A profound attempt at bringing closure, if not always justice, to an ethically ravaged country. (And I didn't forget the "n" there!)

If you've actually lived there (I have, over a decade) and recognise some of the faces as ones that appeared on TV or in newspapers at the time the murders happened, it's heart-wrenching to watch at times. Even should you not have.

If we're all looking at Ferguson or the East Ukraine or elsewhere big boys are playing with guns, watch this documentary and be reminded of how much is destroyed when one human life - with all its complex development up to that moment, all the other people hitched to it more or less tightly - is trodden, shot or stabbed into bloody oblivion.

Although it isn't fashionable nowadays in Africa and elsewhere to do so, I greatly admire the idea of the TRC. But, watching this movie, the TRC does seem to have been ahead of its time by far.

• Tutu, a great talker, but also a very spirited pacifist fighter for what he believes in, seems to be on a mission of bright optimism, removed from the drudge (mostly) of the survivors.
• The perpetrators are essentially trying to save their skins. One was convinced until the end he was doing what was right for "his people".
• The female commissioners were friendly and wise, but in the end probably too aloof.
• The surviving mothers were the true forgivers, although in the final scenes even they show how deeply divisive racism makes everyone involved - they kept asking the black cop, who'd helped shoot their "terrorist" sons, how he could have done this to his "own blood".

I suppose the visual divides humans set up will be with us for a long time yet. Woman/man, dark-haired/blond-haired, dark-skinned/light-skinned... who cares?! In the end, we all do. We fight racism with racism, all the while spreading violence. Which breeds more violence.

We can probably forget the less visible differences ever really becoming as hotly contested: E.g. education, esp. of the political(ly neutral) kind. Even those that are visible in the clothes & environs of the protagonists of these sad stories: E.g. economic elitism vs. poverty.

In the end the feminist Iris Films, who made this foursome of clips on as many TRC cases (a selection from many thousands), managed to point me at one divide, which seems believable: (I misquote Orwell's 1984...) If there's any hope for the future, it lies in the peace-bringing women.

Daughters, journalists, commissioners (perhaps even one or other top politician, with numbers finally increasing!), mothers. Crying for beloved countries. But then getting up, hugging the bloodied once-big boys, moving on.

I've been listening a lot to this lately - stuck in my mind and just won't go. It's the version from that worship scene in the 2nd Blues Brothers film that's my particular earworm.

Recent developments have also brought to a fore my view of Germany's no. 1 woman, who turned sixty yesterday and some say is now at her zenith...

... wrote the book of the seven seals
No-one knows what our chancellor really thinks, it seems. She's nominally conservative but she dumped nuclear power after Fukushima like a hot potato. She said all was okay with the North Americans doing what that Snow-something fella said - only to get seriously pissed off when her own mobile phone turned out to have been bugged by them. She backed Juncker as conservative candidate for the EU general election a few weeks ago, then dropped him a metre or so just after the election was done (conservatives ahead in the polls) only to catch him by the nape of his political neck before he landed in a heap down on the EU premiers' deadly verbal fight floor.

... had twelve apostles and three she led away
People who get in her way get dropped. Fast. That charismatic "blue-blooded" minister of defence. The young but outspoken minister for the environment. Others. She can be ruthless when she wants to be. Pity she restricts those times to securing her seat of power. Just like she learnt from Kohl. As if she wasn't able to be better than him.

Who's that writin'?
That's the point: It isn't her. She hardly ever publicly commits herself. There was no writing on the election posters of her or her party last German elections, except for some silly phrases like "we are strong". So, no one is writing. The message to everyone else is: Stay stupid, mom's here, let her worry. Duh.

Ashamed
Or just afraid? The US secret services have been behaving particularly badly since 9/11. And globally long before, basically determining foreign policy independent of any president. Now it turns out the members of the German parliamentary committee, to investigate US spying on all of us here (not just her & her phone), have been themselves spied upon. Want to guess by whom? Now would be the time to drop the ever-understanding stance she's taken all her life. Stop being the well-behaved vassal. Doing nothing is less and less of an option - the national attorney general will have to act. Will she take sides? Some doubts remain! ;-p

Hillary Clinton is a fan. But I would much prefer the great Moderator to do a little more for all of our personal freedom. Stand up to Big Brother across the Atlantic. Get out of the pocket of the big German arms manufacturers. Allow more dissent, and dissent more openly herself. If she's as popular as they say, she can afford it on the way to retirement. I like moderation. But in her case, I've had more than enough. Thanks, Angie.

Now get your boots on and start walking over the other premier brickheads! No excuses, please!