Winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature, a peace activist who opposed reunification for fear Germany might once again war against its neighbors, ghost-writer of Willy Brandt's speeches,
author of the great fabulist history of World War II and postwar Germany,
The Tin Drum, and of
My Century, a novel of one hundred chapters, one for each year of the last century, a man considered
part of the artistic movement known in German as "Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung" or "coming to terms with the past", Günter Grass belatedly admits the history he expunged from his personal narrative: his service as a member of the
10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg of the Waffen-SS.
In an interview with the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Grass
explained his service would
stain him forever, but that only after the war
did he feel ashamed of having been in the
Waffen-SS:
for me, because I am sure of my recollection, the Waffen SS was nothing frightful, but rather an elite unit that they sent where things were hot, and which, as people said about it, had the heaviest losses.
posted by orthogonality
on Aug 12, 2006 -
46 comments
News Filter - In 2003 the Bush administration rejected an Iranian offer to recognize Israel, end support of Palestinian terror organizations, help out in Iraq, and talk about their nuclear program.
posted by sourbrew
on Jun 18, 2006 -
66 comments
Entertainment NewsFilter: the surviving Beach Boys, including Mike Love and Brian Wilson, appeared together in public today, for the first time in ten years, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of Pet Sounds.
Mike Love
recently sued Brian Wilson for royalties and co-writing credits, again, after Brian released SMiLE, a
mere 38 years after originally starting on it. The strife between the two has been ongoing for decades. As Brian grew more musically ambitious in the Pet Sounds and SMiLE era, Mike
legendarily admonished Brian not to "fuck with the formula." [m.i.]
posted by ibmcginty
on Jun 14, 2006 -
59 comments
Haughey Dead No, not
that one.
Charles Haughey – Former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland, and probably the most controversial figure in recent Irish political history, has died of complications arising from prostate cancer.
posted by Sk4n
on Jun 13, 2006 -
26 comments
Newsfilter. Surveillenve of everything you do online: "It was clear that they would go beyond kiddie porn and terrorism and use it for general law enforcement." Offline: "I'm John Doe, and if I had told you before today that the F.B.I. was requesting library records, I
could have gone to jail." Previously,
here. On your phone? We've already discussed
that, too.
posted by |n$eCur3
on Jun 2, 2006 -
36 comments
Harry Reid accepted free boxing tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission says John Solomon of the AP. Solomon implies that Reid might have gotten himself into an ethical dilemma as the
NAC opposes the creation of a federal boxing commission, something the Senate was
considering at the time. The article also tosses in some digs at Reid by repeating the claim that Reid is involved in the
Abramoff scandal.
However,
Media Matters points out that Reid did not act in the NAC's favor and instead allowed the passage of legislation that would create a federal commission, in opposition to the giftgiver's wishes. This is
not the
first time Solomon has attacked Reid.
Politics/News-filter
posted by papakwanz
on May 31, 2006 -
34 comments
Newsfilter: More than 100 arrests at Moscow gay protest. Upon others, German MP Volker Beck, Oscar Wilde's grandson and Paris mayor's representatives were injured by a mob of fashist thugs and christian-orthodox fundamentalists at Moscow's first gay pride march, and then arrested by the police.
In fraternal unity the violence was called upon by the orthodox church, Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the grand mufti of Russia’s Muslims, and Russia’s chief rabbi. Read this article by Peter Thatchell on UK Gay News for a
first hand account of the events, and for background information
Doug Irland's blog and
Scott Long's Moscow diary, published by the Washington Blade.
posted by kolophon
on May 27, 2006 -
54 comments
Canada's National Post says "Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims." (
Sound familiar?)
CTV says "Prime Minister Stephen Harper says news reports that Iran could require Jews and Christians to wear coloured labels in public might be true." Hmm...might be true?
Montreal's AM 940 says "But independent reporter Meir Javedanfar [who runs
a Middle East analysis site], an Israeli Middle East expert who was born and raised in Tehran, says the report is false." Which is it: truth or fiction? And if it's fiction, is it a malicious disinformation campaign or just incompetent journalism?
Malcompetence?
posted by scottreynen
on May 19, 2006 -
60 comments
CNN confirms that Tom DeLay, the scandal-embroiled Republican Congressman from Texas and former Republican House Majority Leader, has dropped out of the race for the 22nd District House seat.
posted by teferi
on Apr 3, 2006 -
144 comments
Black Box Voting has completed their analysis of
log files from Palm Beach (FL) county voting machines stemming from the Nov 2004 general election. You know it's not good news when the article starts with:
The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.
posted by taumeson
on Feb 24, 2006 -
96 comments
[Newsfilter] In mid-November last year, David Irving, arguably the world's foremost holocaust-denier (
Mel Gibson's dad comes a close second), was
arrested in Austria for doing exactly that (previously discussed
here). Today he was
jailed for it. Should we (read; Austria) be jailing people for their views, however reprehensible or otherwise incorrect they might be? Or is it justifiable in some cases?
posted by Effigy2000
on Feb 20, 2006 -
315 comments
NewsFilter: I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?
posted by I Love Tacos
on Feb 18, 2006 -
154 comments
Sine-Off is the first brand of cold, flu and sinus congestion medicine to completely reformulate and remove
pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient needed to make Crystal Meth.
posted by ijoshua
on Feb 16, 2006 -
100 comments
When you really,
really want your email to arrive at its destination:
now you gotta pay postage. Another brilliant, forward-looking idea for monetizing-the-Internet
TM from the wizards at AOL and Yahoo.
posted by digaman
on Feb 4, 2006 -
46 comments
Then:
Q - Mr. Secretary, on Iraq, how much money do you think the Department of Defense would need to pay for a war with Iraq?
Rumsfeld - Well, the Office of Management and Budget, has come up come up with a number that's something under $50 billion for the cost. How much of that would be the U.S. burden, and how much would be other countries, is an open question.
And now:
The estimated cost to US taxpayers of the Iraq war to date is
$250 billion and rising, or $100,000 per minute. Total cost of the Bush doctrine of spreading "democracy" since September 11th -- half a trillion dollars, or nearly the cost of the 13 years of the Vietnam War, adjusted for inflation. What else could we have done with
that kind of money? Also see
here.
posted by digaman
on Feb 3, 2006 -
112 comments
