nuttie
03-16-2004, 03:29 AM
It's passé even to mention it, yes, though it sure beats having to take action and getting all serious.
If ever there was a time for European leaders to trade talk for action, last week was it. So it tells you something about the solemnity with which the war on terrorism is perceived in some quarters that Germany's first reaction to what may yet prove the deadliest terror attack in European history was to renounce action, and then call for talk.
"I believe we need a conference of EU interior ministers as quickly as possible," announced the German interior minister, Otto Schily. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder seconded Schily, pledging not to beef up security, and vowing to reject new anti-terror laws. Instead, he offered the European version of that silly Democratic slogan: anti-terrorism is largely a police action. He then promised "hard punishment" for terrorists. That way, presumably, once those terrorists have finished butchering yet another swath of humanity, they'll be really, really sorry.
Schroeder's reluctance to take a tougher line against terrorism is understandable, though. Sure, Spain may be under siege by terrorists, all the more terrifying for their anonymity. But the German public is locked in more urgent combat. There is, for instance, the divisive matter of Nazi erotica.
This odd story involves an obscure German novelist, one Thor Kunkel. Kunkel, you see, has just penned a fictitious account about a series of real-life pornographic films shot by the Nazis in the woods of Hamburg. Recently, though, the book was dropped by its publisher after several unflattering reviews touched off a controversy about Kunkel's "right-wing" politics. For his part, the PR-savvy Kunkel amusingly vented his spleen in a letter to the reviewers at Der Spiegel magazine. "Like any half-sensible person I condemn the horrors of the Nazi era," he wrote. "It is not that I am trying to ignore the Holocaust, it's merely that it's totally passé as a theme."
Once you cut through Kunkel's hooey about artistic integrity and the publisher's slightly more accurate charges of latent Nazi sympathies, the real reason for the book's canning seems pretty simple: it sucked. All the same, the spirited debate it stirred up speaks to the utter disarray of German priorities: It's not that Germans are trying to ignore the horrors of international terrorism; it's just that, after two years of actively blasting the Bush team for smiting bin Laden's henchmen, terrorism is totally passé as a theme.
Elsewhere in Europe, folks are no more focused. Take Switzerland. Altogether indifferent to the global threat of suicide terrorism, the country is moving to crack down on a far more serious phenomenon: "suicide tourism." Euthanasia clinics in places like Zurich are apparently popular destinations for visitors eager to depart from this world. Problem is, foreigners are expected to live at least half a year in Switzerland before they're considered eligible for assisted suicide. Unhappily, say Swiss officials, they tend not to stay longer than a day.
-snip-
(Jacob Laksin in The American Spectator, March 16, 2004)
LINK HERE (http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=6288)
If ever there was a time for European leaders to trade talk for action, last week was it. So it tells you something about the solemnity with which the war on terrorism is perceived in some quarters that Germany's first reaction to what may yet prove the deadliest terror attack in European history was to renounce action, and then call for talk.
"I believe we need a conference of EU interior ministers as quickly as possible," announced the German interior minister, Otto Schily. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder seconded Schily, pledging not to beef up security, and vowing to reject new anti-terror laws. Instead, he offered the European version of that silly Democratic slogan: anti-terrorism is largely a police action. He then promised "hard punishment" for terrorists. That way, presumably, once those terrorists have finished butchering yet another swath of humanity, they'll be really, really sorry.
Schroeder's reluctance to take a tougher line against terrorism is understandable, though. Sure, Spain may be under siege by terrorists, all the more terrifying for their anonymity. But the German public is locked in more urgent combat. There is, for instance, the divisive matter of Nazi erotica.
This odd story involves an obscure German novelist, one Thor Kunkel. Kunkel, you see, has just penned a fictitious account about a series of real-life pornographic films shot by the Nazis in the woods of Hamburg. Recently, though, the book was dropped by its publisher after several unflattering reviews touched off a controversy about Kunkel's "right-wing" politics. For his part, the PR-savvy Kunkel amusingly vented his spleen in a letter to the reviewers at Der Spiegel magazine. "Like any half-sensible person I condemn the horrors of the Nazi era," he wrote. "It is not that I am trying to ignore the Holocaust, it's merely that it's totally passé as a theme."
Once you cut through Kunkel's hooey about artistic integrity and the publisher's slightly more accurate charges of latent Nazi sympathies, the real reason for the book's canning seems pretty simple: it sucked. All the same, the spirited debate it stirred up speaks to the utter disarray of German priorities: It's not that Germans are trying to ignore the horrors of international terrorism; it's just that, after two years of actively blasting the Bush team for smiting bin Laden's henchmen, terrorism is totally passé as a theme.
Elsewhere in Europe, folks are no more focused. Take Switzerland. Altogether indifferent to the global threat of suicide terrorism, the country is moving to crack down on a far more serious phenomenon: "suicide tourism." Euthanasia clinics in places like Zurich are apparently popular destinations for visitors eager to depart from this world. Problem is, foreigners are expected to live at least half a year in Switzerland before they're considered eligible for assisted suicide. Unhappily, say Swiss officials, they tend not to stay longer than a day.
-snip-
(Jacob Laksin in The American Spectator, March 16, 2004)
LINK HERE (http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=6288)