When YouTube gives you a horn, you toot it, right…?
Posted in Letter from Berlin, People, Politics on May 11th, 2008 No Comments »
Archive for the 'Politics' Category
Not simulated drowning - it IS drowning!
Posted in Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, People, Politics on Nov 9th, 2007 No Comments »
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”.
What [...]
Why did Claudio Abbado REALLY cancel?
Posted in Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, Music, People, Politics on Nov 3rd, 2007 1 Comment »
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:
“Opening the [...]
My latest love poem to my Berlin, my Germany
Posted in Commonplace Book, Letter from Berlin, Memory Lane, People, Politics, Reflections on Nov 1st, 2007 No Comments »
When a day begins with one unexpected pleasant surprise, it has the same effect upon me that William Wordsworth’s rainbow had on him. When two further unexpected surprises bless the day, that rare benison gooses me into at least mental writing - in this event into what involuntarily took form between my ears during a [...]
The Weimar Republic revisited
Posted in Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, People, Politics on Oct 21st, 2007 1 Comment »
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 paragraph [...]
The good grey "New York Times" has a lighter side
Posted in Life and culture, Politics on Oct 19th, 2007 No Comments »
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], [...]
Editorially rejected review of a Hans Pfitzner concert
Posted in Events, Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, Music, People, Politics on Oct 15th, 2007 No Comments »
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 [...]
The "Good Germans" among today’s Americans
Posted in Commonplace Book, Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, People, Politics on Oct 14th, 2007 No Comments »
To my fellow codgers, the phrase “good Germans” has specific overtones from the 1930s and ’40s, referring to those uncountable but numerous purportedly “good Germans” who emphatically did not elect the Nazis into power but, to quote one source verbatim, did “nothing … while Hitler destroyed Europe and murdered 6,000,000 Jews, and 5,000,000 Poles, Russians, [...]
T E X A S vs. The United States Supreme Court
Posted in Events, Life and culture, People, Politics, Reflections on Oct 5th, 2007 No Comments »
Herewith some additional horrifying background material on how the Lone Star State tells the country’s supreme legal authority to kiss its Lone Star ass and insouciantly continues its self-legalized killings, including some prisoners awaiting appeal proceedings that could reverse their previous sentences.
From The New York Times on June 14th:
“Texas juries in capital cases must make [...]
Texas justice through German eyes: horrifying
Posted in Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, People, Politics, Reflections on Oct 4th, 2007 No Comments »
Let no one still mired out of date in world history of half a century or so ago come at me with “Hmphhh . . . they should talk!” I hope the word has finally got around that the Germany I’ve adopted as my own country today glories in one of the most vital [...]
