The online magazine salon has scored some notable coups in the field of investigative journalism, but I recall none that’s so impressed and inexpressibly horrified me as this one, about the barbarous torture euphemistically called “waterboarding”, which the Bush-Cheney criminal conspiracy not only condones and practises but also inexorably defends as indispensable “under present circumstances”. [...]
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I believe I told at least some of you at one point or another that although I’ve long since collected the handsome certificate (now beautifully framed, for a prominent place on the wall of my Berlin apartment’s entry hall) proclaiming me a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany, the formal ceremony for us Neudeutsche [...]
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From an unimpeachable, totally reliable source I have this latest shaming tidbit of barbarous stateside yahoo nitwittery towards distinguished visiting foreign artists in the fatuous name of “security”, a sacrosanct word which for the incumbent criminal administration apparently excuses no matter what indignities. The Berlin Philharmonic, billed by Carnegie Hall for four concerts with its [...]
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As a reputable musical journalist of several decades’ high-level experience, I almost invariably avoid even mentioning sources I feel I must, for whatever reason, leave anonymous, but I feel strongly that this present instance justifies such an exception. On October 8th, a New York Times article under James R. Oestreich’s byline led off with this: [...]
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Back during the period when German television strove mightily to adopt and adapt the lucrative magic formula that had created such American advertising bonanzas as the pioneer talk shows of Jack Paar, Dick Cavett, et al., I once with stricken eyes watched Cavett’s interview, conducted in Cologne by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk’s chief honcho Werner Höfer [...]
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Habitués (naturally including any additional sons of habitués) of this playpen may recall that when my Knoxville blogfather Perry Nelson finally bludgeoned me into getting it started I led off with a true – but highly improbable – nature story from here in Germany’s thoroughly metropolitan capital, of how a parental pair of crows, with [...]
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Today’s Sunday edition of The New York Times carries a riveting review of what sounds like a fascinating new history of the Weimar Republic Germany gloried in during the far too brief fifteen years between the 1918 end of World War I and the total political nightfall of Hitler’s 1933 appointment as Chancellor. The lead [...]
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Only a few days ago the United States’ official “newspaper of record” started sporting this welcome innovation, combining the best of current political art (including all three of my own personal favorites, listed here in impartial alphabetical order: Pat Oliphant [allegedly born down in Astraya, according to one of his fellow countrymen who enlightened me], [...]
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Well, chalk up another television first: Germany’s Armin Meiwes (pronounced My-vess), presently serving a life sentence for killing a man and eating more than twenty pounds of him, has granted his first television interview, during which, to quote the newsmagazine Der Spiegel, he “describes the taste of human flesh, provides a decent recipe for steak, [...]
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BERLIN. – “Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht,” wrote Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), one of Germany’s greatest poets and most famous Jews, “Dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht” – “If I think about Germany during the night, it robs me of my sleep.” A partially sleepless night preceded the writing of this review, for [...]
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