And I bet he’s greener on the other side now, too.
No, but seriously folks… He was very outspoken. And he spoke out a lot. And he was a humble social critic.
Too bad he couldn’t just stick to what he was really good at. Writing The Tin Drum, for instance.
During the rise of Nazi Germany and the Second World War, Grass was in the Jungvolk (Hitler Youth) before, aged 17, being drafted into the Waffen-SS, the elite armed wing of the Nazi Party. He only revealed this fact about himself in 2006.
Or at least that’s what the Greek parliament just figured out.
However, Italy also suddenly owes Greece $216 billion for its invasion in 1940, too, they said.
After that you’ve got the Ottoman Empire owing the Greeks $197 billion for, well, for being Turks.
Then the Roman Empire will also still need to shell out an additional $116 billion for those nasty Macedonian wars.
And then, of course, Iran will have to step up and pay Greece $97 billion for the ugly Persian Invasion back in 484 BC.
This will still leave Greece with a humungous debt, of course, the parliamentarians noted, but nothing that another little loan from their friends in the European Union won’t fix.
You know, the place where after getting the mayor to hightail it out of town and burning down a planned asylum seekers‘ home on Easter Sunday, right-wing nut jobs are now threatening to behead the local district administrator if asylum seekers start arriving in May as originally planned?
German peace activists will be protesting against the real forces of evil like NATO, instead. The same procedure as every year, James.
The Easter marches reached their peak in support between 1968 and 1983, when events throughout West Germany brought hundreds of thousands out onto the streets annually to demonstrate against issues such as Washington’s military involvement in Vietnam and the nuclear arms race.
Beautiful German weapon sale of the week.
Because somebody has to admire them.
U35, Germany’s most modern 212A class submarine, was commissioned in Eckernförde today. Hmmm. I wonder if this has anything to do with the 100 year anniversary of the Lusitania sinking?
Here’s a German article I read earlier this afternoon entitled: 70 Years after the Dresden Bombing – “The myth began while the ruins were still burning.”
Strange that it won’t open right now. Strange because, well, this German researcher who was interviewed in it says, in essence, that what most of us associate with the bombing of Dresden is actually nazi propaganda that was then also instrumentalized by the communists during the Cold War.
Yes, the killing of 25,000 people was a terrible thing. He then points out that 35,000 died in Hamburg (he forgot to mention the 40,000 in London), however. He also points out that the allied attack was an attack on a military target and not one of vengeance, as opposed to what we are all supposed to believe. The Dresden bombing is just another great myth that no one can properly approach here, in other words, nazi/communist propaganda that we are still hearing to this very day.
An interesting point of view but clearly one that some people out there don’t want us to hear, I mean read. Eerie, don’t you think? Try again later at: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/jahre-bombardierung-von-dresden-der-mythos-entstand-noch-in-den-rauchenden-truemmern-1.2347466
The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy.
Berlin officials have reacted angrily to a series of fake, Nazi-style ads purporting to be part of the German capital’s campaign for the 2024 Olympics.
The spoof ads appeared last week on a satirical blog called Metronaut. Several of the ads were based on actual posters from the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which Adolf Hitler used to showcase Nazi Germany to the world.
City officials issued demands via lawyers on Monday to remove their logo and names from the ads.
Metronaut’s co-founder, John F. Nebel, says the ads were meant to spark a discussion about the darkest chapter in Berlin’s history.
Although President Obama just went out of his way to stress that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine only reinforces the unity of the US and Europe to not do anything about it, Chancellor Merkel’s visit to Washington today nevertheless made clear once again just how wide their views differ when it comes down to the how-not-to-do-anything-about-it part.
Washington, on the one hand, prefers talking about maybe sending weapons someday perhaps but let’s not rush into things because these are weapons we’re talking about here after all people while Merkel, for her part, categorically rejects the idea of sending weapons that are never going to be sent anyway, preferring instead more negotiations about negotiations with whoever feels like negotiating about anything at anytime anywhere, stressing here how crucial it was “that the West stand up for Ukraine,” provided, of course, that this remain a purely figurative expression devoid of anything that could even remotely be interpreted as meaning “like actually standing up for Ukraine or anything.”
“If we give up this principle of territorial integrity of countries, then we will not be able to maintain the peaceful order of Europe.”
I mean, like what’s the point of coming to this country if you don’t even try to bore everybody with stories about your ethnic roots all the time? That’s totally un-American misbehavior, if you ask me. But German-Americans are that way. They’re different. They’re kind of like German-Germans, if you know what I’m saying. They’re tricky.
German-Americans are America’s largest single ethnic group (if you divide Hispanics into Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc). In 2013, according to the Census bureau, 46m Americans claimed German ancestry: more than the number who traced their roots to Ireland (33m) or England (25m). In whole swathes of the northern United States, German-Americans outnumber any other group (see map). Some 41% of the people in Wisconsin are of Teutonic stock.
Yet despite their numbers, they are barely visible. Everyone knows that Michael Dukakis is Greek-American, the Kennedy clan hail from Ireland and Mario Cuomo was an Italian-American. Fewer notice that John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Rand Paul, a senator from Kentucky with presidential ambitions, are of German origin.
The speaker of the Russian Duma has asked a parliamentary committee to study a proposal to condemn the reunification of Germany in 1990.
Sergei Naryshkin earlier this week faced scathing criticism of Russia’s annexation of Crimean peninsula when he spoke at the Parliament Assembly of Europe.
Russian news agencies say Communist deputy Nikolai Ivanov on Wednesday proposed a resolution to condemn what he called the “annexation” of East Germany in 1990. Ivanov said that unlike in Crimea, there was no popular vote to support the German reunification.
…Deutsche Welle, an international television and radio broadcaster akin to the British Broadcasting Corp.’s World Service, plans to launch a new multimedia English-language service called DWNews in April. Deutsche Welle President Peter Limbourg has said the new service is designed to “defy [Russian President Vladimir] Putin ’s propaganda.”
That means a ban on thinking. And that’s what this latest anti-Pegida or anti-anti-Islamization hysteria is all about.
This is so German it hurts. This anti-anti-Islamization movement isn’t primarily a protest against the Pegida anti-Islamization movement in my view (although of course it is that, too), it is going through that classic German ritual of protesting against the German Nazi past by trying to compensate for the anti-Nazi movement that never took place when it could have made a difference. It’s never “anti-” enough when and where it needs to be here in Germany, in other words.
Are these 18,000+ Pegida protesters in Dresden all Nazis and racists? Of course not, although some of them undoubtedly will be. So why call them that? Especially when a recent study indicates that over 18 percent of the German population is hostile to Islam in the first place (is that all?). Do the political parties and media on the left – and elsewhere – profit from calling them Nazis? You tell me.
If they are all such idiots then why the hysteria? Do they possibly have something to say then after all? I’m slowly starting to wonder now.
One thing really does worry me about all these Pegida people, however. It is one of their slogans I heard about the other day: “Potatoes instead of Döner Kebab!” Now that’s scary. Maybe these folks do need to be stopped after all…
Um als Gesellschaft eine sinnvollere Reaktion zu finden, braucht es etwas Gelassenheit.
Observing Hermann 