The writer and semiologist Umberto Eco advocates a sexual revolution to make us all ‘European’. Interview by Gianni Riotti, La Stampa;
English (c) THE GUARDIAN, 2012; photo: Sarah Lee
Archive for January, 2012
Eco: ‘It’s culture, not war, that cements European identity’
Posted in Uncategorized with tags culture, Europe, interview, Italy, Umberto Eco on 31 January 2012 by delclemSchubert drama
Posted in Uncategorized on 30 January 2012 by delclem
“Every year the life of a famous Viennese persona is dramatised at Schauspielhaus theatre.
Following on from Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil and Bruno Kreisky, this year’s production, Winterwanderung (A winter walk), traces the life of the composer Franz Schubert, famous amongst other things for his lieder.”
Text (c) wieninternational.at, 2012
Nazism as cheap turn-on?
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Ari Libsker, Germany, Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS, Israel, Italy, National Socialmsm, Popular Culture, pornography, sexuality, USA on 29 January 2012 by delclem
“From Ilsa, the She-Wolf of the SS to Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, cinema has long been fascinated by the Nazis – and their link to ‘deviant’ sexuality.”
Article by John Byrne (c) THE IRISH TIMES, 2012 Continue reading
“My weekend at the ‘Hague Hilton’”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags ICTY, International Criminal Court, Netherlands, photography, prison, The Hague, war crimes, yugoslavia on 28 January 2012 by delclem
“As I entered, the first journalist ever allowed to report from inside, I had butterflies in my stomach. For I am a prisoner of my past. Some of the people detained here were accused of crimes against members of my family. We lived through the siege of Sarajevo.”
Photographer’s blog (c) REUTERS by Damir Sagolj who took pictures in the war crimes unit of the prison in The Hague.
The British Schindler
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Czechoslovakia, Fim, Great Britain, Holocaust, Joe Schlesinger, Nicholas Winton, Schindler on 27 January 2012 by delclem“In 1938, twenty-nine-year-old Sir Nicholas Winton was preparing to take a vacation when he received a call from a friend who told him that he was leaving for Prague and needed his help. (…) Winton decided to take action and by September 1939, he managed to arrange visas and admission to British families for nearly 700 Central European mostly Jewish children. (…) Fifty years later, his wife found a scrapbook full of documents and transport plans….
Joe Schlesinger, a CBC reporter and one of the rescued children, is the guide in the documentary who presents not only how Winton’s act changed his life, but also how it continues to influence the lives of thousands of others worldwide.”
(on the occasion of Holocaust Memorial Day 2012)
The Waffen-SS as “European Freedom Fighters” – excuse me?
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Estonia, Germany, National Socialism, Waffen-SS, World War Two on 26 January 2012 by delclem
“Despised & ostracized, the Swedish community of Waffen-SS volunteers long gathered in secret on April 14 (…) for obscure ritualistic annual gatherings at a cemetery in a Stockholm suburb.
Since the 1990s, the rituals have not needed to be clandestine: the few, now very elderly survivors now head to Sinimäe, Estonia, where they feel they are now getting the honor to which they are entitled. Here, Swedish, Norwegian, Austrian, German and other Waffen-SS veterans from Western Europe meet up with their Estonian comrades and neo-Nazi followers. (…)
According to the Tageszeitung, this March the Estonian parliament will now consider a law, which would formally designate the Estonian Waffen-SS veterans as “Freedom Fighters.” Article by Per A. Rudling (c) Defending History.com, 2012
Interview with Dr. Rudling (c) hitlersforeignexecutioners.com, 2012
Belfast “peace walls”
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Belfast, Central Europe, peace wall, photos, sectarian violence on 24 January 2012 by delclem
Belfast is probably the most “Central European” place on the Isles…
“Antonio Olmos photographs the walls built across Northern Ireland’s capital city as a means of defusing sectarian tension. There are 99 of them, dividing nationalist Catholic neighbourhoods from loyalist Protestant ones. Some of the walls date from the early years of the Troubles, but an estimated one-third have gone up since the IRA ceasefire in 1994. Now, ‘peace gates’ are being opened in some walls in an attempt to foster greater links between communities.”
(c) THE GUARDIAN/OBSERVER, 2012
> SLIDE SHOW (photos)
FAUST is Austrian Russian
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Alexander Sokurov, Austria, Faust, Germany, Goethe, Johannes Zeiler, Russia on 22 January 2012 by delclem
“There are only few literary figures that are always good at enflaming passions and inciting debates. One of these immortals is Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Faust. The desperate scholar has conquered countless theatres and his pact with Mephisto has been sealed in a number of films.
Most recently, the Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov developed a fascinating new interpretation of the myth for his film Faust for which he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival … The alchemist, who teeters on the brink of the abyss, is wonderfully played by Viennese actor Johannes Zeiler.”
> interview (c) wieninternational.at, 2012
Atheism on the radar
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Alain de Botton, Alex Rosenberg, atheism, creationism, evolution, Gavin Flood, God, religion, Terry Eagleton on 21 January 2012 by delclem
The “god question” explodes in our face. Particularly the English-language book market has become the battle ground for more or less intelligent skirmishes between evolutionists and creationists, believers, agnostics, and atheists. Two reviews:
>1 on Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution (c) salon.com, 2012
>2 on Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists
Gavin Flood, The Importance of Religion
Alex Rosenberg: The Atheist’s Guide to Reality (c) FT, 2012
Another unpunished massacre
Posted in Uncategorized with tags Ardeatine Caves, criminal justice, Germany, Italy, National Socialism, Rome, war crimes, World War Two on 19 January 2012 by delclem
“In the spring of 1944, Nazi troops massacred hundreds of Italian civilians in the Ardeatine Caves near Rome. After World War II came to an end, however, the German government did little to track down the perpetrators. At the time, both Rome and Bonn were more interested in politics than justice.” Article by Klaus Wiegrefe
(c) DER SPIEGEL, 2012; photo (c) Koch/Bundesarchiv
delirium clemens 