Der Untergang
David Irving’s having been jailed for three years by an Austrian court for making a speech in 1989 denying the Holocaust as commonly understood, is beyond belief. Not only does it make Vladimir Putin appear a great proponent of free…
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Category EU
On the Wow! front, rumor beats fact as usual
I thought I wouldn’t get back to the Jutland business but I am weak, hence curiousity’s easiest prey. What do I know about the man who authorized the Mohammed cartoons? — Flemming Rose interviewed Daniel Pipes last year. While I…
Always having to say you’re sorry…
… very sorry? No, I don’t think it’s a good idea to print ugly pictures of Mohammed the prophet unless there’s an exceptionally good reason to do so. No, I don’t think Europeans should but shrug their shoulders when their great…
The everyday economist’s broken hopes
What if this silly boycott, I thought, had pushed down the price of Danish imports — how could I benefit? Alas, the only Danish issues I cared for were ham and beer.
Psychoanalyze this random find
I don’t remember how this crept onto my screen — I looked up and saw this: As a Maoist philosophy lecturer at Vincennes in Paris, her radicalism caused the official disaffiliation of the philosophy department, after she handed out course…
On vertigraphy
Having read this dressing-down of Bernard-Henri Lévy’s new book on America, American Vertigo, I am tempted to compare Lévy’s writings on America to Custine’s writings on Russia but respect for the Marquis tells me to resist the temptation. A nobleman…
The fabulous Bayreuth production of *The Communist Manifesto*
After I had quoted A.C.Douglas on the best Ring for the beginner at a Russian music forum, I got this in a comment among others: I’ve just seen Das Rheingold from the mentioned [DVD] set [Boulez–Chéreau 1976 Bayreuth Ring] and…
What makes blogs possible
The Economist, in “Shock to the System,” Dec. 24, 2005: EDF [Electricité de France] employees work shorter hours, enjoy longer holidays and get more special benefits than workers in any other French company. A bestselling book about how to do…
Under the black mountain
When Arnold Schwarzenegger campaigned for governorship in California, bloggers inquired into the origin of his name. The most convincing opinion was, I remember, that the name should be parsed “schwarzen+egger” and taken to mean something like “black ploughman” or “black…
Far from the raging crowds of Paris
From Letters of a Russian Traveller by Nikolai M. Karamzin (1793): The town is rather small and, apart from the duke’s castle, one can’t find a single huge house here. — I was interrogated at the town gate, after which…
[Alain Besançon on the Russian revolution]
Once you’ve mentioned the Civil War and Revolution, there’s no end in sight. I have dug up a quote from Alain Besançon (a French historian and former “Sovietologist”) that has struck me as a grotesque distortion every time I‘ve though…
Das Heldentum eines Danzigers
These days, every other Eastern European intellectual is hailed as a hero of sorts, and a handful of politicians get hosanna-ed on a regular basis. Havel’s a hero, and Milosz was a hero; the late Pope was a hero, and…